Privacy.

Seshat is made by x Create (Rijn Hartman) in South Africa. Questions and requests go to hello@seshat.digital, and a person answers.

What stays on your Mac

• Your audio, your dictations and the text Seshat writes. Speech recognition and Smart cleanup run on your Mac, and no audio or text is sent to us or to anyone else.
• Your history, your saved words and your insights. They live on your Mac only.
• What’s on your screen. Seshat sends the names of the apps you dictate into, never window titles, documents or messages.

Your account

An account is needed to use Seshat. You can sign in with Google, GitHub, Apple or a 6-digit code we email you. We keep:

• Your email address. With Apple you can choose to hide it; then we get an Apple relay address instead.
• From Google, GitHub or Apple: your name and profile picture link, your GitHub username if you use GitHub, and the account ID they give us so we recognise you next time. We never get your password or your access to those accounts.
• Your access (on the beta list or in the beta), whether you told us you’re in the Gauteng AI Community, which sign-in methods you’ve used, whether you signed up on the website or in the app, and dates such as when you joined.
• How you found us: the link, campaign tag or website that first brought you to seshat.digital, and the first page you saw. Saved once, when you create your account.
• Your country, as a two-letter code, when the network tells us. We don’t store your IP address.
• Your signed-in devices: whether each is a Mac or a browser, the kind of Mac (like “MacBook Pro”), the Seshat version, and when it was last used. Never your Mac’s name.

We use this to let you in, run the beta (including who to invite next), see which links and posts bring people, and email you about your account and Seshat. Sign-in codes are stored only as a keyed hash and work once, for 10 minutes. Sessions are stored only as a hash. Once you’re signed in, Seshat works offline; it checks your account when your Mac is online.

What the app sends

While you’re signed in, Seshat sends usage stats once a day when your Mac is online (catching up on up to 14 days if you were offline):

• How many dictations, split into Quick and Smart, how many words, how many seconds of audio and how many minutes you spent dictating. Counts, not the audio or the words.
• Which apps you dictated into (their names, like “Slack” or “Notes”, and their app IDs) and how many dictations went to each.
• How long processing took (average and slowest), and how many dictations failed or were cancelled.
• Which features you used and how often: teaching it a word, Add more, changing languages or settings.
• Your chosen languages (codes like “en” and “af”), your default mode and your dictation key.
• The Seshat and macOS versions, your kind of Mac, its chip and memory size, and a random ID made on your Mac for this install.

It also sends milestones as they happen: installing and opening the app, granting the microphone and accessibility permissions, steps of the setup, signing in (and how), your first dictation, first using Smart or Quick, changing languages, teaching it a word, installing an update and sending feedback. Those carry only small values such as the name of a setup step.

If Seshat crashes or hangs, macOS gives it a technical report (call stacks and versions, no text), and it sends that too. We keep the last 50 per account.

We collect all of this to build and run Seshat: to see what works, what breaks and which apps, Macs and languages to support next. It comes with having an account. Our server refuses anything that looks like dictated text. To object, or to have it deleted, email hello@seshat.digital.

Emails

We email your sign-in codes, a welcome, your beta invite and a few short tips once you start using Seshat. For everything except sign-in codes, our email service tells us when an email is opened and which link was clicked, so we can see which emails help. Reply to any of them to stop the tips.

Feedback and reports

• Send feedback sends your message, the app version, your reply email if you add one, and diagnostics if you leave them on. You see exactly what’s included before you press Send.
• Report this dictation is the one way your words can reach us, and only when you choose it: for that one dictation it sends what Seshat heard, what it pasted, the language and mode, the problems you ticked and your note. If the report includes that dictation’s recording, our server doesn’t keep it.

This website

• Creating an account here collects what’s listed under Your account.
• Your first visit. Your browser keeps, for 90 days, which link, campaign tag or website first brought you here and the first page you saw. If you create an account, it’s saved with it.
• Visits. We use Google Analytics to see how people find and use seshat.digital: pages viewed, roughly where visitors come from, the kind of device and browser, and a few events: when someone starts or finishes creating an account (and whether with Google, GitHub, Apple or email), presses Download, or plays the pronunciation. It never gets your email or anything you type into a form, and we strip sign-in codes from the addresses it sees. In the EU, UK and Switzerland it runs without analytics cookies. Elsewhere Google Analytics sets its own cookies to count returning visitors. It’s never used for advertising, and it stays off if your browser sends Global Privacy Control.
• Your browser also remembers your Google Analytics choice and, for a few minutes while you sign in with Google, GitHub or Apple, which button you pressed. The site sets no cookies of its own.

Who handles it

We use a few services to run Seshat. Some of them store or process data outside South Africa.

• Convex stores accounts, usage stats, milestones, crash reports, email opens and clicks, and feedback, and runs our server.
• Postmark sends our emails, including sign-in codes, and reports opens and clicks on the others.
• Vercel hosts this website.
• Google runs Google Analytics on this website, and Google sign-in if you use it.
• GitHub hosts the app’s downloads and updates, and GitHub sign-in if you use it.
• Apple runs Sign in with Apple if you use it.
• Hugging Face hosts the speech models the app downloads.

Like any website or download, these services see your IP address when your browser or Mac connects to them. We don’t sell or share your details with anyone else, and we don’t use them for advertising.

Keeping and deleting

• We keep your account, its usage stats, milestones and email opens and clicks while you have an account, and its last 50 crash reports. Email hello@seshat.digital and we delete your account, its sign-ins, devices, usage stats, milestones, crash reports and email history.
• Feedback is kept so we can follow up; ask and we delete it too.
• Sign-in codes are deleted when used or after 10 minutes. Browser sessions end after 30 days without use; Mac sessions after a year without use.

Your rights

South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) applies, and so may the law where you live. You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. Email hello@seshat.digital. If we don’t sort it out, you can complain to the Information Regulator.

If this page changes in a way that matters, we’ll update the date at the top and, for big changes, email you.