Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 5, 2026

Plain-language notice: this is a draft policy written for a small, actively-developed project — it hasn't been reviewed by a lawyer. As accounts, campus features, AI drafting, and moderation tools have all grown, this policy has grown to match, but it still needs a real legal review before this is a public product at any real scale.

The short version

Contacts you add work two ways. Without an account, everything stays in your own browser's local storage — we never see it. If you create an account, your contacts move to a database scoped to your account alone, protected by database-level access rules, and are never visible to other users.

Creating an account also gets you a profile (college, major, bio, photo) that other students at your school can see through Discover and the Campus Forum, if you choose to be discoverable or choose to post. That part is intentionally social — the sections below spell out exactly what's shown, to whom, and what the Forge team can see for moderation.

Using the app without an account

Every contact you add or import (name, company, phone, email, notes, tags, and so on) is saved using your browser's localStorage. It lives only on the device and in the browser you're using — it is never transmitted to any server, and there is no database holding a copy of it. Discover, Campus Forum, and Ask Lucky all require an account, since they involve other people or a server-side AI call.

If you create an account

Signing up is optional, but required for Discover, Campus Forum, Ask Lucky, and Early Testers. Here's exactly what's collected and how it's used:

Full name, email, and password are collected at sign-up. Authentication is handled by Supabase, our database provider — your password is never stored or seen by us in plain text; Supabase hashes it before it ever reaches a database.
College, degree type, major, and class year are collected at sign-up (or later, in Edit Profile). These determine what you can see and post in Discover and the Campus Forum — see below — and your college is also used to group you with other students at your school or your whole school system (for example, all CUNY or all UC campuses).
A bio and a profile photo are optional, added in Edit Profile, and only ever shown to other students if you turn on "Discoverable."
Your contacts (the same fields as the local version — name, company, notes, tags, etc.) are stored in a Postgres database, tagged to your account. Database rules (row-level security) enforce that only you can read or write your own contacts — not other users, and not us browsing around by hand.
Signing back in on another device pulls your contacts and profile down from that database, which is the whole point of creating an account.

Discover and the Campus Forum

These two features are visible to other people by design — here's exactly what's shown:

Discover only lists you if "Discoverable" is checked in your profile (it's on by default, and you can turn it off in Edit Profile). Discoverable students at your college — or your whole school system, like all of CUNY or all of UC — can see your photo, major, degree type, class year, and bio. Your email is never shown.
Campus Forum threads and replies show your real name, college, degree type, major, and class year to everyone in that same school or school-system scope. There's no anonymous posting.
Both are scoped by college — someone at a different, unrelated school can't see either, unless your colleges share a school system.

Ask Lucky

Ask Lucky is Forge's conversational assistant. When you're signed in and send it a message, that message, a short slice of your recent conversation with it, and your saved contacts' names, roles, companies, tags, and notes are sent to a server-side function we run, which forwards them to Anthropic's AI API to generate a reply. If you're signed out, or if the AI call fails for any reason, Ask Lucky falls back to matching your message against your saved contacts entirely in your browser — nothing leaves your device in that case.

Find My Path and AI-drafted invites

The Find My Path tool that ranks your contacts and drafts coffee-chat invites runs two ways:

Matching itself is always local. Scoring and ranking your contacts against whatever goal you type happens entirely in your browser — that part is never sent anywhere, signed in or not.
Template drafts are always local too. The default coffee-chat draft is generated from a template in your browser, with no network request involved.
AI-written drafts (signed in, once configured) leave your browser. When you click "Draft Coffee Chat Invite" or "Get Path Breakdown" while signed in, that one contact's saved fields (name, role, company, college, how you met, notes) — or, for a breakdown, the fields of up to 15 matched contacts — are sent to the same server-side function used by Ask Lucky, which forwards them to Anthropic's AI API. We don't store that request ourselves. Only the contact(s) you're actively viewing are ever sent — never your full contact list.

Anthropic's handling of anything sent to its API is governed by Anthropic's own terms, which we encourage you to read.

Feedback (Early Testers)

Bug reports and suggestions you submit through Early Testers are stored with your account, the type (bug or suggestion), and whatever title and details you write. Each ticket is visible only to you and the Forge team — other testers can't see it. The Forge team can reply directly on your ticket and mark it resolved; you can delete your own tickets at any time.

Reports

Every thread, reply, and Discover profile has a Report option, for flagging content or behavior that violates the Terms. A report includes your identity as the reporter, the reason and any details you write, and a reference to what you reported. Reports are visible only to the Forge team — never to the person you reported, and never to other users.

Moderation and admin access

To act on reports and feedback, the Forge team (currently just the project owner) has an internal tool that can:

See every report and every feedback ticket, across all users, with enough context (the flagged thread, reply, or profile) to review them
Remove a reported thread or reply
Suspend or permanently ban an account for violating the Terms
Search profiles by name or college to act on a report even without browsing to it manually

This access is scoped narrowly on purpose: it does not extend to your private Contacts, which remain readable only by you at the database level regardless of admin tooling. Every action this tool takes re-checks that it's actually the owner account making the request, not just a front-end restriction.

Importing your LinkedIn connections

When you import a LinkedIn export (CSV file), the file is read and processed entirely inside your browser using JavaScript — it's never uploaded as a file. If you're signed in, the contacts it produces are saved the same way any contact you add by hand is (see above). If you're not signed in, they stay local. The same applies to the JSON backup file you can export from the app.

What we don't do

No analytics or tracking scripts on the app pages, beyond basic Vercel page-view analytics used to see which pages get traffic
No cookies set by this app beyond what's needed to keep you signed in, if you choose to sign in
No selling your data to anyone, ever
No one — including the Forge team, through any tool — can read your private Contacts; row-level security blocks it at the database level, not just by policy
Discover only shows the fields listed above to people at your school or school system, and only if you've opted in; it never shows your email

Infrastructure we rely on

This site is hosted on Vercel, account/database/storage features are powered by Supabase, and AI features (Ask Lucky, AI-drafted invites) are generated by Anthropic's AI API. Like any web host, Vercel's infrastructure may log standard technical request data (IP address, browser type, timestamps) purely to serve the pages — see Vercel's privacy policy. Supabase hosts the database, file storage (for profile photos), and handles authentication for account holders — see Supabase's privacy policy. Anthropic processes whatever's described above for AI features — see Anthropic's privacy policy. None of these companies have any relationship to you beyond providing this app's infrastructure.

Your data, your control

Without an account, your contacts live only in your browser — clearing site data, switching browsers, or switching devices makes them disappear unless you've backed them up. Use the Export Backup button in the app regularly, and Restore to bring a backup back in. With an account, your contacts persist in the database instead, but Export Backup still works as an extra copy you control. You can turn off "Discoverable" in Edit Profile at any time to stop appearing in Discover.

Deleting your account

There's no self-service delete button yet — email us (see Contact below) and we'll remove your account and all associated data (contacts, profile, forum posts, feedback, reports you filed) from the database.

Children's privacy

This project is intended for college students and isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under that age.

Changes to this policy

As this project keeps growing — more users, more features — this policy will keep being rewritten to reflect what actually happens with your data, and you'll be able to see the update date above.

Contact

Questions about this policy: [add contact email]