Author+ — Privacy Policy

Who we are

This policy covers Author+, a Windows desktop application published on the Microsoft Store by Dean Eaglin ("we", "us"), the publisher named on the app's Store listing. Contact: ron.eaglin@gmail.com.

Summary

Author+ helps an author write and organise a book: chapters in an editor, and with them the characters, the timeline and the plotlines that have to stay straight across a long manuscript. Its AI features can summarize a chapter, analyse it, or suggest rewrites of a passage you choose, and it provides Git version control for a book, so you can see what changed between two drafts and go back to any of them.

Your book stays on your computer, and we never receive any of it. There are no accounts with us, no advertising, no analytics, and no telemetry of any kind. The app sends nothing to us, ever.

Author+ provides two features that can send something out of your computer, and requires neither of them: the AI features, which go to the AI provider whose API key you entered, and an optional backup of a book to a GitHub repository of your own. Both are switched on by you, book by book and request by request, and both go straight from your computer to a service you signed in to yourself. Keeping version history alone sends nothing anywhere — it is a folder on your own disk. All of it is described in full below.

What we collect

Nothing. No personal information, no usage or diagnostic data, no device identifiers, no location. The app has no account of ours to sign in to and no in-app purchases, and we operate no server that Author+ talks to. The only sign-in it ever offers is to your GitHub account, if you choose to use the backup.

Your work, and where it stays

Everything you write — chapters, characters, timeline events, plotlines, notes, and the results of any AI feature you run — is your own work, written only to your own computer:

• Documents\AuthorPlus\Books — one folder per book, holding one small file per chapter, character, event, plotline and note. They are ordinary text files (JSON, and the chapters as XAML); you can read, copy, back up or delete them yourself at any time, with or without Author+.
• Documents\AiManager — your AI settings: your API keys (encrypted, see below), your edits to the wording of the AI prompts, a log of what the app did, and a ledger of AI requests so the app can show you what you have used. The ledger records the date, provider, model, purpose and token counts of each request. It does not keep the text you sent.
• %APPDATA%\AuthorPlus — the list of books you opened recently, so the app reopens your last one, and which books you asked to keep versions of.
• A .git folder inside a book, if you turn on version history for that book — an ordinary Git repository holding the earlier states of your own files, on your own disk. Delete it and the book is exactly as it is now, without its history.
• Documents\AuthorPlus\github.json, if you choose the GitHub backup — your GitHub access token, encrypted with the Windows Data Protection API under your Windows user account. Sign out in the app deletes it.

None of it is uploaded or synchronised anywhere by the app on its own account, and none of it ever comes to us. The one copy that can leave your computer is the GitHub backup you set up yourself, described below. Uninstalling Author+ does not delete your books: they are your files, and they stay until you delete them. We have no copy and no way to obtain one.

The AI features, and your API key

Author+ has no AI of its own and no AI subscription bundled with it. To use an AI feature you supply your own key for the provider you prefer — Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), OpenAI, Mistral or xAI.

• Nothing is sent unless you ask for it. Each AI feature is a button you press. The app does not send your writing in the background, and it never sends a whole book.
• What is sent is what that request needs: the chapter or the passage you are working on, and the context you have written around it, such as chapter summaries, your character notes, or the instruction you typed about what the passage should convey. You can see the exact text of any request before it goes out — turn on View › Preview AI Prompts Before Sending, and the app shows you the whole request, with its token count and estimated cost, and waits for you to approve it.
• Where it goes. Directly from your computer to that provider's API. It does not pass through any server of ours, and we cannot see it.
• What happens to it there is governed by that provider's terms and privacy policy, not by this one. Providers differ on whether they retain prompts, for how long, and whether they use them for training. Read the policy of the provider whose key you use before you send them a manuscript.
• Your key is stored on your computer, encrypted with the Windows Data Protection API under your Windows user account, so another user of the same PC cannot read it. It is sent to that provider, and to nobody else. You can remove it at any time in the app's AI settings.
• If you never enter a key, Author+ makes no network connections at all and works exactly as an offline writing tool.

Version history, and the optional GitHub backup

Author+ provides Git version control for a book. With it turned on, the app remembers the book as it stood at any moment you choose, shows what changed between two versions, and can put a chapter — or the whole book — back as it was. This is an ordinary Git repository inside your own book folder: it is entirely local, and it sends nothing anywhere.

Separately, and only if you ask for it, that history can be copied to a GitHub repository, so that losing your computer does not lose your book, and so that a book written on two machines stays in step.

• Neither is required. A book keeps no versions until you turn them on, and a book with versions goes nowhere until you sign in to GitHub and name a repository. Author+ is a complete writing tool with both left alone.
• It is your GitHub account and your repository, not ours. You supply a personal access token, which stays on your computer, encrypted for your Windows user, and is sent to nobody but GitHub. We have no access to your account, your token or your repository, and no server of ours sits in between.
• What is sent is the book folder as you would see it in Explorer: the manuscript, characters, timeline, plotlines, notes and any AI results you kept, together with the versions you saved. That is what a backup is; there is nothing extra hidden in it.
• Private by default. The app offers to create the repository as private and says why. If you choose to make it public, or connect the book to a repository that is already public, anyone can read your manuscript. That is your decision, and the app will not make it for you.
• What GitHub does with what you send is governed by GitHub's terms and privacy policy, not by this one.
• You can stop at any time. Sign out removes the token from your computer; deleting the repository on GitHub removes the copy there; deleting the .git folder inside a book ends its history and leaves the book untouched.

Network use

Author+ connects to two kinds of destination, both of them yours and both only when you ask: the API of the AI provider whose key you entered, at the moment you run an AI feature, and GitHub (api.github.com and github.com), at the moment you back a book up or fetch changes. It does not check for updates, report errors, load remote content, or contact us. The Microsoft Store handles installation and updates on its own, as it does for every Store app.

Permissions

The Store package declares runFullTrust, the standard capability for any full desktop (Win32) application, which is what lets Author+ read and write your own book files through ordinary Windows file access, and internetClient, which is what lets it reach the AI provider you chose and, if you use the backup, your own GitHub repository. It is not used to reach any other application's data, and Author+ never needs administrator rights.

Third parties

Two third parties can receive anything, both chosen by you and only as described above: the AI provider whose key you entered, and GitHub if you use the backup. Author+ also includes open-source components — among them libgit2, which does the version-control work — that run locally as part of the application and transmit nothing of their own. Microsoft operates the Store you downloaded Author+ from, and Microsoft's own privacy statement covers that download.

Retention and deletion

Because nothing is stored on any computer but yours, there is nothing for us to retain or delete. Deleting your book folders, or uninstalling the app, removes everything it holds on your machine. Anything you sent to an AI provider is held, or not held, under that provider's policy; ask them.

Children

Author+ is a writing tool for a general audience. Because it collects no information from anyone, it collects none from children.

Changes to this policy

Updates will be posted on this page with a new effective date. If a future version of the app does something this policy does not describe — for example reading a chapter aloud through a speech service — this page will say so before that version ships.

Contact

Dean Eaglin — ron.eaglin@gmail.com