Privacy Policy

DecodiVerse is run by Bramblepath Digital, LLC, Montpelier, Vermont. This policy covers the DecodiVerse website and app. Questions about it, or about your family's information, go to info@decodiverse.com — we're a small team and we read every message.

Accounts are for parents, guardians and educators who are 18 or older. Children read the stories with a grown-up, but they don't create accounts or type anything into DecodiVerse, and we don't knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13. Everything we know about a child is what their grown-up chooses to tell us, described below. If you believe a child has made an account, email us and we'll delete it.

Everything we keep — your account, your readers' profiles, your stories with their pictures and PDFs, and our service logs — is stored in DecodiVerse's own Google Cloud project in the United States, encrypted. Other companies get only what their one job needs, and they're all listed below.

To write and illustrate a story, we send the AI providers below what that story needs: the topic, the reading level, and your reader's notes if you added them. They send back the story or the picture, and we keep the result in our Google Cloud project. They don't use what we send them to train their AI models.

• Account details: your email address, your name if you give it, and how you sign in (Google or email). Passwords are handled by Google Firebase; we never see them.

• Plan and usage: your plan, how many stories you’ve made, and, if you subscribe, your Stripe customer and subscription status. Stripe processes payments; we never see or store your card number.

• Agreements and settings: when you accepted our Terms and this policy, and your email preferences.

• Safety records: if our safety check blocks a story topic, we note it on your account. Several in a row pause story-making while we take a look.

• What you send us: messages through our contact form, ratings and comments on stories, and your email if you join a waitlist.

Adding a reader is optional. If you add one, you can tell us:

• First name: optional. Shown only to you in the app, to tell your readers apart. It is never sent to our AI providers and never appears on a shared story.

• Reading level: used to choose which words and phonics patterns a story may use.

• “About” note and interests: optional, short. Used only to shape that reader’s stories and pictures, which means they are sent to our AI providers (see below). Please leave out last names, school names and anything else that identifies your child.

• Reading history: which stories each reader has read and how many at each level, so you can see their progress.

You can change or remove any of this at any time under Account → Readers. Removing a reader removes their reading history too.

For each story we keep the topic you typed, the reading level and art style, the story text, its pictures and PDF, the parent guide, and the descriptions used to draw each picture. We keep them so the story can sit in your Library, be read again, and have a picture repaired if one fails. Before a topic is used, we automatically remove things like email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and school names; please don't type other private details either, since the topic is sent to our AI providers to write the story.

If you share a story, anyone with its link can read the story itself — its title, text and pictures. The link never shows your account details or anything saved on your reader's profile, but a name you typed into the topic may appear in the story. You can turn a link off at any time.

We use a few companies to provide the service. Each handles your information only to do its job for us:

• Google Cloud and Firebase: hosting, our database, file storage, sign-in, sign-in emails and service logs, in the United States. This is where everything we keep is stored.

• Google Vertex AI (Gemini): writes Kindergarten stories (and Grade 1 and 2 stories if Anthropic is unavailable), safety-checks every story topic and reader note before writing begins, and checks every finished story before you see it.

• Anthropic (Claude): writes Grade 1 and Grade 2 stories, with their picture descriptions and reading guide. It receives the story topic, the reading level and its word lists, and your reader’s “about” note and interests if you added them. It never receives your name, email, your reader’s first name or your account details.

• OpenAI: draws the illustrations. It receives a picture description for each page, written from your story and your reader’s notes, plus the story’s first picture so characters look the same on every page. It never receives your name, email or account details.

• Stripe: payments and subscription billing.

• Twilio SendGrid: delivers the emails we send, such as waitlist confirmations and Library reminders.

• Vercel: hosts our website, and counts page visits and a few anonymous events (such as a finished sign-up) without cookies.

Google, Anthropic and OpenAI process this information under their business API terms, and none of them uses it to train their AI models. Anthropic and OpenAI may keep a request for up to 30 days to watch for abuse, then delete it; they keep it longer only if it's flagged as breaking their usage rules or the law requires it.

We don't sell or rent your information or your child's, and we never will. We don't share it for advertising, we don't show ads, and we don't accept payment to put products in stories. Nothing you or your reader give us is used to train AI models, ours or anyone else's. We don't use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we don't build advertising profiles of families or children. Your browser's storage is used only to keep you signed in and to remember small things like a story you were in the middle of starting.

• Topic check: every story topic, and any reader notes, is checked by a separate AI safety model before writing begins. Harmful topics are blocked.

• Child-safe writing: stories are written by an AI model instructed to write for young children. When Google’s Gemini writes, its own safety filters are switched on.

• Finished-story check: before a story reaches you, the separate AI safety model reads the finished story. A story that doesn’t pass isn’t shown, and your story credit is returned.

• Picture guardrails: illustrations are drawn with the image provider’s safety filters, from descriptions that ask only for child-friendly scenes.

We aim for stories that are fun, silly and sometimes gross (kids love gross), and we have zero tolerance for violent, sexual or hateful content. AI can still make mistakes, so read along with your child — and if anything seems off, tell us at info@decodiverse.com.

• Free plan: each story stays in your Library for 30 days, then the story, its pictures and its PDF are deleted.

• Storyteller plan: stories stay in your Library while your subscription is active. If you cancel, they leave your Library 30 days after your plan ends; we keep them for 6 months after you cancel in case you resubscribe, then delete them.

• Reminders: before stories leave your Library we may email you a reminder, and every reminder has a link to turn them off.

• Your downloads: a PDF you download is yours to keep on your device.

• Service logs: records of each story being made — including its topic and picture descriptions — are kept for up to 90 days for reliability and safety review, then deleted automatically.

We email you about your account (verifying your address, resetting your password) and about your Library. If you join a waitlist or say yes to news, we'll email you about DecodiVerse, and every one of those emails has an unsubscribe link. Stripe may send you receipts for payments.

You can see and change your account and your readers in Account at any time. To get a copy of your information, or to ask us to correct or delete any of it, email info@decodiverse.com and we'll respond within 30 days. As a parent or guardian you can review or delete anything you've told us about your child at any time, and you can stop us collecting more by removing the reader.

You can delete your account from Account Settings at any time. It first enters a 30-day recovery window, during which it is disabled but can be restored by emailing us. After 30 days it is permanently deleted: your profile, your readers and their reading history, your stories with their pictures and PDFs, your shared links, and your sign-in record.

After that we keep only a one-way hash of your email address, the date your account was created, and whether it had free stories left — solely to stop the free plan being claimed over and over. The hash can't be turned back into your email. Stripe keeps payment records as the law requires, and service logs expire as described above.

Everything travels over encrypted connections, is stored encrypted by Google Cloud, and is available only to the people who run DecodiVerse. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach that affects your information, we'll tell you promptly.

When we change this policy we'll post the new version here with a new date. If a change is significant, we'll ask you to review and accept it in the app before you make your next story.