What Saybooks keeps, and what it doesn't
Effective 2026-10-07. Saybooks is operated by Peter Varga, the sole founder, and this page is written by him rather than by a template. If something here is unclear, write to hello@saybooks.io.
The short version
- Your books are yours. Every space exports completely as JSON, audit log included, and one button deletes it permanently.
- We store what you put in your books, who did it, and when. We do not read your books, sell anything, or run advertising.
- Saybooks never emails your customers, never charges a card, never moves money. It records.
- Anonymous demo sandboxes are deleted after 24 hours unless you sign in to keep one.
What we store
| Data | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your Google identity when you sign in: account id, email, name, profile picture | To know whose books are whose and to let you invite people by email | Until you delete your last space and ask us to remove the account |
| Everything in your books: customers, invoices, orders, postings, payments, the company profile and logo | That is the product | Until you delete the space |
| The audit log: every command, who ran it (you, an invited person, or an agent holding your key), the reason given, and refusals | The record is the point; it is what makes an agent safe to let in | Until you delete the space; exported with it |
| Keys you mint for agents and invitations you send | So an agent can act as your delegate, with your permissions, until you revoke it | Until revoked or the space is deleted |
| Bills you or your agent record: the vendor, their number, the dates and amount as printed, the file's name and a hash of it, who approved paying and when the payment went | So you know what you owe and nobody pays it twice; the file itself is never stored | Until you delete the space |
| Payment reminders: the subject and body drafted for an overdue invoice, and when you say it was sent | So you can see who was reminded and when; Saybooks never sends them | Until you delete the space |
| Statements and receipts you or your agent import into personal finances: the rows as read (date, amount, description), the file's name and a hash of it, what the receipt said | That is the record; the file itself is never stored | Until you discard the statement or delete the space |
| Usage counts per workspace: number of calls, writes, agent calls, first and last activity | To see whether the product is used at all; counts only, never content | Rolling; sandboxes' rows go with the sandbox |
| Where you came from: the referring site's host name, the page you landed on, and any utm tags in the link | To learn which channel brings people who stay | 30-day cookie; one row per workspace |
| Standard web server logs (IP address, path, time, browser string) | Abuse protection and debugging | Briefly, on the server |
Cookies
All first-party. sb_sess keeps you signed in (30 days). sb_space remembers which of your spaces you opened last in this browser (the server also remembers your last space, so a new browser lands there too). otc_ws ties a browser to an anonymous demo sandbox. sb_oauth lives for ten minutes during Google sign-in. sb_src records the first page you arrived on and the site that sent you (30 days). There is no third-party analytics script and no advertising pixel.
Who else sees anything
- Google, when you choose to sign in with Google. We receive only the fields listed above.
- Google Fonts serves the typefaces on the public pages, which means Google sees the request for the font file. The workbench uses the same fonts.
- Hetzner hosts the server, in the European Union.
- Anyone holding a key or a document link you created. An agent key acts as you; a document link opens one invoice without a sign-in. Both are capabilities: treat them like passwords and revoke or void them when you no longer want them to work.
- Nobody else. We do not sell or share data, and we do not train anything on your books.
Agents and AI
When you connect Claude or another agent, it reads and writes your books through the same commands you use, under the role of the key you minted, and every action lands in your audit log with the agent named as the actor. Saybooks itself does not call any AI model and does not send your data to one; whatever your agent sees is governed by your agreement with its provider.
Saybooks for Mac and iPhone
The Mac app (called hostel) and its iPhone app work differently from saybooks.io: there is no server of ours in the path, so there is nothing for us to store.
- On the Mac. Your books, the documents you attach, your conversations and the model all live on your Mac, in the app's folder under your user account. We receive none of it. The model runs through Ollama on the same Mac; downloading the model the first time is a request to Ollama's library.
- Between your iPhone and your Mac. Messages and the overview of your books travel through the private iCloud database of your own Apple account, sealed with keys that only your Mac and your phone hold. Apple carries them and cannot open them, and neither can we: we never receive them.
- On the iPhone. The phone keeps the latest overview of your books so it opens offline, and invoice PDFs it has shown, in its own storage. A photo or file you pick on the phone is read on the phone; only its words go to your Mac. Forgetting the Mac in the app's settings forgets these too.
- Web search, if you turn it on. The model's search queries go to DuckDuckGo, and pages it reads are fetched from their sites. Your books, your files and what you type do not.
- Books on saybooks.io. If you point the Mac app at books you keep on saybooks.io, those books are stored as described above for saybooks.io.
- No analytics. Neither app sends usage data, crash reports or advertising identifiers anywhere. The iPhone app's privacy manifest declares the same: no data collected.
Your controls
- Export: in the menu under your name, one click downloads every table of the space as one JSON file, audit log included.
- Move: that file can be brought into empty books on saybooks.io or on your Mac, history and audit trail included.
- Delete: one button permanently removes the space, its database, and every key and invitation on it. There is no soft-delete and no retention copy.
- Revoke: keys and invitations are revoked from the same dialog that created them.
- Account removal: after deleting your spaces, email us and the Google identity row goes too.
Open source
The whole system is published under AGPL-3.0 at github.com/alviso/saybooks. If you would rather not trust a hosted service, run it yourself; the code that handles your data is the code you can read.
Changes
2026-10-07: bills and payment reminders added to what is stored, both described above.
2026-09-29: Saybooks for Mac and iPhone added; books can be brought in from an export file.
2026-09-08: personal finances added (statements and receipts as rows and hashes, never files); the server remembers each person's last space. If this page changes in a way that matters, the change is dated here and announced on the site. Prices, where they exist, change with twelve months' notice.