Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how the operator of Researcher (an individual; "Researcher", "we", "us") handles data in connection with the Researcher website, API, MCP endpoint, tools, agent skills, and related services (the "Service"), including the pages served at researcher.now and at persona.energy (the "personas product," a Researcher project that reverse-proxies and serves the same Researcher pages). This Policy applies in full to persona.energy and its visitors. Researcher and persona.energy are experimental and in beta, and are provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind — see the Terms of Service. By using the Service you agree to this Policy and to those Terms.

1. Data we collect

• Account & identity: account identifiers, email (if provided), authentication identifiers, and API keys (including durable rk_ keys).
• Payment & wallet: wallet/payer addresses, payment-channel and session identifiers, on-chain transaction references, receipts, amounts, and billing/usage records. We do not collect or store card numbers or private keys.
• Research inputs: prompts, questions, source URLs, uploaded or referenced material, topic configurations, and seeds.
• Research outputs & sources: generated reports, summaries, transcripts, extracted claims/facts/quotes, persona answers, topic briefs, and stored copies of source material.
• Technical & usage: logs, events, run state, timestamps, IP address, request and device metadata, error and diagnostic data, and analytics about how the Service is used.
• Cookies / local storage: we use minimal local storage and similar technologies (for example, to remember that you have accepted these terms or to keep you signed in).

2. How we use data

We use data to operate, provide, secure, debug, and bill for the Service; to authenticate users and process payments; to enforce our Terms and prevent abuse, fraud, and security risks; to improve, evaluate, develop, and train or tune the quality of the Service and its features; and to comply with law and respond to legal requests.

3. Service providers and sub-processors

We share data with third parties that help us run the Service, including hosting and infrastructure, AI/model providers, payment and blockchain/settlement providers, transcription and scraping providers, analytics, logging, and storage providers. These parties process data on our behalf or as independent controllers for the relevant function. Prompts, source material, and outputs may be sent to AI/model providers to generate results. We do not sell your personal information.

4. Public visibility of runs and links

Research runs, shared links, and stored source copies may be accessible to anyone who has the viewer/share link, which may be unguessable but is not access-controlled. Anything you mark or share as public may be visible to others. Do not submit secrets, credentials, or material you cannot share with the Service and its providers.

5. Blockchain and on-chain payments

Payments made via stablecoin / machine-payment (MPP / HTTP-402) are recorded on a public blockchain. Wallet addresses, transaction amounts, timestamps, and references are public, permanent, and outside our control — we cannot edit or delete on-chain data, and blockchain transactions are generally irreversible. Information on a public ledger may be correlated with you by third parties.

6. Retention and deletion

We retain data for as long as it is useful for operating the Service, safety and abuse prevention, accounting, debugging, research quality, and legal or compliance purposes, and we may delete data at any time. Because the Service is experimental, we do not guarantee retention, backup, recoverability, or any particular retention period, and we may lose or delete data. On-chain records cannot be deleted (Section 5).

7. Security

We use reasonable measures to protect data, but no method of transmission or storage is fully secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of any data. You use the Service at your own risk.

8. Your choices and requests

You may request access, correction, or deletion of personal data we hold about you by contacting us (Section 11). Depending on your location you may have additional rights under applicable law. We will respond as practicable for an experimental service, subject to legal, security, accounting, and technical limits — including that we cannot alter on-chain records or remove data already shared publicly via a link.

9. International transfers

We and our providers may process and store data in countries other than yours, which may have different data-protection laws. By using the Service you consent to such transfers.

10. Children

The Service is not directed to, and may not be used by, anyone under 18 (or the age of majority in their jurisdiction). We do not knowingly collect data from children.

11. Changes and contact

We may update this Policy at any time by posting a new version with an updated date; continued use after changes constitutes acceptance. Researcher is a personal, experimental project and does not currently offer a dedicated contact channel; we will add one here if that changes and will handle requests we receive as practicable.