Who we are
Hearn is made by Crowbly LLC, a New Mexico limited liability company (Entity ID 0008108972), 1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste N, Albuquerque, NM 87110, USA. In this policy, "Hearn", "we", "us" and "our" mean Crowbly LLC. We are the controller of the personal information described here. Write to us at write@hearn.app with any privacy question or request.
This policy covers Hearn only. Our other products have their own policies. Sites you publish to, and the companies behind the sign-in and payment services you choose, have theirs.
Guest mode keeps your writing on your device
You can use Hearn without an account. In guest mode your projects, pages, Codex entries and pictures are stored in your browser or on your phone, and are not sent to us. We cannot see them or recover them. If you clear your browser storage or delete the app, they are gone, so export what matters.
When you sign in and choose to move a project to your account, that project is stored with us as described below.
Information we collect
We collect only what we need to run Hearn.
- Account details. Your email address and, if you use Apple or Google, the name and an identifier they provide. For Apple this may be a private-relay address. We assign you an internal account ID.
- Your writing and what goes with it. Projects, pages, chapters, Codex entries, aliases, links, tags, word counts, writing language, version history, comments and suggestions, and pictures you add. Pictures are re-encoded and their location and camera metadata (EXIF) are removed before upload.
- Collaboration. Project members and their roles, invitations you send or receive, review links you create, presence while you work together (who is in a project, and where their cursor is), and activity notifications inside Hearn.
- Publishing connections. If you connect a Ghost or WordPress site, the site address, an account label and the credential you provide, which we store encrypted, and the text and images you choose to publish.
- Session and security data. A session token, the IP address and browser or device description (user agent) of each session, and the number of sign-in codes requested, so we can keep accounts secure and rate-limit abuse.
- Subscription status. Which plan you have (for example Folio or Marginalia), whether a trial or discount applies, and the identifiers needed to match a purchase to your account. We do not receive or store your full payment card number.
- Notifications (mobile, if you turn them on). A push token for your device, your notification settings, and the IDs of the project, page or thread a notification refers to. Notification payloads never contain your manuscript text.
- Preferences. Your interface language and light or dark theme, stored in cookies and browser storage (see the Cookie Policy).
- Messages to us. What you write to write@hearn.app, and the details you include.
We do not run advertising or third-party analytics in Hearn. We do not use an advertising identifier, we do not track you across other companies' apps and websites, and we do not build advertising profiles.
How we use it, and why
| Purpose | Examples | Basis (where GDPR or UK GDPR applies) |
|---|---|---|
| Provide Hearn | Create your account, store and sync your writing, show history, run sharing and review, export and publish what you ask us to | Performance of our contract with you |
| Keep Hearn secure | Verify sign-ins, rate-limit abuse, protect against spam and attacks, investigate incidents | Legitimate interests in running a safe service |
| Billing and entitlements | Know which features you have paid for, handle trials, refunds and tax | Contract, and legal obligations |
| Marginalia (optional) | Send the text a check needs to our AI processor and return margin notes to you | Your consent, given when you turn it on |
| Support and communication | Answer your messages, send sign-in codes and service notices | Contract and legitimate interests |
| Legal compliance | Meet tax, accounting and legal requests | Legal obligation |
We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not use your writing to train AI models, ours or anyone else's.
Your writing and encryption
Hearn encrypts connections between your device and our servers (HTTPS and secure WebSockets), and our storage providers encrypt data at rest. Hearn is not end-to-end encrypted: our service must be able to read your writing to sync it between devices, merge changes from collaborators, search, export, generate previews and, if you turn it on, check it with Marginalia. Our staff do not read your writing, and access is limited to what is needed to operate and secure the service or to respond to your support request. Avoid storing anything in Hearn that you would not want processed this way.
Marginalia and other AI features
Hearn has an on-device writing assistant. It runs on your device and sends nothing to us or to anyone else.
Marginalia is an optional, paid AI editor. It runs only on projects where you turn it on. When it runs, the text it needs (scenes, Codex entries and your request) is sent to Cloudflare Workers AI, our AI processor, to produce margin notes. We do not retain that text or the model output beyond the margin notes you see in your project, and your writing is never used to train models. No person at Hearn reviews it. Read the full AI Policy.
Where information is processed
We are based in the United States, and our providers process information in the United States and other countries, including where Cloudflare's network serves you. If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, your information may be transferred to countries that do not have the same data protection laws as yours. Where we do so, we rely on safeguards such as the Standard Contractual Clauses in our providers' data processing terms.
Our account database is hosted by Neon in its Singapore region (AWS ap-southeast-1). Live collaboration runs on Cloudflare's network, close to the people working on a project, and pictures are stored in Cloudflare R2. This means your information is processed outside your country, including in the United States and Singapore, under the safeguards described in this section.
How long we keep it
- Your account and projects: for as long as your account is open.
- Trash and history: pages you delete stay in the project's trash for 30 days before they are removed. Version history is kept for the period your plan allows.
- Sign-in codes: valid for 10 minutes, stored only as a hash, and removed when used or expired.
- Operational logs: our hosting provider keeps request and error logs for a limited period. These logs are deleted automatically within 30 days.
- Billing records: kept as long as tax and accounting law requires, even after your account is closed.
- Messages to us: kept while we need them to help you, and then deleted.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account yourself, in the app, at any time: open Settings, then Account, then Delete account.
- For each project you own that other people are in, you choose whether to transfer it to a named member or delete it for everyone. Nothing is chosen for you.
- You confirm with a one-time code that we email you, or, if you signed in with Apple, with Apple's sign-in sheet. This proves it is really you.
- We then delete your account. This ends your sessions and erases the projects you own (pages, history, comments and pictures) from our active systems, removes your comments and mentions from projects you only belong to, and deletes sign-in records, push tokens and publishing connections. If you used Sign in with Apple, we also revoke Hearn's access to your Apple ID.
Some things remain by their nature: writing you already shared that someone incorporated into their own work, posts you published to sites you control or others control, and copies in provider backups or logs that expire on the provider's schedule. Billing records are kept as described above. Deleting your account does not cancel a store subscription: cancel that with Apple, Google or us first (see Refund & Cancellation).
If you cannot open the app, email write@hearn.app from the address on your account and ask us to delete it. Copies in our database backups are overwritten within 30 days of deletion.
Your choices and rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, receive a portable copy, restrict or object to some processing, withdraw consent, and not be discriminated against for using these rights. In the United States this includes rights under state privacy laws such as California's. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland it includes rights under the GDPR and UK GDPR, and the right to complain to your data protection authority.
- Most of this you can do yourself: edit your account, export your writing, delete projects, delete your account.
- For anything else, write to write@hearn.app. We may ask you to confirm it is you, and we answer within the time the law gives us (generally 30 to 45 days).
- To exercise a right through an agent, have them write to us with your written permission.
We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in California law, so there is nothing to opt out of. We do not respond differently to "Do Not Track" signals, because we do not track you across sites.
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you can exercise these rights by writing to us, and you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.
Security
We use encrypted connections, limit staff access, rate-limit sign-in, require a recent sign-in before an account can be deleted, and store publishing credentials encrypted. No online service is perfectly secure, so keep your own copies of work that matters. If you find a vulnerability, please tell us at the address above before you make it public.
Children
Hearn is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. You must be at least 13 to have an account, or older where your country sets a higher age for consenting to online services. If you think a child has given us personal information, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Hearn or the law changes. The date at the top shows the latest revision. If a change is significant we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. Earlier versions are available on request.
Contact
Crowbly LLC, 1209 Mountain Road Pl NE, Ste N, Albuquerque, NM 87110, USA. Email: write@hearn.app.