Lodestar — Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 21, 2026

Part I — General Provisions

This Part applies to your Lodestar account and to every Lodestar product.

1. What This Document Covers

This Privacy Policy covers your shared Lodestar account — the single login used across every Lodestar product (Sadr, Rigel, Mirach, Deneb, Capella, Altair, Pollux, and Menkar) — and everything common to all of them. Product-specific provisions — covering what each product collects beyond your account (for example an uploaded manuscript or worksheet entries) and how long it is retained — appear in Part II below and form part of this Policy.

2. What We Collect

Account information you provide:

Your email address (required to create an account).
Your password — this is handled entirely by Supabase Auth and stored in hashed form; we never see or store your actual password.
No name is collected at the account level — only your email address.

Payment information:

Collected and processed directly by Stripe, our payment processor, for each Lodestar product you purchase. We never see, receive, or store your full card number or other sensitive payment details — Stripe handles that entirely on its own secure systems.
We do store a Stripe customer reference ID and your purchase tier/access status per product, so the app knows what you've bought.

Your content:

Everything you create, upload, or type inside a Lodestar product — project details, characters, chapters, manuscripts, worksheets, source records, or any other content — is stored in our database (hosted by Supabase) or, for uploaded files, our file storage, so it's available to you across sessions. What each product specifically collects, and how long it's kept, is covered in that product's own section in Part II.

Technical information, collected automatically:

Standard technical data such as IP address, browser type, and access timestamps, collected by our hosting infrastructure (Vercel and Supabase) for security and operational purposes — this is standard for any web application, not something we actively track beyond what's needed to keep the service running securely.

3. How We Use This Information

Public website visit counts: We use Vercel Web Analytics to measure visits to our homepage, public product information pages, and legal pages. It uses no analytics cookies. Reports include page views, estimated visitors, referring sites, general location and browser/device information. We remove URL query strings and fragments before recording page views. We do not send manuscript text, form entries, account identifiers, private workspace routes, uploads, job pages, or payment pages to this analytics service. We honor browser Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals for these page-view measurements. These counts help us understand which public pages are useful; they are not purchase records. Analytics reports on our current plan are viewable for up to 12 months.

To create and maintain your Lodestar account.
To process your purchase and verify your access tier for any Lodestar product you buy (via Stripe).
To store and display your content back to you, and only you.
To provide support if you contact us.
To send essential service communications (e.g., purchase confirmation).
Creating a Lodestar account does not automatically subscribe your email to the Christopher Ray Writes newsletter. At signup, an unchecked checkbox lets you opt in — check it if you'd like to receive the newsletter. If you do subscribe, you can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any newsletter email — doing so only removes you from the newsletter and does not affect your account or access to any Lodestar product.

4. Third-Party Service Providers

We use the following providers to operate Lodestar and the shared account system, each of whom processes data on our behalf under their own privacy and security practices:

Supabase — database hosting, authentication, and file storage, shared across every Lodestar product.
Stripe — payment processing.
Vercel — application hosting and cookie-free public-page analytics.
beehiiv — newsletter delivery (your email address is shared with beehiiv solely if you opt in to the Christopher Ray Writes newsletter).

None of these providers use your data for their own purposes — they act as processors for us, not independent owners of your data. No third-party AI provider is involved anywhere in Lodestar — several products (Rigel, Mirach, Deneb) are entirely rule-based, non-AI systems, and none of your content is ever used to train any AI model.

5. Data Retention

Your account information is retained for as long as your account is active. How long product-specific content (an uploaded manuscript, a generated report, worksheet entries) is retained varies by product — see that product's section in Part II for specifics. If you request account deletion, we will delete your account and associated content within 30 days of your request, across every Lodestar product on that account.

The newsletter is not part of your account. If you opted into the Christopher Ray Writes newsletter, your email address also sits with beehiiv (see Section 4), on a system separate from your Lodestar account. Deleting your account does not remove you from the newsletter, and unsubscribing from the newsletter does not affect your account. If you want out of both, do both — unsubscribe using the link in any newsletter email, and request account deletion.

6. Your Rights

You can export your written and compiled work at any time via the app itself — each product's own download/export feature gives you a local copy of your drafted prose. This is deliberately not an export of everything in your account. Planning material — character and scene records, outlines, worksheets, trackers, notes and similar structured entries — is not exported, because these products are built to carry planning through to written prose, and it is the written result that is designed to leave. If you need a copy of something the export doesn't cover, contact us.
You can request account access, correction, or deletion by contacting us at help@writelodestar.com.
California residents have rights under the CCPA — access, deletion, and opting out of the sale of personal information. We do not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose.

Lodestar is currently offered to users in the United States and U.S. territories only.

7. Security

We use reasonable technical measures (including Supabase's Row Level Security, which ensures your content is only accessible to your own account) to protect your data. No system is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

8. Children's Privacy

Lodestar is not directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Part II — Product-Specific Provisions

The following sections describe what each Lodestar product collects beyond your account, and how long it is retained, in addition to the general provisions in Part I.

9. Sadr

What We Collect

Everything you create inside Sadr specifically — project details, characters, chapters, scenes, events, and manuscript text — is stored in our database (hosted by Supabase) so it's available to you across sessions.

Data Retention

Version history. When you return to a chapter you've already drafted and edit it, Sadr keeps a copy of how that chapter read before that day's changes — at most one per chapter, per day. These sit alongside any revisions you save yourself, so earlier versions of your text are retained, not only the current one. A chapter drafted in one sitting and never revisited doesn't generate one.

Retention and deletion. Your projects, chapters, notes, and version history remain on your account for as long as your account exists. You can delete individual projects at any time. To delete your account and everything in it, contact us — see Section 5 above for how deletion requests are handled.

Your Data, Your Backup

The "Download Full Manuscript" feature gives you a local copy of your manuscript prose — every chapter you've drafted, as plain text. It doesn't include the rest of your project: characters, outline, scenes, events, notes, and other planning material stay in Sadr.

10. Rigel

What We Collect

Your uploaded manuscript — retained temporarily to support the formatting job and any included re-exports (see Data Retention below).
Your finished, formatted output files — retained in your account indefinitely so you can return and redownload them anytime.

Data Retention

Before you complete a purchase

Everything up to the point of purchase happens in your own browser. Your preview is generated on your machine and is never uploaded to us.

Your manuscript is uploaded and stored when you continue to purchase — before you pay, not after — because that is when we begin producing your formatted files. If you don't complete the purchase, everything from that upload — your manuscript and the generated files — is deleted automatically within 24 hours.

After you complete a purchase

Per-manuscript purchases. Your uploaded manuscript is deleted automatically once either three exports have been used or thirty days have passed since your original purchase, whichever comes first.

Rigel Unlimited. If you hold a Rigel Unlimited license, neither limit applies. Your uploaded manuscripts are retained on your account indefinitely so that you can re-export them at any time, with no export count and no expiry.

You can request immediate deletion at any time by contacting us. Your finished, formatted output files are retained in your account indefinitely — this is different from the manuscript itself, and is the benefit of having an account rather than a one-off link.

11. Mirach

What We Collect

Your uploaded manuscript and images — retained temporarily to support the formatting job and any included re-exports (see Data Retention below).
Your finished, formatted output files — retained in your account indefinitely.

We also check your images' print-readiness (resolution and color/grayscale compatibility with your chosen trim size) as part of generating your formatted files.

Data Retention

Before you complete a purchase

Everything up to the point of purchase happens in your own browser. Your preview is generated on your machine and is never uploaded to us, and the image print-readiness checks described above run locally on your machine as well.

Your manuscript and its images are uploaded and stored when you continue to purchase — before you pay, not after — because that is when we begin producing your formatted files. If you don't complete the purchase, everything from that upload — your manuscript, your images, and the generated files — is deleted automatically within 24 hours.

After you complete a purchase

Per-manuscript purchases. Your uploaded manuscript and images are deleted automatically once either three exports have been used or thirty days have passed since your original purchase, whichever comes first.

Mirach Unlimited. If you hold a Mirach Unlimited license, neither limit applies. Your uploaded manuscripts and images are retained on your account indefinitely so that you can re-export them at any time, with no export count and no expiry.

You can request immediate deletion at any time by contacting us. Your finished, formatted output files are retained in your account indefinitely.

12. Deneb

What We Collect

Your uploaded manuscript — used only to generate your analysis report, then deleted immediately (see Data Retention below). We do not retain it.
Your generated report and PDF summary — retained in your account indefinitely so you can return and review or redownload them anytime.

Data Retention

Before you complete a purchase

Uploading your manuscript generates your free preview immediately. Your manuscript file itself is never stored — it is processed in memory and discarded. The report generated from it is stored at that moment, and that report includes short excerpts quoted from your manuscript. If you don't complete the purchase, that report — excerpts included — is deleted automatically within 24 hours.

After you complete a purchase

Your report and PDF summary are retained in your account indefinitely so you can return, review, or redownload them at any time.

13. Capella

Capella has one of the simplest data footprints of any Lodestar product — there is no manuscript or personal creative content involved at all. Capella's sample content is pre-written, not generated per request, and no user data is processed by any AI system. Since Capella involves no uploaded manuscript, there is no manuscript retention policy to state — your account information and purchase record are retained for as long as your account is active, same as every other Lodestar product.

14. Altair

What We Collect

Your worksheet content — everything you type into Altair's worksheets: research questions, arguments, literature review entries, evidence, and the full prose you draft in the Write tab, including complete sections, paragraphs, and working notes toward your thesis.

Data Retention

Your worksheet content and account information are retained for as long as your account is active. There is no upload/analysis retention window to state, since Altair never involves uploading a document — everything is typed directly into the worksheets.

15. Pollux

What We Collect

Your worksheet content — everything you type into Pollux's worksheets: story angles, source entries (including any contact information and attribution status you choose to record), fact-check entries, pitch records, and any drafted section text.

Our Access to Source Data

This includes source names, contact information, and attribution status you log in the Source Tracker. We do not read, review, or browse the substance of this data out of curiosity or for any purpose of our own. This policy is not a legal privilege and does not create source-confidentiality protections beyond what applicable law separately provides — see Section 20 of the Lodestar Terms of Service.

Editor and Outlet Contacts

If you record contact details for an editor or outlet on a pitch, those details are stored with that pitch on your account and are visible only to you.

Data Retention

Your worksheet content and account information are retained for as long as your account is active, including stories you've marked finished — a finished story is not deleted, only excluded from your active-story count. There is no upload/analysis retention window to state, since Pollux never involves uploading a document.

16. Menkar

Menkar has the smallest data footprint of any Lodestar product. There is no manuscript, no uploaded file, and no creative content of yours involved at all.

Menkar's phrases are pre-written and fixed — nothing is generated in response to what you look up, and no data of yours is processed by any AI system. We do not record what you search for, which emotions or body zones you browse, or which phrases you use. Menkar stores nothing about you, which means there is no Menkar data to export, correct, or delete: the reference library is the same library for everyone, and your use of it leaves no trace in it.

Since Menkar involves no uploaded manuscript, there is no manuscript retention policy to state. Your account information and purchase record are retained for as long as your account is active, same as every other Lodestar product.

Part III — Changes and Contact

17. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will notify you that an updated version is available, via a notice shown in the app before the change takes effect.

Reading the update is your responsibility, on the same terms as Section 13 of the Lodestar Terms of Service. We tell you an update exists and keep the current version available; we do not track whether you have read it. This document carries a Last updated date at the top so you can see whether anything has changed since you last looked.

18. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy: help@writelodestar.com.