Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 14, 2026
Short version: chattr has no accounts and no ads. It stores your playthroughs (character name, what you typed, what the narrator wrote) so you can continue them, and it sends what you type to the narrator model to write the next turn. That’s it.
1. Who Is Responsible for Your Information
The person or organisation hosting this instance of chattr (the “Operator”) decides how information on it is handled and is the data controller for that information. chattr is designed to run self-hosted, so the Operator may be an individual running it on their own machine. Contact details are in section 13.
2. Information We Collect
Information you give us
- Account. Your email address and password. The password is stored only as a salted scrypt hash; we never store or log it in readable form. Your email is used to identify your account.
- Player name. The name you give when you first start a story, changeable in Account settings. It is stored with your account and your playthroughs and shown in playthrough lists.
- Player input. Every choice you pick and every freeform action you type. Please do not put real personal information about yourself or others into a playthrough.
- Community Stories and upvotes. Stories you write as a chattrbox member (drafts are private; published ones are public, shown with your player name), and which stories you upvoted (counts are public, who voted is not).
- Billing. If you subscribe to chattrbox: your Stripe customer id, subscription status and renewal date. Card details go to Stripe and never reach chattr.
- Profile picture. An image you choose in Settings, shrunk to 256px in your browser.
- Comments. Comments you leave on playthroughs, with your player name.
- Feedback. Anything you send through the Help center’s contact route.
Information created while you play
- Playthroughs and turns. The narrator’s text for each turn, the stat state after each turn, the suggested choices, a rolling summary the narrator keeps for continuity, and timestamps.
- Art references. URLs of illustrations attached to turns.
- Balances and purchases. Your Quill and Star balances, when you last watched an ad, and a record of each pack or subscription bought (the Stripe session id, what was bought and the amount). Card details never reach us; Stripe handles payment.
Information collected automatically
- Browser storage. A single preference key for light or dark mode (
chattr-theme) in your browser’s local storage. chattr sets no advertising or analytics cookies. - Login cookie. One essential, http-only cookie (
chattr_session) that keeps you logged in for up to 30 days. Logging out deletes it and revokes the session on the server. - Server logs. Standard web-server logs (IP address, user agent, requested path, time) may be kept by the Operator’s hosting environment for security and debugging.
Beyond your account email and password hash, chattr does not collect dates of birth, phone numbers or payment information.
3. How We Use the Information We Collect
- to write each turn — your player input and the story context are sent to the narrator model;
- to save your playthrough so you can continue it later and see it in “Continue reading”;
- to show playthrough counts, most-played and recently-played rankings on this instance;
- to attach illustrations to turns;
- to remember your light or dark mode choice;
- to keep the Service secure, diagnose problems and prevent abuse; and
- to respond when you contact us.
We share information only with the services that make chattr work:
| Recipient | What is shared | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Narrator model provider (Z.ai for GLM models, or OpenRouter and the provider it routes to) | Story instructions, the rolling summary, recent turns, your player name and player input (never your email) | To generate the next turn |
| Image generation platform (Higgsfield) | Scene descriptions written by the Operator; no player input by default | To create cover, hero and panel art |
| Hosted Postgres database (Neon or Supabase), only if the Operator has configured it | Accounts (email, password hash, player name), login sessions, playthroughs and turns | To store playthroughs off the local disk |
| Higgsfield (chattrbox turn images) | A short scene description written from the chosen Turn (no names, no email) | To generate the illustration you asked for |
| Vercel Blob (file storage) | Generated turn images | To keep your images after the generator deletes its copy |
| Stripe | Your email, and the payment details you enter at checkout | To charge and manage a chattrbox subscription |
| Resend (email) | Your email address and a one-time reset link | To send password-reset emails |
| Payment processor (Stripe) | Email, what you bought, amount | To take payment for Stars, Quills and chattrbox |
| Hosting provider | Server logs | To serve the site |
We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect the rights or safety of anyone, or as part of a transfer of the instance to a new Operator. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for targeted advertising.
5. Retention of Personal Information
Playthroughs are kept until you or the Operator delete them, because their whole point is that you can come back to them. On a local instance they live in the .data/db.json file; on a hosted instance they live in the configured Postgres database. Server logs are kept for the period set by the hosting environment, typically 30 days or less. Narrator and art providers keep their own copies under their own policies.
6. Your Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you;
- have inaccurate information corrected;
- have your information erased;
- restrict or object to how we process it;
- receive a copy of it in a portable format;
- withdraw consent where processing is based on consent; and
- lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
7. Exercising Your Rights and Your Choices
- See your playthroughs. Everything stored about a playthrough is visible on its reader page and on the story page lists.
- Delete a playthrough. Ask the Operator through the Help center. On your own instance, remove it from
.data/db.jsonor the database. - Use a pseudonym. Character names are free text; you do not need to use your real name.
- Theme preference. Clear your browser’s site data to remove the stored theme key.
- Other requests. Contact us using section 13. We may need to verify that a request relates to your playthroughs before acting on it.
8. How We Protect Personal Information
We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect stored information, including keeping API keys in server-side environment variables that are never sent to the browser. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and a self-hosted instance is only as secure as the machine it runs on. If you believe a playthrough has been tampered with, tell the Operator.
9. Children’s Personal Information
The Service is intended for people aged 13 and over and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has used the Service, contact us and we will delete the relevant playthroughs. Where local law requires parental consent for older minors, the parent or guardian is responsible for providing it.
10. Links to Other Websites
The Service links to third-party sites, such as the narrator gateway’s key page and the image platform. Those sites have their own privacy practices, which we do not control. Review their policies before providing them with information.
11. Updates to Our Privacy Policy
We may update this policy as chattr changes or as the law requires. The “Last updated” date at the top shows the current version. For material changes we will post a notice on the Service before the change takes effect.
12. Regional Privacy Disclosures
12.1 Residents of certain U.S. states
In the past 12 months the Service has collected the following categories of personal information:
| Category | Examples | Collected | Sold or shared for targeted ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers | IP address in server logs | Yes | No |
| User-provided content | Character name, player input | Yes | No |
| Internet activity | Pages requested, user agent | Yes | No |
| Commercial, financial, biometric, geolocation, inferences | — | No | No |
You have the right to know, correct and delete this information, to data portability, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Because we do not sell or share personal information, there is no opt-out to exercise. We do not currently respond to browser “Do Not Track” signals because we do no tracking that they would apply to.
12.2 Residents of the EEA, UK and Switzerland
Our legal bases for processing are:
| Purpose | Information | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Generating turns and saving playthroughs | Character name, player input, turns | Performance of a contract (providing the Service you asked for) |
| Security, debugging, abuse prevention | Server logs | Legitimate interests |
| Remembering your theme | Local storage key | Strictly necessary for the feature you chose |
| Responding to you | Feedback you send | Legitimate interests / consent |
Narrator and art providers may process information outside the EEA. Where they do, we rely on their standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision. The Service makes no decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects; the narrator only writes fiction. You may complain to your local supervisory authority.
13. Contact Us
Use “Get in touch” in the Help center for any privacy question or request. If you run your own instance, you are the Operator and the contact is you.