The Record

Privacy Policy

Last updated · August 21, 2026

SlowBurns.app turns a plain message into a Civil-War-style field dispatch, rendered as a short documentary film. This policy describes what the service handles, where that information goes, and what it never touches. The short version: no advertising, no tracking cookies, and no sale of data. What leaves your browser is what you ask us to transform — the messages you write, and, if you sit for a portrait, the photograph you upload.

Information you give us

• Messages you submit. The text you type into the dispatch office is sent to our API and forwarded to OpenRouter, the AI provider that performs the transformation. The text, its mode, and the resulting letter are also stored as a render job in Cloudflare R2 so a film can be produced from it.
• Your account. Signing in to the dispatch office is handled by Clerk, which holds your account and the sign-in method you chose. We identify you to our own storage only by the opaque user id Clerk issues.
• Google sign-in on the landing page. If you choose to sign in with Google there, Google Identity Services returns an ID token to your browser. Your name, email address, and profile photo are read from that token in your browser only and kept in your browser's local storage. Those details are never transmitted to or stored on our servers. Google's own privacy policy governs the sign-in itself.
• Photographs you upload for a portrait. If you sit for a carte-de-visite portrait in the dispatch office, the photograph you choose is reduced in your browser first — only a copy no larger than 1024 pixels on its long edge is sent, so the full-resolution original never leaves your device. That copy is sent to our API and forwarded to fal.ai, the provider that renders the portrait. We do not keep the photograph you uploaded — it is held only long enough to hand to fal.ai and is never written to our storage. Once fal.ai has processed it, what it does with it is governed by its own policy.
• The portrait made from it. The finished portrait is stored, in Cloudflare R2, and served from an unlisted, hard-to-guess URL. It is also sent to Clerk and set as your account's profile image, so it appears wherever your account is shown. Alongside it we store a small record — the portrait's status and identifiers — kept against your account id. Sitting again replaces the portrait and deletes the previous one.

Information collected automatically

The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like nearly every web host, Cloudflare processes standard connection data (IP address, browser type, requested pages, timestamps) to deliver and protect the site. The dispatch office and dispatch pages load Plausible, a cookie-free analytics service that records page views and a few named events without profiling visitors or tracking them across sites. There are no advertising cookies and no tracking pixels.

Films are reachable by link

Finished dispatch films are stored in Cloudflare R2 and played back through an unlisted, hard-to-guess URL. Anyone who has the link can view the film, and the film contains the text of your dispatch. Treat the link like the letter itself — share it deliberately, and do not put secrets into a dispatch.

Third-party processors

• Cloudflare — hosting, storage (R2), and content delivery.
• OpenRouter — AI processing of submitted messages.
• fal.ai — rendering uploaded photographs into portraits.
• Clerk — accounts and sign-in for the dispatch office, and your profile image.
• Plausible — cookie-free page and event analytics.
• Google — optional sign-in, loaded only when you click the button.

Retention and your choices

Browser-side data (sign-in profile, theme, job state) lives in your browser's local storage until you sign out or clear it. Render jobs, finished films, and portraits are kept in R2 until deleted.

Sitting for a new portrait replaces the old one and deletes the previous image. There is no self-serve button to remove a portrait outright yet — to have a portrait, a stored dispatch, or a film struck from the record, email privacy@slowburns.app with the film's URL, job id, or the email address on your account. Deleting your account with Clerk removes the profile image held there, but not the copy in our storage — ask us for that as well.

Children

The service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the revised version is posted at this address with a new date. Material changes will be noted on the site.

Contact

Questions or requests about your information: privacy@slowburns.app.