MechaSquid

Privacy Policy

Last updated 24 September 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, your name, the pen names you add and, if you sign in with Google, the identifier Google gives us. Passwords are handled by Google's sign-in service; we never see them.
  • What you write and make: your worlds, books, chapters, scenes, wiki pages, plans, ties between pages, maps, comments, the history of revisions, your rules for your writing voice, and the pictures you upload or generate.
  • 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, processing new writing, reading relationships, generating a picture), a record of the call: which feature, how much it cost, whether it worked. While we tune these features, the record also holds the text sent to the model and its answer; these 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.
  • 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.

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).

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.
  • 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.
  • The people you share a book with read the shared copy and see their own comments with your replies.
  • 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 runs in Belgium. The other built-in AI features (automatic summaries, processing new writing, reading relationships between pages, 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 and pictures only run when you ask for them.

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.
  • Shared copies and their pictures: deleted when you revoke every link and remove every reader of that share.
  • Records of app requests and of built-in AI calls: for as long as your account exists.
  • 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.

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 or EPUB, a world or everything as an Obsidian vault, from Settings or your dashboard.
  • Disconnect an app or revoke an API key on your dashboard or in a book's settings; it stops working at once.
  • Stop sharing by revoking a link or removing a reader.
  • Switch off the built-in automatic summaries and relationship reading in a world's settings.
  • Delete pages on the website, or your whole account on your Account page. Deleting the account stops everything at once and erases it all after seven days; signing in during that week cancels it.
  • 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.