Ancient Paths is a concordance: it searches a library of public-domain and permissively licensed Christian writing and shows you what those authors said, quoted and attributed. This page explains what we hold about you, who else touches it, and how to have it removed. It is written in plain English on purpose.
Questions, or a deletion request: hello@ancientpaths.app.
What we collect
If you join the waitlist
Your email address, the campaign parameters in the link that brought you (the utm_ values, if any), the page you landed on, the site that referred you, and the consent sentence you agreed to. We use it to tell you when a place opens up.
If you create an account
Your email address, and either a password or a Google sign-in, handled for us by Neon Auth. We never see your password. We store your account id and email so your work belongs to you across devices.
What you make while using it
Highlights, notes, saved passages, studies, reading plans, prayers, your reading position, and the history of your research. This is the product: it exists so that your work is still there tomorrow.
Documents you upload
If you bring your own sermons or papers into the library, the file is stored in private storage that is not readable from the web, and its text is split into passages and turned into numeric vectors so it can be searched. Both the text and the vectors are scoped to your account by the database itself, not merely by our code.
Questions you ask
We keep the question, which sources were retrieved, whether the answer passed our verifier, and how long it took. We read these to find bad answers and fix the retrieval behind them. They are not used to build a profile of you.
Analytics and logs
We use PostHog to see which parts of the product get used. We disable its feature-flag requests, and before anything is sent we cut every page address down to its path and any campaign tag (like utm_source), so your searches, your questions, and the question a citation link carries back to its answer do not travel into analytics, on any page. PostHog also keeps a small record in your browser’s cookie and local storage: an anonymous ID and the address of the first page you opened. It is cut down the same way before anything based on it is sent. Our server logs deliberately leave email addresses out; they record the shape of an event, not the person.
Who else touches it
We are a small operation and we rent our infrastructure. These companies process data on our behalf, under their own security terms:
- Vercel: hosting, and private file storage for uploads.
- Neon: the database, the accounts service behind sign-in, and the email that verifies your address.
- DeepInfra: turns text into search vectors, chooses which quotations answer a question, and writes the occasional one-line summary beside one.
- PostHog: product analytics.
Cookies
Four, and no advertising cookies at all. One keeps you signed in. One is PostHog’s analytics cookie. Two more exist only if you ask a question before creating an account: one names your browser to us so your free questions can be counted (it is signed, and scripts cannot read it), and one holds nothing but how many you have used. Both expire 30 days after your last question. Blocking the analytics cookie costs you nothing; blocking the sign-in cookie means the site cannot tell it is you. Your browser’s local storage also holds your reading settings and places (theme, text size, where you were reading), so the site can pick up where you left off. Clearing it resets those.
What we do not do
We do not sell your data, and we do not run advertising. We do not read your private notes except where you ask us for support and we need to look at the thing that is broken.
Keeping and deleting
We keep your account and your work until you ask us to delete it. Inside the product you can delete individual documents, studies, plans and notes yourself. To have the whole account and everything in it removed, email hello@ancientpaths.app from the address you signed up with and we will do it, normally within a few days. Ask and we will send you a copy of what we hold first.
Answers you see without an account are deleted 30 days after your last question. The question text is also kept, with no name or email, to help improve answers.
Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Your rows are separated from other people’s inside the database itself, so a bug in our code is not on its own enough to show your work to somebody else. Uploads go to a private store, not a public one. No system is perfect; if something ever goes wrong that affects you, we will tell you rather than hope you do not notice.
Children
Ancient Paths is not aimed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will remove it.
Changes
If this changes, the date at the top changes with it, and material changes will be mentioned to anyone with an account rather than quietly edited in.
See also the Terms of Use.