Privacy Policy

1. The short version

Done By the Book is local-first: your projects are saved on your own device, and you can use the app without ever creating an account, except the five features in section 3 that read your photos and plans. A free account is optional: it adds backup and cross-device sync, and it turns those five features on. We don't sell your data, we don't run ads, and we only share data with the service providers needed to make the app work.

2. What stays on your device

Your projects — answers, checklists, plans, saved drawings and progress — are stored in your browser's storage on your device, and so are the photos, scans and documents you add to them. If you never create an account, that is where they live, full stop. Clearing your browser data deletes them. The Export button in My Jobs makes a file of your project records that you control; it doesn't include your photos, scans or other files.

3. What we process to answer you

Five features send what you give them to our AI provider to be read: Photo review, Sketch to plan, and the three scans that read your photos, plan pages or numbers page into your project. The photos, drawings or documents you choose, and any words you type with them, go to our servers and on to our AI provider to produce the result. These five need a free account: each time you use one, our server checks with our authentication provider that you're signed in. Questions you ask, inspector notes you decode and your step-by-step plan are answered on our own servers by the app itself — they aren't sent to an AI provider. Don't include personal information you don't want processed — the app works fine without names or exact addresses in your drawings and questions.

We also count anonymous usage events (like how many scans happened) to understand what's being used. These counters aren't tied to your name or email. To see how many different people reach each step of the app, your device stores a random session code — letters and numbers, nothing about you — that rides along with these events. It is never used to identify you or to follow you to other sites, and our server keeps only irreversible tallies built from it, so there is no list of codes anywhere to look anyone up in. When you start a project, we also count it by area: if you found your municipality by typing a postal code or a street address, the count keeps only the first three characters of the postal code (the part that covers a whole neighbourhood) and, for a street address in a municipality that publishes its community boundaries, the name of the community it falls in — never the full code or the address, and never on your project or account.

One more thing we keep, disclosed plainly: redacted copies of text you type into the assistant — questions, pasted inspector notes, and project specs — because reading what real people ask is how the answers get better. Before anything is stored, we automatically remove email addresses, phone numbers, street and rural addresses, legal land descriptions and permit numbers, and keep only the first three characters of a postal code (the part that covers a whole neighbourhood). Automatic removal can miss some — an address typed all in lower case, for example, or written an unusual way — so leave out anything you don't want kept. The copies are not linked to your name, your email, or your session code, and the logs are capped, so the oldest entries fall off as new ones arrive. If you'd like something you typed removed, contact us and we'll clear it.

4. If you create an account (optional)

We store your email address and a securely hashed password with our authentication provider, plus the date you accepted the Terms of Use.

Your projects sync to our database so they can back up and appear on your other devices. The photos and documents you attach as records — application documents, inspection photos, correction photos and product photos — also back up, to a private storage area that only your account can access. Other photos and scans, like the survey's photos, your plan's scans and the numbers page, stay only on the device you added them on.

Signing out leaves your local copy on your device. When you delete a project it moves to a Deleted list for 14 days, where you can restore it on any of your devices, so its cloud copy is kept for those 14 days. After that, or as soon as you choose Delete now, its content is erased from our database — leaving only a marker with no project content, so your other devices know it was deleted — and its backed-up photos are deleted from our storage, normally within the hour, whether or not you open the app again.

5. Who we share with (and who we don't)

We share data only with the providers that run the service: our AI provider (to read the photos, drawings and documents you send to the five features in section 3), our database and storage provider (to hold account data and backups), our hosting provider (to serve the app), our map provider (when you type a street address to find your municipality, your browser sends it there to look it up — we keep only the municipality, plus the first three characters of its postal code and the name of its community, for the area count in section 3), and our form provider (to deliver feedback you send us; feedback about an answer includes the question or note and the answer). Each receives only what it needs to do its job. Our hosting provider also gives us cookieless visit statistics (how many visitors, which pages are read) that use no cookies and no personal identifiers. Community boundaries come from the open data of the City of Calgary and the City of Edmonton, used under their open government licences. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Calgary. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – City of Edmonton.

If you use the microphone button, your browser turns your speech into text using its own speech-recognition service, which, depending on the browser, may send the audio to that browser's maker (for example Google in Chrome or Apple in Safari). We never receive the audio, only the words it produced.

We do not sell your data. We do not run ads. We do not share your information with advertisers, data brokers, your municipality, or anyone else — unless the law requires it.

6. Your choices and rights

Use the app signed out — everything works without an account except the five features in section 3, which need a free one.

Export your project records any time from My Jobs; the file is yours (it doesn't include photos or other files).

Ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and its data — use the feedback option inside the app and we'll act on it. When an account is deleted, its backed-up photos are removed from our storage, normally within ten days.

We keep data only to operate the service, not longer than we need it.

7. Where your data lives

The app and its data are hosted with cloud infrastructure providers. Account data and backups are held by our database provider; the photos, drawings and documents you send to the five features in section 3 are processed by our AI provider. If you have questions about data residency, ask through the in-app feedback and we'll answer plainly.

8. Children

The app is guidance for planning and permitting construction work. It isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them.

9. Changes

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date below changes with it, and meaningful changes will be called out in the app.

10. Contact

Questions or requests about your data? Use the feedback option inside the app.