Privacy

In short

Reading Sahvelo, talking to it and building a Handbook need no account. Sahvelo builds no profile from your answers and nothing you type into the conversation is stored. A Handbook is built in your browser, carried in the page address and downloaded to your own device, and Sahvelo keeps no copy of it. The other things Sahvelo keeps about a person are an email address you give it on purpose, and the words you type into the “Tell us what’s missing” box. Counting how the site is used is done without names, without text and without cookies.

The conversation

What you type is sent to Sahvelo’s server so it can be answered, and the answer comes back. The server does not save it. Sahvelo answers from its own library of verified guidance and does not send your message to an outside AI service.

The conversation is kept in your browser tab only. It is there if you reload the page and gone when you close the tab. Sahvelo cannot see it later and cannot recover it for you.

What Sahvelo records about a conversation is its shape, not its content: which of the three situations it was about, what kind of question was asked, whether it was answered, which state it concerned, and how long the answer took. Each of those is chosen from a fixed list. There is no field that can hold a sentence.

The Handbook

Your answers travel in the page address, after the question mark, and Sahvelo keeps no copy of them. That cuts both ways and is worth saying plainly: it is what lets you close the tab, keep a link, or come back to the plan later, and it also means the address carries your answers wherever the address goes, including your browser history and anyone you send the link to. Nothing about them reaches Sahvelo, and nothing after the question mark reaches the counts described below. Downloading the Handbook writes a file on your own device, and that file is yours: Sahvelo does not receive it and cannot recover it for you.

“Tell us what’s missing”

If you use that box, Sahvelo keeps the words you typed, up to 400 characters, which page you were on, which of the three places you opened it from, and the time. Your conversation is not sent with it, and nothing Sahvelo has worked out about your situation is attached.

If you tick “Email me if Sahvelo adds guidance about this”, your email address is kept with that one request and used for nothing else: not for Briefings, not for any list, and not shared. Leave it unticked and no address is asked for.

A person at Sahvelo reads these. Sending one does not start a conversation, and Sahvelo does not reply to it.

Briefings

If you sign up for Sahvelo Briefings, Sahvelo keeps your email address, which Briefings you asked for and how often, when you signed up, and your time zone only if you gave it. There is no name field and nothing else is asked. Briefings have not started going out yet, so nothing has been sent to that address. You can change or stop them at any time from the preferences page, and from any Briefing once they start; stopping stops everything. Sahvelo does not track whether you open them.

How Sahvelo counts use

Sahvelo counts events in broad strokes: a page was viewed, a conversation started, a Handbook was built, a search ran and how many results it found, a commercial link was shown or followed. Each count carries the page’s path, which situation and state the page or conversation concerned, and similar fixed labels. Two systems receive these counts: Sahvelo’s own, which runs on Cloudflare, and Google Analytics 4.

What never reaches either: a message you typed, an answer you were given, a search you typed, a Handbook answer, anything typed into the “what’s missing” box, an email address, a name, or anything after the question mark in a web address. Sahvelo’s own counts hold no IP address and no identifier for a person. Google Analytics is set up without cookies, without advertising signals, and without an identifier that outlasts the visit. The full list of what Google receives is on the How Sahvelo makes money page.

Cookies and what stays in your browser

While you are logged out and not part way through logging in, Sahvelo sets no cookies. Two things are kept in your browser's tab storage, which empties when you close the tab: the conversation while the tab is open, and a debugging flag that exists only if you turn it on.

Logging in sets one short-lived cookie that ties the code Sahvelo emails you to the browser that asked for it, so a code cannot be used from somewhere else. It lasts fifteen minutes. Once you are logged in, one cookie keeps you logged in on that device for thirty days, and logging out removes it. Both are marked so that scripts on the page cannot read them and so that they travel only over HTTPS.

One more thing is kept, and it is the only thing Sahvelo puts in your browser's long-term storage. If you start building a Handbook and then have to log in to save it, the address of the Handbook you were working on, which is where your answers live, is held in your browser for thirty minutes so that it survives the trip to your email and back. It stays on that one device, Sahvelo never receives it, it is deleted the moment it is used, and logging out deletes every copy of it. If it expires before you get back, the page says so and offers to start again rather than showing you an empty questionnaire as though nothing had happened.

The reason it works that way is worth saying plainly. Your answers are already in the Handbook's own address, which is how the page works at all. What Sahvelo will not do is copy that address into the log in as well: carrying it through would have written your answers into the link in your email, into the address your browser follows back, and into every log along that route, which is several more places than the one address you can see. Holding it in your own browser for thirty minutes keeps it to that one.

Who else handles information

Sahvelo runs on Cloudflare, which serves the pages, answers the conversation, and holds the two small sets of records described above: “what’s missing” requests and Briefings signups. Google receives the analytics events described above. When Sahvelo sends email, a Briefing or a note that guidance was added, it goes through Resend, an email delivery service, which handles the address in order to deliver it. Sahvelo does not sell information about you and does not give it to anyone else.

How long things are kept

The conversation: not at all. A Handbook: not at all, because Sahvelo never receives one; it lives in your page address and in the file you download. A “what’s missing” request and a Briefings signup: until they are deleted. There is no automatic deletion schedule yet, so the honest answer is that they stay until you ask. Write to the address below and the record will be removed.

Questions about privacy

Write to hello@sahvelo.com. A person reads it.