What Marginalia is, and its status
Marginalia reads a whole project, not one page, and checks continuity, timelines, what each character knows, facts and anachronisms. It leaves margin notes that you accept or dismiss. It does not write or change your text unless you ask it to.
Marginalia is part of the paid Folio + Marginalia plan and is rolling out. This policy describes how it works at launch. Hearn's separate on-device writing assistant is not part of Marginalia: it runs on your device and sends nothing anywhere.
What is sent, and to whom
When Marginalia runs on a project you have turned it on for, Hearn sends the text it needs for that check to our AI processor, Cloudflare Workers AI: the relevant scenes, Codex entries, the timeline derived from them and your request. We do not send your name or email with it. Marginalia uses models that Cloudflare hosts, so your text is not sent to a separate model company. If we change this, we will update this page and the Subprocessors list first.
Some checks need the open web, for example to verify when a figure was first published. In that case Hearn sends a short search query describing the fact, not your manuscript, to a search provider. We will name that provider here and on the Subprocessors page before Marginalia launches.
What is kept
- Zero retention. We do not store the text we send or the model's raw output after the check completes. What stays is the margin notes, which are saved in your project like comments, so you can accept, dismiss or delete them. Deleting a project or your account deletes them.
- No training. Your writing, your Codex, and Marginalia's notes are never used to train or fine-tune any model, by us or by Cloudflare under our use of the service.
- No human review. Nobody at Hearn reads what you send to Marginalia. The only exception is content you choose to send us yourself when you ask for support, or where we are legally required to look.
- Operational data. Our providers may keep technical metadata (such as request time, size and errors) for security and billing. This does not include your text.
Cloudflare processes this text only to answer the request. Under its terms for Workers AI, Cloudflare does not use your inputs or outputs to train models. We will confirm the retention terms in force when Marginalia launches and state them here.
Your control, and opting out
- Marginalia is opt-in. It runs only on projects where you turn it on, and nothing is sent to it before that. You can turn it off again at any time.
- You can dismiss or delete any note, and you can delete the project.
- You do not need Marginalia to use anything else in Hearn.
- You can ask us questions or withdraw consent at write@hearn.app.
Limits you should know about
AI can be wrong, miss things, or state something with false confidence. Marginalia cites sources where it can, but it is an assistant, not an authority. You decide what to accept, and you are responsible for what you publish. Notes are suggestions, not facts.
Marginalia is for fiction and non-fiction writing. It is covered by the Acceptable Use Policy. Do not rely on it for legal, medical or safety decisions.