Privacy
Privacy policy
Last updated
Folie stores the research you put in it and the account that owns it, and as little else as running the service allows. This page says what that is, who else touches it, and how you take it out.
Folie is built and run by its founders, Soham Kela and Abhav Kunchakuri. It is not yet a registered company; when it becomes one, this page will name it.
Folie is in early access. We update this page whenever what Folie does changes, and the date above moves with it.
What Folie stores
Your account. The email address you sign up with, a display name if you add one, and the credential behind your sign-in: a password held as a hash by our authentication provider, or the identity returned by Google if you sign in that way. Each account has a personal space and can belong to organizations you are invited into; each organization’s member list records your role in it.
Your research. Everything you write or upload into a project: manuscripts and their files, datasets and their versions, the links and locations you give for data kept elsewhere (never the files they point to), figures, sources and citations, claims, and the AI-use declarations you choose to add. Every version of a manuscript, whether you save it yourself or Folie records it at the end of an editing session, records who wrote it, when, and whether the assistant took part, because that history is the product. A name you give a version can be read by everyone who can read the project. A PNG or JPEG you upload, as a figure or to a project’s files, or that comes in a project’s .zip, is stored without the details a camera or editor writes into it, such as where a photo was taken, the camera and any comments; the picture, its colour profile and its rotation stay.
Your autosaved draft. While you edit a manuscript, Folie saves the text you have typed since the last version to your account a moment after you stop typing, so a refresh, a crash or another device does not lose it. There is one draft per person per project. Only you can read it, and only while you can still edit that project: other members, including the owner and admins of its space, cannot. It is deleted when it becomes a version, when you discard it, when the project is deleted, or when you delete your account. If you lose edit access to a project, your draft there stays out of everyone’s sight, yours included, until the project or your account is deleted.
When you last opened a project. For each project you are a member of or that was shared with you, Folie keeps when you last opened it and when your visit before that ended, so that opening it can tell you what others saved in between. Only you can read these times, and only while you can still open that project. They are deleted when the project is deleted or when you delete your account. Download your data includes them.
Your provider keys. If you add your own key for an AI provider, Folie encrypts it (AES-256-GCM, with a key held only on the server) before it is stored, never shows it again, and uses it only for the requests you start. You can remove it at any time in Settings.
Your AI usage. For each assistant request, Folie records which provider and model answered, how many tokens it read and wrote, what that cost, and which project it was for, never the text. That is how the usage meter and any plan’s AI allowance are counted. Only you can see your totals. AI credit you buy is kept the same way, with the identifier of its Stripe payment. Both are deleted when you delete your account.
Feedback you send. When you send feedback, a bug report or an idea, from inside Folie or from its feedback page, Folie keeps your message and what goes with it, so the people who run Folie can read it and answer it: the page you were on (its path, never its query), the app version, your browser’s name and version and your operating system as your browser reports them, the size of your browser window, and the project you were in, if you sent it from one you can open. Sent while you are signed in, it is linked to your account, so they see your name and email address beside it; it is deleted when you delete your account, and Download your data includes it. Sent while you are signed out, it carries only the email address you chose to give, if any, and we delete it if you ask. Only the people who run Folie can read feedback; nobody in your organizations or projects can.
Security records. Sensitive actions such as adding or removing a key, deleting a project, or changing who is in an organization write an entry to an append-only audit log that records who acted, what they did, and the network address the request came from. Entries are deleted one year after they are written. Counters used to stop abuse hold a network address, an account, space or project id, or a one-way hash of an email address, and are deleted within three days. They never hold your sign-in session or anything derived from it.
Billing. Paid plans are not live. When they are, payments will be handled by Stripe, and card details will never reach Folie; we would hold only the customer and subscription identifiers Stripe issues.
Product analytics. When analytics are on, PostHog receives page views and product events such as “project created”. It runs without cookies or browser storage, is told not to record your IP address, and never receives the content of anything you write. Sign-in codes are stripped from any URL before it is reported.
Why
To provide the service you signed up for (the contract between us), to keep it secure and to investigate abuse (our legitimate interest), and to meet legal obligations where they apply.
Folie does not use anything you put into it to train a model. The AI provider that answers an assistant request handles it under that provider’s own terms, which for your own key are the terms of your account with them. Some free tiers, including Google AI Studio’s, allow the provider to use requests to improve its models, so use a paid key if that matters to you.
Who else handles it
Folie is built on hosted services. Each one receives only what its part of the job requires.
| Service | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, authentication and file storage, in the United States (AWS us-east-1) | Everything listed above, at rest |
| Amazon Web Services | Keeps Folie’s own backups, in the United States (US East, N. Virginia), and, from the day folie.work moves to it, hosts the application and runs the LaTeX compiler in place of Vercel and Google Cloud | A nightly copy of the database and the uploaded files, each set to expire 35 days after it is made, and its old version about 30 days later. Once it hosts the application, also every request, including its network address, in request logs kept about 30 days, and a project’s source files when you compile, kept only for the compile |
| Vercel | Hosts and serves the application | Every request, including its network address |
| Resend | Sends sign-in, confirmation and password-reset emails | Your email address and the link in each message |
| Resend | Sends the email when someone invites a person to a project or an organization by address | The invited person’s email address, the inviter’s display name, the project’s or organization’s name, the role offered and the invite link |
| Google Cloud | Runs the LaTeX compiler | A project’s source files, only when you compile, kept only for the compile |
| Your AI provider (Anthropic, OpenAI or Google) | Answers assistant requests | The text you ask about and the document context needed to answer, under your own key, or under Folie’s where we provide one. With neither, Folie returns sample output and sends nothing. |
| Crossref, arXiv, and doi.org | DOI lookup, arXiv links, and checking a project’s references against the registries’ records | The DOI or arXiv id of a paper you add. For each reference an editor checks, from Folie’s server: Crossref receives its title, first author’s surname, year and DOI, with Folie’s contact address rather than yours; arXiv receives its arXiv id; doi.org receives a DOI Crossref does not know. By default only the references the project cites are checked, and an editor can leave any out. No text of the paper is sent, and nothing about the check is kept. |
| NCBI (PubMed) | Finds the DOI of a PubMed or PMC article you add by link | The article’s PubMed or PMC id |
| The site a link points to, and doi.org | Reads a paper’s title, authors and date when you add a source by link, or when a DOI’s record is only on its own page | Up to six requests from Folie’s server for that page, the first and any redirects, without cookies or anything about your account, so the site sees Folie rather than you |
| Sentry | Error reports, where enabled | The type, message and stack of an error, the page path without its query, and the app version. It is told not to store your network address, and receives no cookies, headers or document content |
| PostHog | Product analytics, where enabled | Page views and product events, without cookies, IP addresses or document content |
| Stripe | Payments, when paid plans open | Your email and the plan you choose; card details go to Stripe directly |
Previews of linked files. A project can link to data kept elsewhere. When a reader chooses Show preview on a Google or Microsoft file, their browser loads the preview directly from Google or Microsoft, which receive that reader’s network address and, if the reader is signed in with them, know who is looking; that sign-in and the file’s own sharing settings decide what the preview shows. Folie sends those companies nothing, fetches nothing from them and never reads the file. Opening a link takes the reader to that site, under its own policy.
Importing from Zotero. An editor can import a Zotero group, or their own library, into a project’s Sources. Their browser reads the library directly from Zotero, which receives their network address, that the request comes from Folie, which library was read and, for a private library, the key they paste; it receives no cookies and not the address of the page they are on. A key stays in the page’s memory while the import panel is open: it is never saved, and never sent to Folie. Folie receives only the items to add, each one’s title, authors, year, venue, type, DOI, link and citation key, and keeps them as sources, as it would from a pasted .bib file. The browser remembers which library and collection were chosen, for each project, and nothing else.
We do not sell personal data and do not share it with anyone else, except where the law requires it.
Cookies and browser storage
Folie sets these cookies, and no others:
- Your sign-in. A session cookie keeps you signed in. While an emailed sign-in or password-reset link, or a Google sign-in, is under way, a second one pairs it with the browser that started it. Neither is readable by scripts.
- Two preferences. One remembers the theme you chose, and one remembers how you arranged the panes of the project workspace, so a project opens the way you left it. Each lasts a year.
- A change of address. If Folie moves to a new web address and you open a sign-in link sent to the old one, a cookie keeps you on the old address for half an hour so that sign-in can finish. It holds nothing about you.
Your browser also keeps a few interface preferences locally, such as a prompt you dismissed or the model you last picked. There are no advertising cookies, no cross-site tracking, and, because analytics run without cookies, nothing that requires a consent banner.
Sharing you control
- Public projects. Some projects, such as the live demo, are public: anyone with the link can read the manuscript, its sources, data, figures and history, while editing stays with the members. There is no switch for this in the product today, so nothing you create becomes public on its own.
- AI-use records. A record you publish is readable by anyone with its link, which is the point of it. It contains what you declared and the signed hashes that let a reader verify it, never the manuscript text itself.
- Organizations. Members of an organization you belong to can see your display name and your role there, and every version you save carries your name for them. Its admins also see the email address an invitation was sent to until it is accepted.
- Invitations by email. When you invite someone, Folie emails them your display name, the name of the project or organization and the role you offered, with the link.
- Shared projects. When a project is shared, its owner and everyone it is shared with see each other’s display names and roles on it, and every version one of them saves there carries their name for the others.
Keeping it, and taking it out
Your data is kept for as long as your account exists. Two controls in Settings → Data controls are yours at any time:
- Download your data gives you an archive of the projects in your personal space and in organizations you own or administer. It includes your own autosaved drafts (the fifty you edited most recently, as many as one download holds, with a list of any it leaves out) and when you last opened each project, and the feedback you sent while signed in. It then adds the projects’ images, fonts and PDFs that still fit, with a list of any it leaves out. Each project can also be exported from its Export menu as LaTeX, Markdown, PDF or a submission package.
- Delete account erases your account, your personal space and everything in it, the feedback you sent while signed in, and your autosaved drafts in every project, in a single transaction. The images, fonts and PDFs stored with the projects it erases are removed right after it; if any are missed then, we remove them the next time we clean up deleted files. Where you contributed to a project owned by someone else, your contributions remain so that their history stays whole, but your identity on them is replaced by an anonymous marker. Two things stay as they are, because other people rely on them: an AI-use record you published keeps the name and ORCID iD you signed it with, and the prompt saved with an assistant edit stays in that project’s history. If you want a published record withdrawn, contact us through the support page before you delete your account.
Audit-log entries, including the network address of each request, are deleted one year after they are written, whether or not you still have an account. Abuse counters are deleted within three days. Our hosting provider’s backups can hold a copy of deleted data for a limited time before they roll over. Folie’s own nightly backups, kept with Amazon Web Services, are set to expire each copy 35 days after it is made, and its old version about 30 days later, so what you delete normally leaves them within about two months.
Your rights
Wherever you are, you can see what we hold (export), correct it (Settings), erase it (Delete account), and take it with you (export and the submission package). If you are in the EU, the UK or another jurisdiction that grants further rights, such as objecting to processing or complaining to a supervisory authority, those rights apply, and the support page tells you how to reach us to exercise them.
Security
Traffic between your browser and Folie’s servers travels over TLS. Every table in the database enforces row-level access rules, so the database itself, not only the application, refuses a request for another person’s data. Provider keys are encrypted at rest; the audit log cannot be edited after the fact. Folie is not designed for protected health information or other data governed by a specific regime, and you should not store such data in it.
Children
Folie is not intended for anyone under 13, and we do not knowingly hold their data. If you believe we do, write to us and we will remove it.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. A material change will be announced in the product before it takes effect.
Contact
See the support page for how to reach us.