MechaSquid

Privacy Policy

Last updated 24 October 2026.

MechaSquid is a writing app for novelists. This page says what it stores about you, why, where, who else receives it, how long it is kept and what you can do about it. Questions and requests about your data: support@mechasquid.com.

1. What we store

  • Your account: your email address and whether you verified it, your name, the pen names you add with the About the author text you write for each, what you chose to be emailed about with your time zone (so an email arrives in your morning), the contact details you add for submissions (your legal name, postal address, phone and email), when you created the account and accepted these terms, and, if you sign in with Google, the identifier Google gives us and the address of your Google profile picture. Passwords are handled by Google's sign-in service; we never see them. If you turn on two-step sign-in, that service also keeps the name you gave each authenticator app, when you added it, and the secret it shares with the app to make the codes; that secret never reaches MechaSquid's servers: the QR code that carries it is drawn in your browser, which does not keep it.
  • What you write and make: your books and the worlds they are set in, chapters, scenes, wiki pages, plans, relationships between pages, maps, comments, the history of revisions, your rules for your writing voice, and the pictures you upload or generate, with the larger copies made of them for print.
  • Your writing record: how many words you typed on each day, in all and per book, for your goals and the record on your Account page. Only the numbers, never the words themselves; pasted text and what your connected apps write are not counted.
  • When you last opened each book, so its Overview can show what arrived since your last visit.
  • The apps you connect: for each AI app you allow (such as Claude or ChatGPT) its name and when you allowed it; for each API key you create, a scrambled copy (a hash) of the key, never the key itself.
  • What your connected apps did: one line per request an app makes: which app, which tool, which book and pages, whether it read or changed something, whether it worked and when. Not the content of the request or the answer.
  • Built-in AI features: when MechaSquid's own AI features run (summaries, search, tidying new scenes and the checks you switch on for it, reading relationships, describing the pages of an imported book, reading the names on a map you upload, choosing words for a sentence, suggesting pacing scores for scenes, the beta reader, adding what your scenes say to the world pages they name (Through the book), sorting an idea into pages and suggesting more for it, generating a picture, making a picture print-ready), a record of the call: which feature, how much it cost, whether it worked. The text sent to the model and its answer are not kept. The records cannot be read through the website by anyone, our own admin pages included.
  • Sharing: when you share a book, the shared copy of the text and pictures you chose; for readers you invite, their name and email address; the comments readers leave, their answers to your questions and the changes they suggest to your text.
  • Emails we send you: one record per email: to which account, what kind (readers responding, your account being deleted, your access ending, a backup that did not work), when, and whether it was sent. Not its subject, its text or your address.
  • Backups, if you turn them on: which service they go to (Google Drive or Dropbox), the email address of that Google or Dropbox account (to show you where your backups go), the permission it gave MechaSquid, kept encrypted, and when backups ran, how large each was and whether it worked.
  • Feedback you send: your message, which page you were on and your browser, never your manuscript.
  • Your access: the invitation code you used and until when your access runs. If you ask to delete your account, the day it will be erased.

The website uses no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies. It keeps a few settings in your browser (theme, editor preferences, where you left off, unsaved text until it is saved) and a copy of what you opened, so it loads quickly.

2. Why we use it

  • To run the service you signed up for: store your writing, show it to you, let the apps you connect read and propose changes to it, and let the readers you choose read what you shared.
  • To show you what your connected apps did, so you can check and undo it.
  • To count allowances (for example generated pictures per month) and to keep the service secure and working.
  • To answer feedback and fix problems.

We do not sell your data, we do not show you ads, and we do not use your writing to train AI models, ours or anyone else's.

3. Who else receives it

  • Google Cloud (Firebase and Vertex AI), which hosts the database, the files, the website and the AI models behind the built-in features, and processes the data only on our instructions. When you ask the cover studio to make a picture print-ready, that picture, one you uploaded included, is sent to Google's image model on Vertex AI, which makes a larger copy of it, under the same terms as the pictures you generate; Google marks the copy with an invisible watermark (SynthID) saying AI made it. Enlarging a picture plainly sends it nowhere.
  • The AI apps you connect. An app you allow receives what it reads through MechaSquid, and what it does with it is governed by your agreement with that app's provider (for example Anthropic or OpenAI). You choose which apps, and you can disconnect them at any time.
  • Resend (Resend, Inc., in the United States, certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework), which delivers the emails MechaSquid sends you. It receives your email address and each email's subject and message: for readers responding, the book's title, who responded (the name a reader signs with, or a link's label), how many comments, answers and suggestions, the furthest chapter they reached, and links to your book in MechaSquid, never the words of a comment; for account notices, the date, and for a backup that did not work, which service it was going to and what went wrong. Resend keeps its delivery logs for 30 days. We only email the address of your own account, only once you have verified it, and never your readers.
  • The people you share a book with read the shared copy and see their own comments with your replies.
  • Wikimedia Commons, only when you search it for mood pictures: your browser sends it the words you search for and loads its pictures, as any visit to Wikimedia would (it sees your IP address). A picture you add is copied into your files with its credit; nothing of your book is sent.
  • The map services behind Earth in the Atlas: OpenFreeMap (the map itself), Mapterhorn (the shading of hills), OpenHistoricalMap (the past at a year), Allmaps and the library that holds an old map you lay over it. While Earth is open, and on a place page that has a spot on Earth (its small map), your browser asks them for the part of the world being shown, so they learn that area and your IP address, as any map website does. When you look a place up, your browser sends Wikidata (or, on Enter, OpenStreetMap's search, Nominatim) the name searched for: the words you typed, the name of the place page you are finding, or, when you ask MechaSquid to find your book's places on Earth, the names of those place pages. When you ask what is near a spot or a place, your browser sends Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons where that spot is. When a connected app puts a place on Earth by its Wikidata id, our server asks Wikidata for that id. No text of your book is sent to any of them.
  • Read aloud in Write mode uses your browser's own speech. MechaSquid sends nothing for it. A voice on your device keeps the text on your device; a voice marked “online” (such as Chrome's Google voices or Edge's online voices) sends the sentences being read to the company behind the browser, which turns them into speech, under that company's own terms. You choose the voice, and the device's own voices are offered first.
  • Google Drive or Dropbox, only if you connect one for backups on your Account page. Once a week, and when you choose Back up now, our server sends it a copy of everything in your account (the same zip as Export everything: your books and their worlds with their pictures, maps, comments and voice rules, and your details for submissions). In Google Drive MechaSquid can see only the files it made there, in a folder called “MechaSquid backups”; in Dropbox only its own app folder. It keeps the last four backups and removes older ones it made. What happens to the files there is governed by your agreement with Google or Dropbox.
  • Authorities, only where the law requires it.

4. Where it is kept

Your data is stored in the European Union: Google Cloud in Belgium (europe-west1), and the website in the Netherlands (europe-west4). Search and making a picture print-ready run in Belgium. The other built-in AI features (automatic summaries, tidying new scenes, reading relationships between pages, describing the pages of an imported book, reading the names on a map you upload, generating pictures) use models Google serves only from its global endpoint, which has no fixed region, so that text may be processed outside the EU. You can switch automatic summaries and relationship reading off in each world's settings, and processing, describing an imported book, map reading, pictures and print-ready copies only run when you ask for them. The emails we send you pass through Resend, a United States company, under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. A backup you send to Google Drive or Dropbox is kept wherever that service keeps your files.

5. How long it is kept

  • What you write and your account data: for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, everything is erased seven days later, including the records below; comments you left on someone else's shared book stay with that author, without your name.
  • Export files: deleted automatically after one day.
  • Pages you delete: kept in the trash for 30 days, so you can bring them back, then erased with their history and pictures. You can erase them sooner from the trash.
  • Shared copies and their pictures: deleted when you revoke every link and remove every reader of that share.
  • Records of app requests, of built-in AI calls and of emails sent: for as long as your account exists.
  • The backup connection: until you disconnect it on your Account page or delete your account. The backups already made stay in your Google Drive or Dropbox, which are yours.
  • Your name and pen names: until you change them or delete your account. A pen name you choose for a book appears on its exports and under the title of its shared copies.
  • Your contact details for submissions: until you change them or delete your account. They are printed only on the title page of a manuscript you export yourself as a Word file (from a book's Settings or the Publish page), so an agent or editor you send it to can reach you, and they are in your own Export everything. They are never in a world's vault, a shared copy, an ebook, a paperback, or a file an app you connected exports.

When your access ends, nothing is deleted: your books become read-only and export keeps working.

6. What you can do

  • Take everything with you at any time: a book as Markdown, EPUB or Word, or the book with its world as an Obsidian vault, from the book's Settings, under Export; or everything at once with Export everything on your Account page.
  • Disconnect an app on your Account page, under Connected apps, or revoke an API key in its book's Settings, under Advanced; either stops working at once.
  • Stop backups with Disconnect on your Account page, or by removing MechaSquid's access in your Google or Dropbox account; either stops them at once.
  • Stop sharing by revoking a link or removing a reader.
  • Switch off the built-in automatic summaries and relationship reading, and choose what tidying new scenes looks for (the voice check, pacing scores, the beta reader and Through the book are off until you turn them on), in a book's Settings.
  • Delete pages on the website (they wait in the trash for 30 days, or until you empty it), or your whole account on your Account page. Deleting the account stops everything at once and erases it all after seven days; until then, Cancel the deletion on your Account page brings everything back as it was.
  • Ask for a copy of your data, for a correction, for deletion, or object to how we use it, at support@mechasquid.com. If you are in the EU or the UK you may also complain to your data protection authority.

7. Children

MechaSquid is not meant for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

8. Changes

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes.

Privacy Policy · MechaSquid