Metadata-only ingestion

Metadata-only ingestion means a system reads the surrounding facts about a piece of communication or a calendar event, such as who was involved, when it happened, how long it lasted, and how many people were included, without reading the substance of what was said or written.

For a calendar event, this might include start and end time, attendee count and how recently it was booked, without the meeting title, description or attached documents. For a messaging platform such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, this might include message frequency, timing and channel, without the text of any message.

Sloane is built around metadata-only ingestion for calendars and team tools. This is a deliberate design choice, not a limitation worked around later: it means Sloane can identify meaningful patterns, such as a spike in after-hours activity or a sudden rise in meeting density, without ever having access to sensitive or confidential communication content.

This distinction matters for trust as much as for privacy engineering. It allows Sloane to offer individual coaching and, separately, anonymised group-level patterns for leaders, without either party being able to see what a specific person actually said in a meeting or a message.