Privacy Policy
# Privacy Policy
Last updated: 12 November 2026
## About this policy
This is an interim Privacy Policy. It accurately describes how Branch Press handles information today, and it applies now. It is currently under review by legal counsel and may be refined for clarity and completeness; any material change will be handled as described under "Changes to this policy" below. If anything here is unclear, contact [email protected].
## What changed on 12 November 2026
Until today this policy said that the AI agent sends your writing only to model hosts that "neither keep" it nor may train on it. That promised more than Branch Press asked for: it asked OpenRouter only for hosts that may not train on what they are sent. From 12 November 2026 it also asks for hosts that do not routinely store it, and "The AI agent" now says exactly what is asked for, with its two limits. One clause is added under "Retention and deletion": the key OpenRouter issued for you stays in your OpenRouter account when you delete your Branch Press account, as it does when you disconnect.
## What changed on 28 October 2026
Two additions. "Your Google Drive copy" describes an optional feature: a copy of your notes in your own Google Drive, what Branch Press keeps to make it work, and how you choose where its folders go. And under "Fonts and page assets are served by us": a published note that carries its writer's own design can make your browser fetch fonts, stylesheets and images from hosts its writer chose. That has been possible since 12 October 2026 and should have been said then.
## What changed on 24 October 2026
Branchspace now keeps earlier versions of your notes, so you can read or restore how a note was (see "Version history"). This means words you edit out of a note stay in its history until you delete them. Readers of a published note can open the versions kept while it was public, and a reader's highlights now record the title and writer of the note they were made on, which the reader keeps (see "What is public").
## What changed on 6 October 2026
The previous version, dated 14 August 2026, said that Branch Press had no AI feature and sent no content to any AI provider. That stopped being true on 23 August 2026, when Branchspace gained AI review (which, when you asked, sent the open note to Anthropic or OpenAI on your own key; it was removed on 29 September 2026), and it is not true of the optional AI agent that replaced it. This version describes the agent (under "The AI agent"), names the companies it involves, and adds features it did not yet describe: comments and ratings, following and blocking, highlights and margin notes, the album, published boards, two-factor sign-in, and the "Report a problem" form. None of your writing was sent to any AI system unless you yourself used AI review or the agent.
## The short version
Branch Press is a reading site and a private writing workspace. If you only read, we collect nothing about you beyond the ordinary technical logs any website produces. If you create an account, we store what the service needs to work: your email, your profile, and the things you write. Your notes are private by default and protected so that only your account can read them. We run no analytics, show no ads, send no marketing email, do not sell or share your data, and never use your content to train AI models. Branchspace has an optional AI agent: it sends anything only when you ask it something, through OpenRouter on your own OpenRouter account, and only to model hosts that may not train on your writing and do not routinely store it once they have answered. If you never use it, none of your writing reaches any AI system. You can export your writing and delete your account, and everything in it, at any time.
## Who operates Branch Press
Branch Press (branchpress.org) is an independent literary press and writing platform operated by Soulaiman B. Mershed, also writing as S B Mershed, an individual based in Muscat, Oman. In this policy, "Branch Press," "we," "us," and "our" refer to this project; "you" refers to any visitor or account holder. For anything concerning your data or this policy, contact [email protected]. General correspondence: [email protected].
## Scope
This policy covers branchpress.org and the account-based writing workspace within it, called Branchspace. It describes the system as it actually runs today. If we change what the system does with your data, we update this policy first.
## The two ways to use Branch Press
As a reader, without an account: the essays, books, graph, guides, and public pages are readable without signing up, without consent-requiring cookies, and without identifying you. The only data involved is the technical minimum described under "Information processed automatically."
As a writer, with an account: Branchspace is a private writing workspace with notes, spaces, boards, templates, a knowledge graph, a reading tracker, an optional AI agent, and a public writer profile. Everything you create there is private by default. Some things become public only by your explicit choice, described under "What is public."
## What we collect from account holders, and why
We collect only what each feature needs to function.
To sign you in: your email address and a securely hashed password, held by our database and authentication provider, Supabase. We never store or see the password itself. If you sign in with Google, we receive the identity information Google's sign-in provides (your name, email, and avatar reference) and the tokens Google issues; we do not gain access to your Gmail, Drive, or any other Google data.
To keep your account secure: if you turn on two-factor sign-in, the authenticator setup and your recovery codes, which we store only in hashed form, so no one, including us, can read them back. Your settings list the devices currently signed in to your account, so that you can sign them out.
To give you a profile: an optional display name, handle, bio, and avatar image, and the album, if you add to it: the web addresses of photographs you host elsewhere, with your captions. The avatar is stored in our storage system.
To make the workspace work: the notes, spaces, boards, and compositions you create, and the templates you install; your reading-tracker entries; your reading positions, bookmarks, saved essays and shelves, and the highlights and margin notes you make while reading; and daily contribution counts used for your profile's contribution calendar. Private workspace records are protected by database access rules and restricted server endpoints. Those contribution records are numbers only, never the content, titles, or subject of what you wrote. Your private writing may contain anything you choose, and we treat all of it as private regardless of its subject.
To let you take part in conversation: the comments you post on Branch Press essays and the comments you like; the ratings you give essays and templates; the writers you follow; and the people you block or whose comments you hide.
If you use the AI agent: the connection to your OpenRouter account, and your conversations with the agent. Both are described under "The AI agent."
If you connect Google Drive: a key for it, kept encrypted, the Google account you connected, and our record of the files we made there, as described under "Your Google Drive copy."
If you report a problem or suggest an idea: what you write, the page you sent it from, your browser, your screen size, and your theme, all listed on the form before you send it, and your email address only if you tick "You may reply to me by email." Only the operator can read reports.
If you email us, we receive your email address, your name if you give one, and your message, used only to read and respond to you.
## Information processed automatically for everyone
Like any website, Branch Press is served through hosting and content-delivery infrastructure. When you load a page, that infrastructure processes limited technical information as a normal part of delivering the site, protecting it from abuse, and diagnosing faults: your IP address, browser and device type, the page requested, timestamps, referring page, and security and error logs. Our hosting and content-delivery provider is Cloudflare, and our database provider keeps equivalent service logs. These logs are held for short rolling windows on the providers' standard schedules, typically measured in days to weeks, and are not used by us for any purpose. We run no analytics and no tracking, so we do not profile you.
## Fonts and page assets are served by us
All fonts and site assets on Branch Press are served from Branch Press's own hosting. Loading a Branch Press page does not send your IP address or any other information to third-party font or asset services. One exception exists by a writer's own action: if a writer places an image in a note or their album by linking to an outside host, or embeds a video, your browser fetches it from that host when the page is displayed. The same is true of a published note that carries its writer's own design: the fonts, stylesheets and images that design names are fetched by your browser from the hosts its writer chose, such as Google Fonts, which then see your IP address and browser as any website you visit does. No script of theirs runs: Branch Press runs no script inside a writer's design.
## What we deliberately do not do
Each of these is true of the system as it runs today:
- No analytics or tracking scripts of any kind.
- No advertising and no ad-tech.
- No sale or sharing of your personal data with anyone for their own purposes.
- No marketing email; we email you only about your account or the service when necessary.
- No cross-site tracking and no third-party cookies.
- No AI training on your content, by us or, through the agent, by anyone else. The agent sends your writing only when you ask it something, and only to model hosts that may not train on it and do not routinely store it.
If we ever wanted to change any of these, we would change this policy first and tell you.
## What is public, and only by your choice
Privacy on Branch Press works in one direction: things become public only through an explicit action of yours, and you can reverse the visible part of that action at any time.
Your profile page, at a public address based on your handle, shows your display name, handle, bio, avatar, your public spaces and notes, your public activity, your contribution calendar, the boards you have published, and your album. If you hold a paid plan, the plan's name appears on it as a badge. The profile is public by default, because Branch Press is a press and writers are its public face, but a single switch in your profile settings makes the profile private.
Marking a note, board, or space public exposes it at a share link that anyone can read, and that search engines can index, cache, and quote. Unsharing removes it from Branch Press going forward, but cannot recall copies others may already have made. Publish deliberately.
Comments you post on Branch Press essays are public, with your name, which links to your profile only while your profile is public. For likes and ratings, only the totals are public, never who gave them. Whom you follow, who follows you, and whom you block or hide are private to you; the other person is never told.
Other writers may branch a published essay of yours: answer it with an essay of their own, which opens with a credited quotation of your first lines and a link back. Branching is open by default, and you can close it for any essay.
When a note is public, anyone who can read it can also open the earlier versions kept while it was public, each with its date; versions from before you published it stay private to you, and taking the note back to private hides them all. A version you delete from a published note leaves only a dated line saying it was withdrawn, never its words. Readers who highlight a passage of a published note keep, in their own private library, the passage, their own note on it, and the note's title and your name, even if you later change or delete the note.
Reading-tracker entries are private unless you mark an individual entry public. Apart from your public profile and the notes, boards, spaces, comments, or reading entries you explicitly publish, nothing else you create is visible to anyone but you.
## Images you embed from elsewhere
The workspace lets you place images in notes and in your album by pasting a direct link to an image you host elsewhere. Branch Press stores only the link. The image stays with, and is served by, the host you chose, under that host's own privacy practices. Choose hosts you trust, especially for images in notes you make public. The same goes for the fonts, stylesheets and images your note's own design loads.
## Looking up a reference
When you add a reference in Branchspace and give its DOI (a published work's permanent identifier, such as 10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354), Branch Press looks the DOI up at Crossref (crossref.org), the registry of scholarly publications, to fill in the reference's details. Only the DOI is sent, by Branch Press's own server; nothing of your note and nothing about you goes with it, and your browser does not contact Crossref. Crossref's own privacy policy governs its service. A reference you type yourself is sent nowhere.
## Your private notes stay private
We designed Branch Press so that reading your private notes forms no part of ordinary operation: database access rules restrict each note to its owner's account, and no feature of ours reads private content for analytics, recommendations, training, or curiosity. The AI agent reads your notes only when you ask it something, in your own browser session, and only within the reach you allow (see "The AI agent"). We have no interest in inspecting private notes. We will not access your private content except where the law recognizes a narrow need: where we are legally compelled to by a valid legal order, or where it is strictly necessary to investigate a specific, credible report of abuse of the service or harm to others, and then only to the minimum extent required. We prefer this honest statement to an absolute promise that a single legal order could turn into a falsehood.
## Version history
We keep earlier versions of your notes so you can read or restore them: one for each day a note changes, plus one just before you restore an earlier version and one just before a plain note becomes rich. They stay until you delete them in Branchspace or Settings, or delete the note. Only you can see the versions of a private note; what readers can see of a published note's history is described under "What is public." Each plan includes room for history; when it is full, your notes still save, but new daily versions are not kept until you make room.
## Your Google Drive copy
Branchspace can keep a copy of your notes in your own Google Drive. It is off unless you connect it, in Settings ▸ Writing ▸ Google Drive, and you can disconnect at any time.
When you connect, you sign in to Google in a window Google shows you, and give Branch Press permission to create files in your Drive and to work only with the files it creates and the folders you choose for them. Branch Press cannot see, open or change anything else in your Drive. Google gives us a key for that permission, which our server keeps encrypted; your browser never holds it. When you choose where a folder goes, Google's own window shows the folders in your Drive. For that window only, our server gives your browser a short-lived pass from Google, valid for an hour at most and with the same narrow permission; your browser uses it for nothing else and does not keep it. Branch Press learns only which folder you chose, and uses it only to keep its own folder there.
What we keep: that key; the address of the Google account you connected, so you can see which one it is; the names and identifiers of the folders and files we made, which are your spaces' names and your notes' titles; for each note, a short fingerprint of what was last copied, so that only changes are sent (your words cannot be recovered from it); and the time of the last copy and of the last error.
What goes to Google: each note, as a Markdown file in a "Branch Press" folder with a folder for each space: its words, title, subtitle, tags and dates, whether it is plain, rich or an essay, and its own design if it has one. Notes are copied shortly after you change them while Branchspace is open, and when you press Copy changes now. They travel from your browser through our server to Google, and our server keeps no copy of them. If you choose to move old versions of your notes to Drive (see "Version history"), each becomes a file in a "Branch Press version history" folder and we keep only its date and where to find it; versions of a published note never move. Branch Press reads files back from your Drive only when you ask, to import them or to open a moved version, and only files it made.
In your Drive, the files are yours. Google holds them under your own agreement with Google and Google's privacy policy; you can open, share, move, rename or delete them, and Branch Press shares them with no one. When you delete a note in Branchspace, its file goes to your Drive's trash, where Google keeps it for 30 days. Disconnecting withdraws our permission at Google and deletes the key and our record of the files; the files stay in your Drive. Deleting your account does the same.
Branch Press's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
## The AI agent
Branchspace has an optional AI agent that can answer questions about your notes, map a space, suggest links, and, if you allow it, make changes. It is off until you connect your own OpenRouter account. Branch Press charges nothing for it; OpenRouter bills you directly, under your own agreement with OpenRouter.
When it sends anything: only when you ask the agent something. It never runs in the background and never reads your notes on its own.
What it sends: your question; the conversation so far; your agent instructions, if you have written a note titled AGENT.md; the note you have open; and any other notes the agent reads to answer. The agent may read notes in the open note's space. It reaches your other spaces only if you allow it each time, and you can forbid that altogether in Settings.
Where it goes: from your browser to Branch Press's server, which passes it to OpenRouter and passes the answer back. Branch Press's server keeps no copy of what passes through it; if a request fails, it records only that it failed and OpenRouter's stated reason. OpenRouter routes the request to a company that runs the model you chose: the model's maker (such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, Alibaba (Qwen), or Meta) or a hosting company that runs that model. Branch Press instructs OpenRouter, on every request, to use only hosts that may not train on what they are sent and that do not routinely store it once the answer is given. This rests on OpenRouter's own record of each host's policy. Two limits: a host may keep requests for a limited time to detect abuse where OpenRouter allows it, which you can switch off in your own OpenRouter privacy settings; and OpenRouter screens requests for illegal content and may keep what it flags. If a model has no host that meets the instruction, the request is refused before anything is sent. OpenRouter states that it does not store prompts or answers unless you opt in to that in your OpenRouter account settings; it keeps records such as the size and cost of each request, which you can see in your OpenRouter account. Their own privacy policies govern what OpenRouter and each host do.
Changes to your notes: by default, every change the agent suggests is a proposal you accept or decline. If you choose automatic mode, the agent makes the kinds of change you allowed itself, and each one can be undone from the conversation while the page stays open. It never deletes notes.
Your OpenRouter connection: when you connect, OpenRouter issues a key for your OpenRouter account. Branch Press encrypts it before storing it, and your browser can never read it back. Disconnecting in Settings deletes it from Branch Press; the key itself remains in your OpenRouter account until you delete it there.
Your conversations: each conversation with the agent is saved to your account, so that it survives a closed page and follows you to other devices. A conversation holds what you asked, what the agent answered and proposed, whether you accepted, the reasoning the model showed, and the text of any note the agent read or quoted. Only you can read your conversations. You can delete them one by one or all at once, and they are deleted with your account. A saved conversation is sent nowhere again unless you continue it.
## Retention and deletion
Your content persists until you delete it. Deleting a note deletes it; unsharing a note removes it from public view immediately. The earlier versions of your notes persist until you delete them, and deleting a note deletes its versions. Agent conversations persist until you delete them. Reports are deleted automatically twelve months after they are sent. You can delete your entire account from your account settings. Account deletion removes your authentication record, profile, avatar, album, notes and their earlier versions, spaces, boards, readings, highlights and margin notes, saved essays, bookmarks, reading positions, comments, likes, ratings, follows, blocks, reports, your OpenRouter connection (the key itself stays in your OpenRouter account until you delete it there), your Google Drive connection, your agent conversations, and your contribution history. Files in your Google Drive are yours and stay there; we withdraw our access. Residual copies in operational backups are purged within 30 days. One thing stays: if another writer branched your essay, their essay keeps its short credited quotation of yours. You can also request deletion by email at [email protected], and we will complete it within 30 days of verifying that the request comes from the account holder. Server and security logs follow the short provider schedules described above.
## Your rights
You can, at any time: access the personal data we hold about you, most of which is simply visible to you in your account; correct it, since profile fields are self-serve; export your content and take it elsewhere, which works per item, for compositions and notes, or for all your notes at once through the Google Drive copy; a downloadable full-account archive does not exist yet; delete individual content or your entire account; and object or complain, first to us at [email protected] and also to a data protection authority. The precise set of statutory rights that applies to you depends on where you live; if you contact us, we will honor the rights the law gives you.
## Where data lives and international transfers
Branch Press operates from Oman, and its infrastructure providers are international. Your account data is stored with Supabase in Singapore (AWS ap-southeast-1) and transits Cloudflare's global content-delivery network. If you sign in with Google, Google processes the sign-in. If you connect Google Drive, Google stores your copy, in the United States or elsewhere. If you use the AI agent, what it sends passes through OpenRouter, which is based in the United States, to the company running the model you chose, which may be in the United States or elsewhere. This means your data crosses borders as an inherent part of the service. The formal safeguards that govern these transfers are provided through our providers' data-processing terms; the exact contractual wording is being finalized with legal counsel.
## Information stored in your browser
Branch Press stores a small amount of data in your browser: your sign-in session, theme and workspace style, reading positions, editor and agent preferences, your 2D or 3D and titles choices for graphs, a copy of your profile graph (note titles, tags and links, never their text) so it opens faster, and drafts you have not yet saved. This is functional storage the service needs to work; it is not used for tracking, and we do not use third-party cookies. You can clear it at any time through your browser's site-data settings, which signs you out and resets preferences.
## Security
Private content is protected by database access rules that make each record readable only by its owner's authenticated account; public data is exposed only through deliberately restricted read paths; passwords are hashed by the authentication provider; two-factor sign-in is available; your OpenRouter key and your Google Drive key are stored encrypted; and all traffic is encrypted in transit. No system is invulnerable, and we do not claim ours is, but its privacy boundaries are enforced in the database itself, not merely in the interface. If a data breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and any authority the law requires.
## Age
Branch Press is a general-audience service for adults and is not directed at children. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account.
## Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Branch Press evolves. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date above, and for material changes, meaning anything that changes what we collect, what becomes public, or what we promise under "What we deliberately do not do," we will post a clear notice on the site, and show it to account holders in Branchspace, before or when the change takes effect. Continued use of Branch Press after a change takes effect means the updated policy applies to you.
## Contact
Questions, requests, or complaints about privacy: [email protected]. We aim to respond within 14 days and to resolve verified data-subject requests within 30 days.