CleanCritique — Privacy Policy

What CleanCritique does

CleanCritique is a browser extension for capturing screenshots of web pages, marking them up with annotations and notes, and exporting the result as an HTML file, PDF, image, or Markdown document.

What we collect

By default, nothing leaves your device. Data is sent only when you take one of these actions:

• Publish to CleanCritique. When you click Publish, the critique page (images, notes, cover and brand colors) and a share image are uploaded to the CleanCritique server so it can host your link.
• Publish to Netlify. The same files are sent to your own Netlify account using the token you provide.
• AI first pass. When you click AI first pass and then Send, the boards in the current project are sent to the CleanCritique server as downscaled images with your redactions burned in, together with board titles, source URLs, your existing notes, and the project title and client name. The server passes them to Anthropic's API to draft findings for that request and does not store them. Anthropic processes the request under its own API terms. Captures are never sent without that click.

Otherwise:

• The extension does not use analytics, tracking, cookies, or advertising.
• Capturing, marking up and exporting need no account. Publishing works without one up to 3 times a month, and free pages carry a small “Made with CleanCritique” footer. The AI first pass needs a CleanCritique workspace token on a paid Studio or Agency plan.
• We do not read, collect, or transmit your browsing history.

Tokens you paste in

If you paste a CleanCritique workspace token or a Netlify personal access token, it is stored locally in the extension and sent only to the service it belongs to (cleancritique.com or api.netlify.com) when you publish or run the AI first pass. To limit anonymous publishing, CleanCritique counts publishes using a salted hash of your IP address, not the address itself.

Published pages

A page you publish to CleanCritique is public to anyone with its link. On paid plans, the published page records first-party view statistics so its owner can see engagement: an anonymous visitor id, which boards were viewed and for how long, and the referring site's hostname. It sets no cookies, uses no third parties, does not record IP addresses, and is off for visitors who send Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Pages published on the free plan do not record views.

Where your data is stored

Everything you create — captured screenshots, annotations, notes, and project metadata — is stored locally in your browser's storage (IndexedDB) on your device. It never leaves your computer unless you choose to export a file and share it. Exported files (HTML, PDF, PNG, Markdown) are generated locally and saved by you; we never receive them.

Sensitive content

Screenshots you capture may contain personal or sensitive information (including content on pages you are signed in to). Captures stay on your device until you publish or send them. The Redact tool blurs or blocks out an area, and the redaction is written into the image pixels of every export, publish and AI first pass request. When you capture a page, the extension checks on your device for signs that you are signed in (such as a sign-out link or an account-style address) and stores only a yes/no result, so it can remind you to redact before publishing. No page text is recorded for this check. Take care when you export and share files, as an exported file will contain the screenshots and notes it was made from.

Permissions we request, and why

• activeTab — lets the extension capture the current tab, only when you click the CleanCritique toolbar button. It has no access to other tabs or your general browsing.
• scripting — used only on the tab you are capturing, to draw the region-selection overlay and to measure/scroll the page for a full-page capture.
• storage — saves your projects locally on your device.
• Optional access to cleancritique.com — requested the first time you publish or run an AI first pass. Optional access to api.netlify.com — requested only if you publish to Netlify.

Data retention and deletion

Your data stays until you delete it. You can delete individual boards or whole projects inside the extension, or remove everything by uninstalling the extension or clearing the browser's site data for the extension.

Third parties

Data you choose to send goes only where the action says: the CleanCritique server for publishing, your Netlify account for Netlify publishing, and, for AI first pass, Anthropic's API via the CleanCritique server. We do not sell data or share it with advertisers.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update the date above and, for material changes, note it in the extension's listing.

Contact

Questions? Email jackgierlich@gmail.com.