Privacy
Plain words about your words.
What First Mate does on your device, what leaves it, and what this website collects. Written to be read, not scrolled past.
Your manuscript
It stays with you.
On your device first
Typo fixes, spelling, grammar, style, consistency, the Captain’s Log and every report run on your computer. They work with no internet, and nothing is sent anywhere to run them.
The grammar engine is local
Grammar runs on harper.js, an open-source engine (Apache-2.0) that is loaded onto your device the first time First Mate runs and stays there.
Your decisions live in the book
The Captain’s Log is stored with the book, so backups and sharing cover it, and it travels with the manuscript.
Nothing trains on your book
We never use your manuscript to train an AI, and First Mate has no server of ours that reads it.
The AI parts
Only what you choose, only when you say.
Only when you press Send
The AI proofread, chapter critique, beta readers and Ask my AI are off until you connect your own AI. Each one shows exactly what will be sent, and nothing goes until you press Send.
What is sent
The passage or chapter you chose, the Source of Truth entries named in it, and the Captain’s Log decisions that apply, plus the First Mate rulebook your AI follows.
Where it goes
Directly from your device to the AI provider you chose, under that provider’s terms. Your key is stored on your device. Run a model on your own computer and nothing leaves it at all.
What comes back
Suggestions, shown as a before and after. Nothing is applied until you accept it.
This website
No tracking, no cookies banner.
This website is a few static pages served by Cloudflare Pages. It sets no tracking cookies and runs no analytics scripts. The day/night choice is stored in your browser’s local storage, on your device, so the site remembers it next time. Fonts are served from this site, not a third party.
The contact form opens your own email app with your message filled in. Nothing is stored on this site. When you email us, we use your address only to reply.
Cloudflare, which hosts the site, may keep standard server logs under its own privacy policy.
Placeholder for attorney review: company name and address, governing law, how to request deletion of an email, and a last-updated date. Keep this box visible until a lawyer has read the page.
Ask us anything.
Questions about any of this: hello@saltofthepage.com, or the contact page. A person will write back.