Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

This policy describes how the MindGrow Stories prototype processes personal data when you use the web application. The data controller for your deployment is the organization operating this instance (see your tester onboarding for contact details).

2. What we collect

We collect and process the following categories of data:

• Account: email address, display name, bcrypt-hashed password, session cookies, and login timestamps.
• Book inputs: child age, character names, story themes, emotional-personalization choices, optional free-text context, dedication notes, and illustration preferences.
• Uploads: reference photos and character descriptions you provide (highest sensitivity when photos show real children).
• Generated content: story text, scene images, PDF exports, and technical metadata (job IDs, seeds, provider names).
• Library: book titles, favorites, and links between your account and completed jobs.
• Browser storage: settings, character library portraits (IndexedDB), and generation drafts in localStorage on your device.

3. Why we use it

We use this data to authenticate you, generate and store your personalized books, show your library, improve prototype stability, and prevent abuse (for example rate limits).

We do not sell your personal data. We do not use it for advertising profiles in this prototype.

4. Third-party processors

When you generate a book, parts of your inputs (text and, for image features, image bytes) are transmitted to external AI providers configured for this deployment, such as OpenAI, Google (Gemini), or deAPI for images.

Hosting infrastructure (for example Render) stores server-side files and databases. Contracts and data-processing agreements for production use with children's data must be completed before wider public launch.

5. Where data is stored

Server data lives in a SQLite authentication database and on-disk job folders (by default under runs/, scoped per user when authenticated).

Some data never leaves your browser until you send it to the API (character library portraits, UI preferences, local drafts).

6. How long we keep it

Sessions expire after a configurable period (default: 14 days of inactivity, see AI_STORYTELLER_SESSION_TTL_DAYS).

Generated book files on our servers — including images, PDFs, and other job artifacts — are automatically deleted when they are more than 30 days old (default DATA_RETENTION_DAYS). Cleanup runs when the API service restarts. Download a PDF if you want to keep a copy beyond that period.

Your account and library metadata remain until you delete individual books, delete your account, or we remove data as described above. Deleting your account removes associated server-side book data.

7. Your choices and rights

You can permanently delete individual books from “My Books”, which removes the library entry and all related files on our servers.

You can delete your account from Settings, which removes your account and associated book data on our servers.

You can clear character library and local settings from the Settings page or by clearing site data in your browser.

You may request access, correction, or deletion of your data by contacting the project team. Depending on your location (for example the EU/EEA under GDPR), you may have additional rights such as restriction of processing or data portability. We will respond to lawful requests within a reasonable time.

8. Children's data

The service is designed for parents to create content about children. We treat photos of minors and identifying story details as high-sensitivity data.

Please avoid uploading images you are not allowed to share. Planned controls include stripping EXIF metadata from uploads and separate consent before sending photos of real people to external image APIs.

9. Security

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Session identifiers are stored as hashes server-side; cookies are HttpOnly. HTTPS is used in production deployments.

No system is perfectly secure. Report suspected incidents through your tester contact channel.

10. Changes to this policy

We will update this page when data practices change. The “Last updated” date at the top reflects the latest revision.

A detailed technical inventory is maintained in docs/DATA_INVENTORY.md in the project repository.