Privacy, in plain words

The short version

• You can only get in via an invite. The site isn't searchable or open.
• We collect the minimum needed to run the app: your account, the code you write, and your chats with Ren.
• Your chats with Ren, and any comments your kid leaves on a friend's shared game, go to Anthropic (chats to power Ren, comments to be safety-checked before another child sees them). They're contractually barred from training on them.
• If your kid asks for an AI-drawn background or sprite, the short description they type is safety-checked, then sent to OpenAI to draw the picture. That's the only thing OpenAI ever receives.
• No ads, no tracking pixels, no third-party analytics, no selling data. Ever. We do count visits to our public pages, using software we run on our own server. Nothing about it leaves our machine, and it doesn't run while your kid is using the app.
• You (or a grown-up) can delete your account and everything in it at any time.

What we collect

Your account

Kids join via an invite link and pick a display name, a username and a password, and no email address is required or stored. Grown-ups have a display name, an email address, and a password. In both cases the password is stored hashed (bcrypt) so we never see it in the clear. If a grown-up invited you, we record who.

The code you write

Every project file you save, in your account. It's yours. You can rename, delete, or export it.

Your chats with Ren

The conversation thread is kept in your browser. The most recent turns plus the current code are sent to Anthropic each time you press Send, so Ren has the context to help. Anthropic processes them to answer; they don't train on them and don't keep them long-term (see their privacy policy). On our side we keep the usage counters below, plus which lesson you were on and how much help you'd asked Ren for, but not the words you typed.

Comments on shared games

When your kid leaves a comment on a friend's shared game (or receives one), we store the text, who wrote it, when, and the outcome of the AI safety check. Comment text is sent to Anthropic (Haiku) for that check, on the same terms as Ren's chats: no training, not kept long-term. Your kid (and the admin) can hide any comment.

AI-drawn pictures (backgrounds and sprites)

When your kid uses a Generate button, we store the description they typed and the resulting picture in their account (a generated sprite becomes editable pixel art in their library). The description, and nothing else, is first safety-checked by Anthropic (Haiku), then sent to OpenAI's image model to draw. OpenAI doesn't train on API data under their terms. Generations are capped per child per day.

Lesson progress

Which lessons you've finished, so the right next one unlocks. We also keep a note of each time you press I did it!: whether it passed, which check said not-yet, how many lines you changed from the starter code, and roughly how long you spent actively working on the lesson. That's so your grown-up can see where you got stuck and give you a hand. It's visible to your own parent and the site admin, nobody else, and it's in your export.

AI usage counters

Tokens used and approximate cost per request. Visible only to the site admin, and used to keep the bill in check.

Standard server logs

IP address, browser type, the URL you requested, the time. Rotated daily and kept for up to about eight weeks for security and debugging, then automatically deleted.

Counting visits

We need to know whether anyone is finding this site, so the public pages (the home page, the pages explaining how it works, pricing, this one) count visits using Umami, which we run ourselves on the same server as the site. It is not a third-party service: no other company receives anything, and it is not the kind of analytics that follows you between websites.

For each visit it records the page you looked at, roughly where in the world you are (country only), which browser and device you used, which site linked you here if any, and which of the buttons on the page you pressed (for example “Start your free trial” or “See pricing”) — that last one so we can tell whether these pages actually explain the thing. It does not use cookies, does not build a profile of you, and does not store your IP address. Your IP is used to work out the country and then discarded.

It does not run inside the app. Once your kid is signed in and building games, there is no visit-counting script in their browser at all. What the app does send us is a short list of milestones: that someone signed up, started their free trial, created a project, finished a lesson, or started a subscription, with no name, no username and no account attached. It's a tally rather than a trail, so we can see that a lesson was finished but not who finished it.

What we don't do

• No advertising. None. No third-party ad pixels or tracking cookies.
• No third-party analytics services: no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, nothing that reports your visit to another company. We run our own (see Counting visits below), and no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies of any kind.
• No selling, renting, or sharing personal data for marketing.
• No public profiles, no discovery, no DMs. Kids in the circle can leave comments on each other's shared games (those comments are AI safety-checked before they appear), but there is no general messaging surface, and no one outside the circle can see anything.
• No biometric data, no location tracking, no microphone or camera access.

Who else sees the data

Four third parties, all of them essential to running the service:

• Anthropic processes chat messages and the code excerpts you send to Ren, the text of any comment your kid leaves on a friend's shared game (for the safety check), and the descriptions typed into the image Generate buttons (also a safety check). Bound by their commercial terms not to train on the data.
• OpenAI receives only the short description your kid types when generating an AI background or sprite, and returns the picture. API data isn't used for training under their terms.
• Stripe handles all payments. Your card number goes directly to Stripe and never touches our server; and we store only your subscription status and a Stripe customer reference. See Stripe's privacy policy. Kids' accounts have no billing data at all.
• Our hosting provider runs a Linux server in Sydney, Australia that stores the database and serves the site. It's standard hosting, and no human reads the data unless we ask them to help with a specific incident.

That's it. No marketing platforms, no CRMs, no data brokers.

Cookies

One cookie, called a "session cookie", that remembers you're logged in. It's deleted when you log out or when your browser clears it. No tracking cookies and no cross-site cookies. The visit counting described above is cookieless, so it doesn't set one at all.

Kids and grown-ups

Irenaverse is built for kids. Because of that, we take a few extra steps:

• An invitation has to come from a grown-up who already has an account. Kids can't sign themselves up, and there's no public sign-up form.
• Kid accounts collect no email address (see "What we collect" above), so there is no inbox we (or anyone else) can reach a child at through Irenaverse.
• Grown-ups can ask to see, correct, or delete their child's data at any time. Email irenaverse@div.nz and you'll get a real human replying within a few days.

Your rights

Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (and equivalent overseas), you can:

• Access any personal data we hold about you.
• Correct anything that's wrong.
• Delete your account and everything attached to it. There's a button in your profile, or you can just email us.
• Export your code and lesson progress. Ask and we'll send a JSON dump.

Security

The site runs over HTTPS only. Passwords are bcrypt-hashed. The database is on a managed server with daily backups. We patch dependencies regularly. If we ever discover that account data has been exposed, we'll notify affected users within 72 hours and tell you what happened, what's affected, and what to do.

Changes to this notice

If we change anything material, meaning what we collect, who we share it with, or how long we keep it, we'll update this page and, for logged-in users, post a notice in the editor. The "last updated" date at the top will move.

Contact

Irenaverse is run by Tom Peck in Wellington, New Zealand. Reach us at irenaverse@div.nz for anything privacy-related. We read every email.