Terms and Privacy

Terms of Service

Service and operator

Tremulations is an AI-assisted research platform at tremulations.org. Ask Swedenborg is its research environment at swedenborg.tremulations.org, using Swedenborg’s writings, the Bible and sources you choose. The operator and public service address are identified in the Legal notice. These Terms apply to the platform and environment, not Google or the external contribution provider.

Your account and acceptance

Google sign-in establishes your identity; it does not itself accept these Terms. You must explicitly accept the displayed current version before using the research workspace. We record the version and server timestamp against your account. Materially updated Terms require a fresh explicit action. The Privacy notice is information about processing, not a request for bundled consent. Keep access to your Google account secure and contact us about unauthorized use.

Your materials and permitted use

You retain your rights in uploaded documents, Questions, Notes, Evidence, Synthesis and Writing. You grant only the permissions necessary to store, extract, index and process them to provide the research actions you request, including sending relevant material to the disclosed model provider. Upload only materials you may lawfully use; respect copyright, confidentiality and other people’s rights. Do not use the service for unlawful activity, abuse, intrusion or automated overload.

Personal and sensitive information

Use published sources and non-personal research materials where possible. Do not submit other people’s confidential personal information, special-category personal data (for example an identifiable person’s religious beliefs or health), or criminal-offence data. Discussing ideas or religious texts does not by itself identify an individual’s beliefs. This service is not offered for processing such sensitive personal data. If you submit it inadvertently, stop using it and contact the operator for removal; no automated filter can guarantee its exclusion.

AI transparency and verification

You are interacting with AI-assisted tools using model providers, including OpenAI. Answers, research plans, source interpretations and assisted Writing may be inaccurate or incomplete, including citations. Check the original passages and provenance before relying on an output. This is research assistance, not professional medical, legal or financial advice, and it does not replace your judgment. There is no guarantee of factual correctness or uninterrupted availability.

Changes, ending use and responsibility

You may stop using the service and request account/data deletion using the contact in the Legal notice. The operator may restrict abusive use or withdraw the service, with notice where reasonably possible. Retention and deletion limitations are explained in the Privacy notice. Mandatory consumer rights and liability that cannot legally be excluded remain unaffected; these Terms do not waive statutory remedies. Updated Terms are displayed with a new version before continued research access.

Support contributions

Support is optional and separate from research access. Only an explicit outbound action on the Support page opens the configured hosted provider, initially Ko-fi. That provider’s terms and privacy notice govern its checkout. Tremulations does not collect card details or confirm payment success here. No charitable status, tax deductibility, receipt or subscription is promised by this service.

Privacy notice

Controller and contact

The operator named in the Legal notice is the controller for the platform’s processing. Contact that operator to ask about privacy, account deletion or exercising your rights. Hosting provider and deployment-specific transfer/retention information are shown below. A deployment is not legally ready until the owner has confirmed these details.

Account identity and Terms records

For Google OAuth we receive your Google account identifier, email, name and profile-image URL and record account/login information. Your browser visits Google during sign-in; Google processes the sign-in under its own privacy notice. OAuth codes/access tokens are used to complete authentication, not shown in the research workspace. We store the explicitly accepted Terms version and server timestamp. New acceptance records do not retain an IP address; older acceptance IP records may remain until account deletion or review. Account processing is necessary to provide your requested service (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR); security and evidence of acceptance rely on legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) where applicable.

Research Library and research artifacts

We store uploaded PDF, TXT, Markdown and DOCX documents, extracted text, document/source metadata and relevant revisions, as well as Questions, selected sources, discussion/history, Notes, retained Evidence, Synthesis and Writing versions. This supports persistent research, source inspection and your requested drafting actions under Art. 6(1)(b). Removing an item from a Library or source set is not a promise to erase every revision, retained excerpt or linked artifact. Account-wide deletion is available by contacting the operator; ownership is checked before access/removal.

AI and retrieval recipients

Relevant prompts, Questions, selected passages/document excerpts, contextual discussion and current Writing/instructions may be transmitted to OpenAI for embeddings or model responses when the corresponding research/AI action is used. An upload is stored/extracted by the service; selected material can later enter these requests. Not every saved object is automatically sent to a model. Retrieval uses PostgreSQL/pgvector within the hosted Tremulations application and data layer; it is not a separate external retrieval recipient. Hosting and model providers process service data under applicable processor arrangements; Google and the externally visited contribution provider also have their own responsibilities. We do not claim that no data reaches third parties.

International processing and provider safeguards

Google, OpenAI and their subprocessors can involve processing outside the EEA. We do not claim EEA-only processing, zero provider retention or a particular data-residency setting without account-specific evidence. The deployment-specific transfer position and verified safeguards are shown below. The operator must verify processor agreements, lawful transfer arrangements and actual provider settings before activation. Provider privacy and data-processing terms explain their independent processing; contact us for the applicable arrangements.

Hosting, logs and security

The service is hosted at Hetzner. Deployment-specific hosting details are identified below. Requests can generate server/proxy logs containing IP address, timestamp, requested path, response status and technical request metadata. Application errors, rate-limit counters, authentication/session state and security diagnostics help operate and protect the service (legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f)). Do not put secrets in Questions, URLs or uploaded files. Access is restricted to authorized operation/support and relevant processors; legal disclosure may be required by a binding obligation.

Sessions and local storage

PHPSESSID is the essential session cookie for login and workspace state. It is not optional advertising consent. The application also uses browser session/local storage for interface preferences and research navigation state; these are separate from the session cookie. No analytics or marketing cookies, trackers or external font requests are introduced by this release. Your browser may request Google-hosted profile images if displayed; Google receives that request. Contribution-provider resources are not loaded before your explicit outbound click.

Retention and deletion criteria

Account identity and research records are retained while you maintain your account and stored research, until deletion is requested or a specific legal/security need ends. Append-only artifact versions and retained source excerpts can outlast removal from a source set. Contact the operator for export or deletion of the account and associated records; we verify identity and explain any legal hold or technical limitation. Logs/security counters are retained for troubleshooting and abuse investigation according to operational rotation, not indefinitely for marketing. Protected backups can retain removed records until their rotation and are restricted to recovery; a restore must re-apply relevant deletion requests. Deployment/provider retention criteria are shown below; no automatic account-deletion UI or unverified purge interval is promised.

Sensitive information

Free text and uploads can contain personal information, including special-category data. We cannot truthfully guarantee that none is processed. The Terms prohibit using the service for sensitive personal data or other people’s confidential information; we do not claim an Art. 9 exception for such use. If it is submitted inadvertently, contact us for restriction/removal and avoid further model requests. The operator must assess the incident and any applicable legal obligations.

Your rights

Subject to applicable conditions, you may request access, correction, erasure, restriction and portability of your personal data, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. Contact the operator with the request; proportionate identity verification may be needed. Requests are handled within applicable statutory time limits, with any permitted extension explained. You can complain to the competent data-protection supervisory authority, including where you live or work. No decision with legal or similarly significant effects is made solely by these research AI outputs.

External support and notices

Visiting the configured support provider is your choice. It receives the information you supply there and connection metadata under its own terms/privacy notice. Tremulations does not process card details in this flow. The Privacy notice can change as actual processing changes; the published version identifies the current notice.

Legal notice

Operator and public service address

The operator/controller name, service address and direct contact are supplied below from runtime configuration. Tremulations and Ask Swedenborg are service names, not an assertion that a company or charity with those names exists. Applicable register/VAT information is displayed when configured. The operator must confirm that all legally required details for its actual status are complete before activation.

Service hosts

Platform: https://tremulations.org/ — Research environment: https://swedenborg.tremulations.org/ — Platform API boundary: https://api.tremulations.org/. The API hostname is not a separate operator. A host listed here does not assert that its production route is already active.