Privacy policy

Version 2 — 6 November 2026 (covers account platform, products, advertising). Version 1 described the static marketing site only; version 2 restates the whole system, surface by surface. Where the Hero Agent product disagrees for Agent data, the Hero Agent privacy notice wins.

Hero Studios is an independent software and technology studio — not affiliated with any other company using a similar name. Questions or data requests: privacy@herostudios.dev.

1. Scope map — what this policy covers

• (a) Marketing site — herostudios.dev. Static pages, local browser preferences, aggregate download counts, Adsterra banners. Details →
• (b) Account platform — client.herostudios.dev + the herostudios.dev API. Username/email, profile, 2FA, sessions, orders, entitlements, friends, progress milestones. Details →
• (c) Hero Agent product. Conversations, project copies, memories, prompts sent to model providers. Full Agent notice →
• (d) Client mod cloud sync. Configuration snapshots pushed from Hero Client. Details →
• (e) Support submissions. Contact form and support portal messages. Details →

Each section states the same five things: what is collected, for what purpose, how long it is kept, who processes it, and what you can control.

2. (a) Marketing site — herostudios.dev

What we collect

• Your local browser may store your recent searches (to power the command palette) and expanded-roadmap preferences. This never leaves your device.
• Downloads may be counted in aggregate for popularity — never tied to you.
• No first-party analytics scripts, no activity telemetry of our own, no tracking cookies.

Purpose

Keeping the site usable (search, preferences) and showing honest popularity figures.

Retention

Local preferences stay on your device until you clear site data; aggregate counts are not personal data and have no expiry.

Who processes it

Hero Studios (operator of this site). Advertising requests additionally involve Adsterra — see Advertising. Browsing needs no account.

Your controls

Clear site data in your browser to erase local preferences; block or switch off ads (below); no account-level opt-out is needed because no personal profile is built here.

3. (b) Account platform — client.herostudios.dev and the API

What we collect

• Identity: username, email, display name, bio, avatar/banner, accent colour, role.
• Authentication: a salted password hash (never plain text), email-verification state, optional Google sign-in linkage, 2FA state (encrypted authenticator secret + one-time backup codes), login attempts and security events (sign-ins, password/2FA changes) for rate limiting and your login history.
• Sessions: device label, IP address, user agent, created/last-active/expiry times. Web sessions live up to 30 days (the shared hs_token cookie has a 30-day Max-Age); mod/API sessions default to 24 hours. Expired rows are pruned automatically.
• Commerce & entitlements: store orders (cosmetic purchases), owned cosmetics, plan entitlements (Free/Pro/Enterprise), and plan checkout records — your DonationAlerts reference text, optional receipt note, amount and verification status (see Payments).
• Social: friends list and its states (pending/friends/blocked).
• Progress milestones: optional, coarse product milestones (for example first chat, first build) — off unless you enable telemetry; never file contents or prompt text.
• Notifications: account messages such as security notices.

Purpose

Running the account: sign-in, security, entitlements across products, purchases, the friends/social features and progress reporting you switch on.

Retention — be precise

• Profile, auth state, friends, progress, notifications: until you delete your account.
• Sessions: 24 hours (mod/API) to 30 days (web), then purged with expired rows.
• Store orders and plan checkout records: kept as long as accounting and tax law requires, then purged or anonymised — this is the one category that outlives account deletion.
• Where no fixed period applies (profile, friends, milestones): until you delete your account.

Who processes it

Hero Studios (operator of the platform). Payment-side processing happens on DonationAlerts — we never receive card details (Payments). Model providers only see Agent prompts, covered by the Agent notice.

Your controls

• Export: “Download my data (JSON)” on the account page — profile, plans, orders, cosmetics, progress, checkout records, session metadata.
• Delete: account deletion instructions on the account page or by emailing privacy@herostudios.dev.
• Security: revoke sessions, manage trusted devices and 2FA on the account page.
• Telemetry: progress milestones stay off until you enable them.

4. (c) Hero Agent product

Conversations, project copies, memories, prompts and context sent to model providers, BYOK key handling, milestone telemetry and crash reports are all covered by the dedicated Hero Agent privacy notice — what stays local, what goes to our servers, what goes to model providers (the processors for this product), retention periods and your controls (memory panel, conversation delete, telemetry toggle, export, account deletion). This main policy links there; that notice links back; both directions are one click away.

5. (d) Client mod cloud sync

What we collect

Configuration snapshots you push from Hero Client: settings, modules, waypoints, replays, backups, account and cosmetics payloads — one stored snapshot per type, transferred over HTTPS and kept as the JSON snapshot you pushed (the client and account pages describe what is encrypted on-device today versus planned).

Purpose

Mirroring your configuration across machines you sign in on.

Retention

Until overwritten by a newer push, or until you delete your account — whichever comes first.

Who processes it

Hero Studios only. Snapshots are never used for advertising and never shared.

Your controls

Pull/push/replace from inside the client; deletion of the account erases all snapshots; export what you need first (see Download my data and the cloud page).

6. (e) Support submissions

What we collect

Whatever you write in the support portal or contact form: your reply email, product and version details, and the message itself. The form tags each submission with its mailbox (for example [Security]) and addresses it accordingly — security reports go to security@herostudios.dev, everything else to the general studio mailboxes.

Purpose

Answering you, fixing bugs, and keeping a record of what was reported.

Retention

Kept in the studio's mail for as long as the conversation or legal matter needs; ask privacy@herostudios.dev to delete it. Don't put credentials or secrets in support messages.

Who processes it

Hero Studios, plus whichever mail provider is configured for sending (Resend or Web3Forms — Cloudflare's legacy MailChannels relay is only tried as a last-ditch fallback and no longer delivers). Cloudflare Email Routing then forwards our published addresses to the studio inbox.

Your controls

Email us to correct or delete a submission; use direct addresses from the address list instead of the form if you prefer.

7. Payments & donations

• How plan checkout works: you make a donation on DonationAlerts and paste its reference/message on your account page; an admin verifies it and activates the plan. Nothing activates before verification.
• No card data touches our systems. Card numbers, expiry and security codes stay between you and DonationAlerts — we only keep your reference text, an optional receipt note you type, the plan, amount, status and timestamps.
• Retention: those checkout records are kept as long as accounting and tax law requires.
• Who processes payment: DonationAlerts, under their own terms and privacy policy. Store cosmetics orders are recorded the same way — our record only.

8. Advertising

We display clearly-labelled banner advertisements served by Adsterra on selected public pages (never on sign-in, account, security, checkout, documentation, download buttons or inside the Hero Agent workspace). Our policy bans popunders, pop-ups, interstitials, notification-style units and click-anywhere ads — fixed, in-flow, sponsor-labelled slots only. Adsterra may process device and request data to serve ads and prevent fraud as described in Adsterra's own privacy policy. We do not receive or store data about which ads you see beyond aggregate, non-identifying revenue figures. You can hide ads in this browser with any ad blocker; the site also honours a local ad switch (the account page exposes it to admin accounts today). Because we keep no per-user ad data, there is no server-side ad profile to opt out of.

9. What we never do

• Sell or share personal data.
• Track you across sites.
• Run our own targeted advertising or build advertising profiles about you.
• Use account email, chat prompts, source code, file names or cloud-sync data for ad targeting.

10. Changes to this policy

Material changes bump the version line at the top of this page and appear on the releases page. The current version is linked from the root site footer, the client platform footer and the Agent notice, so every surface points at the same document.

Privacy questions or data requests? Email privacy@herostudios.dev or contact the studio