Privacy Policy

Sonic Weaver is operated by Novus Stream Solutions, a sole proprietorship in London, Ontario, Canada. It is run by one person, the owner, who is accountable for how Sonic Weaver handles personal information and is its person in charge of the protection of personal information. Canada's federal privacy law for businesses, PIPEDA, applies to how we handle personal information. Privacy questions go to visualizers@novusstreamsolutions.com.

Guest work is stored device-locally in your browser using IndexedDB, and it never leaves your device unless you explicitly export a `.novusvis` file. Signed-in projects, revisions, profiles, preferences, notifications, moderation records, and security events are stored in Turso (a hosted libSQL database), and the application itself is hosted on Vercel. Accounts use a public username and display name. A password account keeps no email address: the sign-in system stores an identifier made from your username that cannot receive mail, is never shown in the app and is never used to write to you. An account made with Google keeps the email address Google gives us (see Sign-in with Google).

Thumbnails and watermarks you design are drawn in your browser. A video you open in the Thumbnail maker, and the pictures and frames in your designs, stay on your device; a saved design keeps only its layout. A thumbnail is uploaded only when you choose to: as a post's still, as your channel picture, or as a thumbnail link, which you can turn off. If you switch on “Made with Sonic Weaver” (off by default), your downloaded PNG, JPG and MP4 files carry that label, and only the credits you type, in their metadata. No account, email, device or location detail is ever written into a file.

When music posting is available and you explicitly publish with music, the selected full song or preview is encoded on your device and uploaded as a separate post copy. Publishing can also upload resized copies of selected images. Your original files stay on your device. Posted music is served through the post's access controls; a private source file is never made public by saving.

Audio analysis and rendering run in your browser. Music, images and other files you import stay on your device and are not uploaded when you save a project. Both editors can keep imported files in your browser's storage for this site. A saved project records file names, fingerprints (checksums) and editing settings, so it can find those files again on the same device. On another device, or after this site's data is cleared, you need to reattach the files. If browser storage is unavailable, files remain available only in the current session. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes the files stored there.

Background Motion, still layers, drawing and shader recipes, mix/master processing, and editor workspace transfers run on your device. Background scene documents and imported pictures use this browser's storage. Lyric transcription, lyric translation, stem separation, background removal and picture depth use open models that your browser downloads directly from Hugging Face, only after you start one of those tools (a stem model is about 166 MB). Hugging Face receives that download request with your network address and browser details, as any website you load does; your audio, pictures and words are processed on your device and are not sent with it. Your browser may keep the models, and Settings lists the ones it kept, with a Remove for each. If you explicitly save a processed stem or master to My Assets, the selected audio file is uploaded to private asset storage and checked with its type, size and checksum; this is separate from local preview, export and editor transfer.

Earlier versions of Studio saved a private copy of files that signed-in members imported, as private Vercel Blob objects with Turso ownership metadata. Those copies were never public; they still open in the projects that use them, and we will tell you in the app before we delete them.

Uploads receive random paths, checksum and type validation, decode/parse checks, and quarantine status. Public posts use separate media copies. Private source audio and models are never served by a community page.

Before publication, checksums of posted copies are compared with files we selected from upheld copyright cases on Sonic Weaver. We keep the result and any decision from our review with the post. A suspected match is sent for review by hand and does not automatically issue a strike or restrict the post. References stop matching when withdrawn or expired; we choose an expiry for each reference. This check does not search a commercial music catalogue or establish ownership.

Passwords are stored only as secure hashes. Passkeys store public credentials; device private keys remain with your authenticator. Recovery codes are shown once, hashed, single-use, and replaced as a complete set. If you turn on an authenticator app, its shared secret and its backup codes are stored encrypted with the site's key; the backup codes are shown once and each works once. Recovery creates a short-lived HttpOnly session. Without a passkey, unused recovery code, or authenticated trusted session, Sonic Weaver cannot self-recover an emailless account. Signup and account recovery are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile to block automated abuse.

When Sign-in with Google is offered and you use it, Google tells us your Google account number, your name, your email address and a link to your Google profile picture, and gives us sign-in tokens; we store them with your account. Your public username starts as the part of that address before the @, so change it in Settings, Profile if you would rather it did not show. We use the address to recognise you when you sign in and, when our mail is on, to send you notices about your own account, such as a moderation decision about your content. Adding Google to an existing password account lets you sign in with it but does not change that account's address, so we do not write to you there. Google's own privacy policy covers your Google account.

Sonic Weaver sends email only when its mail is switched on, through Resend, which delivers it for us and receives the address, the subject and the words of each email. Mail goes to a member with a confirmed address (today, an account made with Google) about decisions on their own account and content; to a person who sent a notice through the Report content page, about that notice; and to the owner, about messages and the site's status. We do not send newsletters or marketing email.

If you write to visualizers@novusstreamsolutions.com, we keep your email and our answer to reply to you and to keep a record of what was asked.

Projects and assets are private until you explicitly publish. Publication freezes one revision and its preview. Public profile data, posts, comments, reactions, follows, remix attribution, and view counts may be visible to others according to your selected visibility. Reports, blocks, moderation decisions, and immutable admin audit records are retained to operate and secure the community.

A notice sent through the Report content page keeps what you write in it, the address of the content and, for a copyright notice, your name, postal address and email address; a keyed fingerprint of your network address is kept with it, never the address itself. That page says what we forward to the member and what we keep. A counter-notice keeps the name, email and statement the member gives, which we send to the person who sent the notice only with the member's agreement.

No decision about you is made by automated means alone: reports, suspected copyright matches and notices are reviewed by hand. When the site is set to do so, a complete copyright notice about a post's music mutes that audio until the review is done.

A creator can add links to their own pages on PayPal, Stripe, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee or Patreon to their profile. We store those links with the profile and show them where the profile and its posts are shown. A payment through one is made on the provider's own site and is between the supporter and the creator: Sonic Weaver does not handle the money, take a share or receive payment details, and does not record who follows a support link. The provider's own privacy policy applies there. A creator can remove their links at any time; they are included in the data export and deleted with the account.

Signed in, you can write to Sonic Weaver from the contact page, Settings or SW Agent. We store what you send: what the message is about, its subject, your messages and our answers, when each was written, the conversation's status, and your account, so that only you and Sonic Weaver can read it. A bug report can also carry the page you were on (its path on this site only, never what follows it in the address, with any invite or recovery code hidden), your browser's identification string, your screen size and the site's version. The form shows each of these with its own checkbox, and nothing is read until you open the form or sent until you press Send.

Sonic Weaver's owner reads your messages to answer them, and is told that a message arrived, in the site and, when our mail is on, by email; the email never carries your words. What the owner does with a conversation (an answer, a change of status) is recorded in the audit log without its words. Your conversations are in your data export and are deleted with your account.

Signed in, SW Agent saves your chats and jobs to your account after each finished turn, so you can find them again: up to 200 entries, with the oldest unpinned one removed first. It also keeps what you ask it to remember (such as your artist name, your handle and your brand colours) and the styles you choose. Signed out, the same things stay in this browser only, up to 30 entries, and are sent nowhere; when you sign in, SW Agent asks once whether to move them into your account. In Settings, SW Agent you can see, change and delete each item, or clear everything. They are in your data export and are deleted with your account.

Signed in, you can make a link to a SW Agent chat or to one answer. Nothing is sent until you press Create the link, after SW Agent shows you what it will hold. We then store the words of up to 40 messages and the links in them, the title you chose, SW Agent’s version, when it was made, how many times it was opened, and your account so you can find and turn it off. Files SW Agent made and the names of files you attached are never part of a link.

Anyone with the link can read the page; it is not listed in search engines, and we do not post it anywhere. Turn a link off, or every link, in Settings, SW Agent: the words are deleted at once and the link then says it was turned off. We can turn off a link that breaks the rules, and each time we do it is recorded. Your links are in your data export and are deleted with your account.

Under each SW Agent answer you can press a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and after a thumbs down add a short note. Nothing is sent until you press one. Pressing it sends us your question (the message the answer replied to), the answer as it was shown, which part of SW Agent answered, the kind of question SW Agent read it as and, for an answer from its human thinking mode, which of its model answers the answer was planned from, your rating, your note if you wrote one, SW Agent's version and the time, and, when you are signed in, your account, so you can see and delete it. We do not store your network address or your browser's details with it.

We use it only to improve SW Agent: answers members disliked become tests and fixes, and a question whose answer several members liked can become an example SW Agent learns from (see Help improve SW Agent). Ratings taken together also decide how SW Agent answers: when many different members dislike one kind of answer, that kind is given in a more careful shape and a model answer they dislike stops being used. One member counts once, and a rating sent signed out never decides it. It is never shown to other members or published. Sonic Weaver's owner sees ratings without any account or name. Each rating is deleted 180 days after you sent it. Signed in, you can delete one or all of yours at any time in Settings, SW Agent; they are in your data export and are deleted with your account. A rating sent while signed out is linked to nothing that identifies you, so we cannot find it to delete it on request; it is deleted after the same 180 days. Please keep personal details out of a note.

The writing check under a text box (and SW Agent's "check my writing") reads your words only when you press Check or ask. They are sent to our server to check the spelling against our dictionary and the grammar with our own rules, and the suggestions are sent back; the words are not stored or logged and no other company receives them. If our server cannot be reached, the check runs in your browser without spelling.

The free library (SW Agent's "find free pictures of ..." and the library under the editors) searches what we compiled from open collections on our own server, and, for pictures, video, sound and word definitions, also sends your search words from our server to Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, the Internet Archive, Openverse or NASA's image library, who answer with openly licensed or public-domain items; the pictures, video and sound in the results then load in your browser straight from those collections, which receive your network address and browser details. When SW Agent cannot answer a question from our docs or its own knowledge, it may also send the question's words from our server to Wikipedia and to Europe PMC, which answers with open-access journal articles. Only the words are sent: never your account, your address or your files. We do not store your searches; Openverse's and Europe PMC's answers are kept on our server for a day so the same search is not sent twice.

Help improve SW Agent is a switch in Settings, SW Agent. It is off unless you turn it on, and only a signed-in member can turn it on. While it is on, each time SW Agent runs something for you we keep a record of that run with your account: what you asked, with email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, postcodes, network addresses, links, long numbers and file names replaced by placeholders before it is kept; the kinds of file you attached, never their names or contents; the job SW Agent chose and how sure it was; each step it ran and how it ended; whether it finished, failed, tried another way, was stopped or asked you to choose; SW Agent's version and where you used it; and your thumbs if you rate that answer. We never keep your files or your projects with it, and we do not store your network address or your browser's details with it.

We use these records, and the ratings above, only to improve SW Agent. When at least 3 different signed-in members asked the same thing and it went well for each of them, with nothing against it, or when Sonic Weaver’s owner approves it, the request (with those details removed) becomes an example SW Agent’s word models learn from in the next release; the models keep counts of words, not sentences, and never who asked. A run that went well that often may also be reused, by its words only, to plan a similar request. A request that went wrong becomes a test case and a fix. Records are never shown to other members or published, and Sonic Weaver’s owner sees them without any account or name.

Each record is deleted 90 days after the run. You can see your records, delete one or all of them, and turn the switch off at any time in Settings, SW Agent; turning it off stops new records at once and offers to delete the ones kept. They are in your data export and are deleted with your account. Nothing about this switch is kept in your browser. Please keep names and other personal details out of what you ask.

Sonic Weaver processes request metadata, coarse device/browser information, rate-limit state, and security events to prevent abuse and diagnose failures. Operational logs exclude passwords, recovery codes, raw project documents, usernames where avoidable, and private object paths. Sonic Weaver uses Google Analytics 4 for aggregate usage measurement through this site's own property, configured by one Google tag under Consent Mode v2. The cookie bar governs it: your answer there (Accept all, Decline, or the Analytics setting under Manage settings) sets Google's analytics and advertising signals, which stay denied in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and wherever your region cannot be determined, until you accept, are reapplied on later visits, and are overridden by Global Privacy Control. Turning analytics off immediately denies them and expires applicable Google measurement cookies. Outside those regions (including Canada) analytics is on from your first page until you decline. Ahrefs Web Analytics, which sets no cookies, measures aggregate page views under the same analytics choice. Vercel Speed Insights, which sets no cookies, measures how fast pages load for a small sample of page views: the page, the browser, the kind of device, the country and the timings, recorded without anything that ties a visit to a person. Vercel Web Analytics is switched off.

Sonic Weaver also counts how AI uses the site. When a named AI service fetches a page, when anything fetches llms.txt, llms-full.txt or the public API, or when an AI assistant calls Sonic Weaver's MCP server, the server adds one to a daily count. The count names the service (by the published name its software sends), the kind of page and, for the MCP server, the tool, the kind of app that called and whether it worked. Nothing else is kept: never the network address, never the words of a question, never an account. When the site's Google Analytics connection is set up, the server also sends these counts to Google Analytics as events, with the same fields and an identifier for the AI service, not for a person, so Google receives no address or browser details of yours from them. SW Agent's use is counted by kind of action (a message sent, a function or chain it runs and how it ended, never what you typed or your files), and only when analytics is on, in Google Analytics and in the site's own daily counts. The daily counts are kept for 400 days.

The caption and title fonts load from Google Fonts on every page. Google Fonts sets no cookies, but Google receives each request with your network address and browser details; Google says it uses them to serve the fonts and keep the service secure, not to build profiles or target ads.

The site's approximate active-creator counter is also analytics-consent gated. It counts anonymous browser identifiers, shared across tabs when browser storage is available, that sent a visible-page heartbeat within the last three minutes; the counter refreshes about once a minute. Only a hash of the random identifier is stored server-side, and its short-retention presence record is pruned with the usage ledger. This is an approximate browser count, not a count of signed-in accounts or individual people.

Advertising is controlled by two site-wide admin switches. Google AdSense Auto Ads is enabled by default; its publisher script loads after advertising consent on eligible public routes, and Google serves ads only after the site is approved and Auto Ads are enabled in the AdSense account. Adsterra placements are off by default and may be enabled separately by the site admin. Google, Adsterra, and their demand partners may use cookies, scripts, or similar technologies to serve and measure ads. The cookie bar governs advertising consent: in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and wherever your region cannot be determined, no ad script is requested until you accept; elsewhere advertising is allowed until you decline. Declining stops new ad requests and removes ads already on the page, and Global Privacy Control turns advertising off whatever you choose. Personalized ads in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland require a Google-certified CMP. The screens where you sign in, sign up, recover an account, see recovery codes or manage security, and the admin area, load no ad code at all, and the legal, security and accessibility pages carry no ad.

To protect members from abuse, we record security events by network address: sign-ups, sign-ins, failed sign-ins, refused requests and reports. Each event keeps your address for 7 days so the site owner can block an address that is attacking the site, and then only a keyed fingerprint that cannot be turned back into the address; the event itself is deleted after 90 days. A blocked address sees a page that says when the block ends and how to appeal by email; shared networks can be caught by mistake, so please write to us if that happens. Session records do not keep your address.

Account export and deletion controls are provided in settings. How long each kind of information is kept, and what deleting your account removes, is under How long we keep information below.

These are the companies whose services Sonic Weaver uses, and what each one receives. We do not sell personal information for money.

• Vercel (hosting, file storage and Speed Insights): every request to the site, with your network address and browser details; the files you upload; and the sampled page speed figures above.
• Turso (database): your account and everything the signed-in features save, as this page describes.
• Cloudflare (Turnstile): on sign-up and account recovery, your network address and signals from your browser, to tell people from automated abuse.
• Google: what Sign-in with Google describes, when you use it; the Google Fonts requests on every page; Google Analytics 4 when analytics is on; the server's AI and MCP usage events, which carry nothing about you, when the site's Google Analytics connection is set up; and Google AdSense when advertising is on.
• Ahrefs: cookieless page view counts, when analytics is on.
• Adsterra: ad requests, when advertising is on and the site admin has switched Adsterra on.
• Resend: the address, subject and words of each email we send, when our mail is on.
• Hugging Face: the model downloads your browser asks for when you start a model tool.
• Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Openverse, NASA and Europe PMC: the search words our server sends for the free library and SW Agent, and nothing about you; and, for the free library's results, the requests your browser makes to show them.
• OpenStreetMap: when the map on the contact page loads, the request for it, with your network address and browser details.
• Twitch: its own chat, shown inside the Stream page only after you type your channel and press Show, under Twitch's own cookies and privacy policy.
• PayPal, Stripe, Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee and Patreon receive nothing from us; you reach them only by following a creator's support link.

Advertising and analytics partners use their own cookies or similar technologies on our pages when those categories are on, under their own privacy policies. Some US state laws call that selling or sharing personal information; see US state privacy rights.

Where the GDPR or the UK GDPR applies to you, these are the legal bases we rely on:

• To run your account and the features you use (saving, publishing, messages, SW Agent, support links): providing the service you asked for (contract).
• To keep the site and its members safe and working (security events, rate limits, the abuse challenge, moderation, reports, audit records, fixing failures, measuring page speed and loading fonts): our legitimate interest in a safe, working site, weighed against your interests. You can object to it (see Your rights).
• Analytics and advertising in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and the optional things you switch on or press (Help improve SW Agent, a rating, a shared link): your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• Copyright and other legal notices, and the records we keep for them: our legitimate interest in handling legal claims and meeting the duties the law places on us.

Under PIPEDA we rely on your consent, which you give by using a feature after this page and the feature tell you what it does. For analytics and advertising outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, that consent can be withdrawn at any time with Decline in the cookie bar. You need a username and password, or a Google account, to make an account; everything else you give us is optional, and a feature that needs something says so.

• Your account, profile, projects, posts, messages, SW Agent history and settings: until you delete them or your account.
• When you delete your account, it is anonymised and the rows that belong to it are deleted at once, in one step; your stored files are queued and permanently removed 7 days later. Deleted information can remain in our database provider's backups until they expire.
• Security events: the network address for 7 days, and the event for 90 days.
• SW Agent ratings: 180 days. Help improve SW Agent records: 90 days.
• The records that identify a member named in a copyright notice: six months from the notice, or one year if the sender tells us they have started court proceedings, as the Report content page says.
• Reports, notices, counter-notices, appeals, strikes, and moderation and audit records: kept after the account that made or received them is deleted, for as long as they are needed to deal with the matter, to answer an appeal or a legal claim, and to keep repeat abuse off the site.
• Google Analytics measurements: for the retention period set in this site's Google Analytics property.
• The daily counts of AI use (AI services, the MCP server and SW Agent): 400 days.
• Email to our contact address: for as long as we need it to answer you and keep a record of what was asked.

You can edit profile visibility, notification preferences, sessions, passkeys, and recovery codes; delete your ratings of SW Agent's answers and turn off your shared SW Agent links in Settings, SW Agent; export project files; remove the files Studio keeps in your browser by clearing this site's data; unpublish or report community content; and request account export or deletion. See the account security guide for the recovery model.

This service is intended for a general audience aged 13 and older and is not directed at children under 13. Making an account with a username and password asks you to confirm that you are 13 or older, and posting to the community needs that confirmation from every account; nothing checks an age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information, contact us and we will delete anything we hold.

You can ask us to confirm what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy of it; correct it if it is wrong; delete it; restrict or object to how it is used, including profiling for advertising; and receive it in a portable, machine-readable form. Project files can be exported yourself at any time from settings without asking us. To use a right, email visualizers@novusstreamsolutions.com or write to us from your signed-in account; we may ask you to show that the account is yours before we act.

Where we rely on your consent for analytics or advertising, you can withdraw it at any time: choose Cookie settings in the footer of any page, or open the cookie bar from Your choices on the Cookie Policy page, then Decline or switch the category off under Manage settings. Withdrawing either does not affect anything that happened before. Exercising any of these rights is free, and we will not degrade the service or treat you differently for it. We answer requests within 30 days.

Some of these rights come from PIPEDA and Quebec's privacy law, and others from Articles 15 to 22 of the GDPR and the UK GDPR where those laws apply to you. We answer every request, whichever law you are under.

If you live in a US state with a consumer privacy law, such as California, you can ask what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct or delete it, in the same ways as above. You can also opt out of advertising that uses your activity across sites: choose Decline or switch Advertising off in the cookie bar, use Turn ads off on the Cookie Policy page, or turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser, which this site reads as that opt-out without asking and which turns advertising and analytics off for that browser. We use sensitive personal information, such as your password, only to run your account. We will not treat you differently for using these rights.

Sonic Weaver is operated from Canada. Accounts and projects are stored in Turso; community preview images, files you choose to publish or save to My Assets, and the private copies earlier versions of Studio made of imported files, are stored in Vercel Blob; analytics and advertising are handled by Google, Ahrefs and Adsterra; and the other services listed above run their own servers. These providers operate globally and process data on servers outside Canada, including in the United States, under their own data processing terms. If you are in the European Union, the European Commission has decided that Canada gives adequate protection to personal information that businesses handle under PIPEDA. Music and files you import, guest work and all rendering stay on your own device and cross no border at all, unless you choose to publish them or save them to My Assets.

If a breach of security safeguards involving personal information we hold creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and tell you as soon as feasible, as PIPEDA requires, and tell any other privacy authority whose law requires it. We keep a record of every breach of security safeguards, whether or not it had to be reported, for 24 months.

For privacy questions, PIPEDA access or correction requests, or any other right on this page, email visualizers@novusstreamsolutions.com. The owner of Novus Stream Solutions answers it. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

If you are in Quebec, you may also contact the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec; in the European Union or the EEA, the data protection authority where you live or work; and in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office.