Privacy

Your microphone is off until you turn it on. While you are talking, the audio is sent live to our voice provider so it can be understood and answered. It is discarded once the session ends. We do not keep recordings of your voice. We do keep the text of what was said, the moves you played, and a short note each persona holds about you so it can refer back to earlier games. Email privacy@coffeehousechess.com to ask us to delete a game, a transcript, or your account. We will respond within 30 days. Account-linked data is removed from live systems within 30 days and from backups within 90 days. A limited usage ledger may remain for billing, disputes, security and legal compliance.

We do not sell personal data, we do not run advertising, and we do not share your games or conversations with anyone except the providers listed below who are required to run the product. Site analytics is currently disabled. If it is enabled later, we will receive aggregate page-view reports that are not tied to your account or IP address.

Coffeehouse Chess operates coffeehousechess.com and is the data controller for the information described here. Contact privacy@coffeehousechess.com for anything on this page, including access and deletion requests.

This is the part most people want spelled out, so it gets its own section.

• Capture is explicit. The browser will not give us microphone access without your permission, and we request it only when you start a voice session. You can revoke it at any time in your browser, and you can mute inside the app.
• Audio is streamed, not filed. While a session is live your audio travels over an encrypted connection to our real-time transport provider and on to our voice model provider, which turns it into text and generates a spoken reply. We do not write your microphone audio to disk and we do not retain it after the session ends.
• Text survives. The transcript of the session is kept and attached to the game, because it is what makes analysis, review and the persona’s memory work. If you do not want that, play silently or email privacy@coffeehousechess.com to request deletion. We will respond within 30 days.
• Anyone else in the room is on your microphone too. If other people can be heard where you are playing, their speech is captured the same way yours is. Please do not use voice mode where that is a problem.

• Account details. We collect your email address and authentication identifiers, handled by our authentication provider. We never see or store your password.
• Gameplay. We keep the moves, positions, results and PGN of games you play, plus engine evaluations and move classifications.
• Session transcripts. We keep the text of what you and the persona said.
• Persona memory. This is a short written note per persona summarising things worth remembering about you as an opponent. You can read it, edit it and clear it.
• Usage. We record voice minutes consumed, session start and end times, and plan status, which is what the allowance on your plan is measured against.
• Technical logs. These contain your IP address, browser and device information, and error diagnostics, and are kept for security and debugging.
• Anonymous site analytics. This is currently disabled. If Vercel Web Analytics is enabled later, page URL, referrer, filtered query parameters, country, region, city, browser, operating system, device type and event time will be used in aggregate page-view reports. Vercel does not tie those reports to your account or IP address and does not use cookies.

If you pair a physical board, that connection is made directly between your browser and the board over Bluetooth. It does not pass through us, and we do not receive anything from the board other than the moves you play.

Where UK and EU data protection law applies, we rely on: performance of a contract for everything needed to actually run a game you asked for (gameplay, transcripts and voice processing); legitimate interests for security, abuse prevention and keeping the service working. If anonymous site analytics is enabled later, legitimate interests will also cover understanding which public pages help people find the product. We rely on consent for microphone access, which your browser obtains from you separately and which you can withdraw at any time.

We use a small number of providers to run the product. Each receives only what it needs, and none of them are permitted to use your data for their own purposes.

• xAI processes your speech and generates the persona’s replies. It receives session audio and conversation context.
• LiveKit carries the real-time audio between your browser and our voice agent.
• Clerk handles authentication and holds your email and login credentials.
• Neon is the database where your account, games and transcripts live.
• Vercel hosts and serves the website. Once Web Analytics is enabled, it will also process anonymous page-view data for aggregate traffic reports.

These providers operate in the United States and elsewhere, so your data is transferred internationally. Where required we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent transfer mechanism.

• We do not retain microphone audio after the session ends.
• We keep games, transcripts and persona memory until we complete your deletion request or close your account.
• We retain a limited, append-only usage ledger for billing, account disputes, security and legal compliance. It records usage quantities and identifiers, not game moves, transcripts or microphone audio. It may outlive the account. Where the law requires that ledger itself to be corrected or erased, we can use a restricted transaction-scoped process to do so.
• We typically retain technical logs for 30 days.
• If anonymous site analytics is enabled later, Vercel’s daily visitor hash will be discarded after 24 hours. Aggregate page-view data will remain available for the reporting window on our Vercel plan.
• After an account-deletion request, account-linked data other than the limited usage ledger is removed from live systems within 30 days of the request and from backups within 90 days of the request.

You can ask for a copy of your data, correction of anything wrong, deletion, a machine-readable export, or that we stop a particular use of it. You can read, edit and clear persona memory in the product today. Game deletion, transcript deletion, account deletion and data export are not self-service. Email privacy@coffeehousechess.com with any request and we will respond within 30 days.

If you are in the UK or EU and think we have handled this badly, you can complain to your data protection authority. We would rather you told us first.

This product is not intended for children under 13, and under-16s in some countries need a parent’s consent. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If a child has an account, contact us and we will delete it.

If we change this policy in a way that affects what happens to your voice or your data, we will tell you by email before it takes effect rather than quietly updating the date at the top. See also the cookie policy and the terms of service.