Arca, a desktop app that buys the AI chat logs sitting on people's hard drives, dropped its invite wall on November 11, 2026. The tool comes from the team behind Brevis, the verifiable-computing shop known for its Pico zkVM, and it's free on Mac and Windows. Anyone with an email address or Google account can sign up — no waitlist, no access code.
The pitch is blunt: every session with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or Claude Desktop is a record of somebody thinking through a problem. Arca wants to buy those records instead of letting them get deleted.
How the app finds and prices your old chats
Arca scans the computer for session histories that already exist, including ones users may have forgotten about, and presents them in a list. The user picks which sessions to hand over. The app anonymizes each one on the device before anything is uploaded, then comes back with a quote range.
From there the user confirms — sending the session to review — or withdraws, which deletes the upload. Approved sessions get paid out weekly. The company says nothing is read beyond what's already on the machine, nothing uploads in the background, and nothing leaves the device until the user confirms.
What gets stripped before upload
Before a session leaves the computer, Arca strips names, file paths, account details and keys. More anonymization runs on Arca's side. Not every session qualifies: very short ones are rejected, and each submission is reviewed before any payment goes out.
Model support is partial at launch. Sessions with Claude Opus and Fable qualify today, as do sessions with the latest GPT models in Codex. The company says more models are planned. Users can also optionally connect GitHub to strengthen their profile, which Arca says can potentially raise what a session is worth.
The Brevis connection and the $10,000 challenge
Arca first appeared on October 13, 2026, in invite-only early access, letting users in a few at a time. The public opening arrives with a promotion attached: through November 30, the Arca Launch Challenge adds $10,000 in prizes on top of regular payouts for approved sessions.
The app is built by the same team as Brevis, whose main line of business is verifiable computing infrastructure. Arca is a consumer-facing bet that there's a market for the byproduct of AI work — the prompts, corrections and dead ends that normally vanish when a session closes.
Michael, co-founder and CEO of Brevis, framed the product around ownership: he said every AI session is a record of real thinking and work, and that Arca lets people see what their sessions are worth and decide what to share.
What happens after the launch window
The practical questions are still open. Pricing depends on review, and Arca hasn't published a rate card. The Launch Challenge runs only through November 30, so anyone weighing whether to submit old sessions has a deadline to work against. After that, payouts fall back to the standard weekly schedule for approved sessions. Arca is available at arca.market, with media inquiries directed to Nicolas Tang at [email protected].
