Microsoft is testing an app called Context Vault that offers Recall-style AI search without the constant screenshots.
Windows Latest found the app, which carries the working name Project Pantheon. It is not built into Windows 11. It has to be installed from the Microsoft Store, though it is not yet listed there. Instead of capturing snapshots of your activity automatically, it only works on what you add yourself: files, images, web pages or clipboard text. You can then ask the AI questions about that material or have it organize it, with a summer trip plan as the example given.
The design differs from Recall in other ways. It does not need a Copilot+ PC or a local NPU (the chip that runs AI tasks on-device), because it can use cloud-based AI. Third-party AI such as Claude can reportedly be given access to the vault. The current build also has a panel tracking AI token usage. Microsoft is said to be weighing encryption, per-app access controls and a Windows Hello login, which Recall already requires. None of this is confirmed for a release.
The trade-off is plain. Manual curation answers the main complaint about Recall, that it records everything. Cloud processing reintroduces a privacy question, even if local processing remains an option.
Reddit threads on the find were mostly hostile. One commenter called it "solving [a] problem [that] doesn't exist," and another said bookmarks and Office documents settled this around 2000. A Recall user in the same thread was more positive and wanted syncing between devices. The writer who rounded up that thread concluded that anti-Recall users will not be swayed by a different take on the same idea.
That read seems fair, and it points to a larger problem. Recall's trouble was never only its design. It came from distrust of how much AI Microsoft keeps adding to Windows. A separate app that users opt into by hand is a cleaner offer, and it works much like standalone tools that already let people upload documents and question them. The open question is whether Microsoft can pitch it to people who are not already arguing about it.