The Sonela Gateway

Run an AI assistant on your own data without opening a port

One small service, on one server, next to your data.

The gateway is the only part of Sonela that runs inside your network. It is a single file — and your dashboard writes the setup script that installs it: download both, run one command on the server, and the gateway is a service.

It is also not where a workspace has to begin: Sonela can first answer from the procedures you already have written, with no database connected, and the gateway can come later — same workspace, nothing redone.

1
Outbound only

It calls us; we never call it

The gateway opens the connection, over the same port 443 your browser uses, and asks whether there is a question waiting. There is no inbound port to open, no VPN to stand up and no tunnel to maintain. If the machine can browse the web, it can run the gateway.

2
Stays on your machine

What it needs to reach your database stays there

Everything the gateway needs in order to sign in to your database is configured on your side and stays there — never sent to Sonela, never written to a log, never echoed back. We hold only a hash of the gateway's own key, so even that cannot be read back out of us.

3
Runs on your side

The same read-only checks, on your server

Every statement is validated as a single read-only SELECT over the schema you approved, and rewritten with your tenant filter — or run without one, if you told us the database has one owner — inside your network, before it reaches your database. Then it runs under a three-second statement timeout and a 500-row cap, and the transaction is thrown away rather than committed — on PostgreSQL and MySQL inside a READ ONLY transaction the engine itself enforces. Same code as a direct connection, different address.

Download

Get the gateway.

One file per platform, self-contained — no runtime to install first. Each build publishes its SHA-256 alongside it, so you can check what you downloaded before you run it.

The gateway's key comes from your dashboard: sign in, add a gateway data source, and the key appears once — at the start of a guided setup that takes it, and your answers, from there.

Installing it

An afternoon's work, and most of that is deciding where it runs.

Pick one server that can already reach your database and browse the web. Answer a handful of questions in your dashboard and your browser writes the install script for that server's operating system — the key, the settings and the build's SHA-256 already in it. Run it once on the server and the gateway is a service that comes back after a reboot. The dashboard turns green when it connects.

And once it runs, it is watched. The dashboard listens for the gateway's heartbeat: if it goes quiet, the first screen you open says so — and for how long — instead of you finding out from a slow afternoon of failed answers.

Read the installation guide

Covers Windows and Linux, running it as a service that survives a reboot, checking that it connected, rotating the key, uninstalling, and the first few things that actually go wrong.

Your database never leaves the building. Only the rows that answer a question do.

Open a workspace, add a gateway data source, and answer a handful of questions — your browser writes the install script, and one command on the server does the rest.

14 days, 200 answered questions, no card. No AI key to supply — trials run on Sonela's key.