Version 1.9.0
Download Warden
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. No account, and nothing to configure. The AI runs on your own processor, so once it is set up nothing you look at leaves the machine.
Installs to your user folder. It does not ask for administrator to install, and it does not need administrator to run.
No reliable internet on the machine you are installing to?
The standard download fetches the AI model on request, the first time you ask for it, about 1 GB, kept afterwards. Everything else works before that, using the built-in rules engine.
An offline edition with the model already inside it is built by build-installer.ps1 -Offline and is not published yet. Until it is, you can build it from source.
Windows will warn you, and here is why
The installer is not code-signed, because a certificate costs a few hundred dollars and this is a student project. So SmartScreen will show “Windows protected your PC” the first time you run it. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
You should be suspicious of that prompt in general. The reason to trust this one is that every line of the source is public and the build script that produces this file is in the repository.
About the AI model
Warden reasons with a language model that runs on your own processor. It is not in the installer, because bundling it would make this a one-gigabyte download and most people would never find out whether the software was any good.
Instead the first launch works immediately using the built-in rules engine, which handles every scenario end to end, and the Readiness page offers to fetch the model when you want it. About 1 GB, downloaded once, kept in your user folder, and used offline from then on.
Nothing is downloaded without you asking. Warden does not spend a gigabyte of your bandwidth because you opened it.
What it puts on your machine
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\WardenThe application itself. Removed completely when you uninstall.
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Warden\sessionsA record of what Warden saw and did, one file per run, so a decision can be reopened later. Uninstall asks before deleting these.
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Warden\logsPlain-text log. The first place to look if something misbehaves.
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Warden\modelsThe AI model, once you ask for it. Kept outside the application folder so an upgrade does not mean downloading it again.
Nothing is written outside your user folder, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Requirements
Warden also needs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime to draw its window. Windows 11 has it already, and so does almost every up-to-date Windows 10 machine. The installer checks and tells you before installing if it is missing.
If your machine blocks installers
Some managed laptops will not run a setup program. The plain folder works instead.
Extract it anywhere and run Warden.exe from inside the folder. Keep the folder together, because the _internal directory beside it is not optional.
Or build it yourself
You need Python 3.11+, Node 18+, and about ten minutes. The model runtime is staged separately because it is third-party binaries that do not belong in a git history; drop -RuntimeOnly to build the offline edition instead.
git clone https://github.com/genix2600/warden cd warden .\scripts\fetch-model.ps1 # stages the local model .\scripts\build-installer.ps1 # produces dist\Warden-Setup-1.9.0.exe