Privacy

Who we are

underway is operated by Personal Works Ltd (PERSONAL WORKS LTD), company number 14013912, registered in England and Wales. We are the controller of the personal data described on this page.

For anything here, contact hello@underway.life.

What we collect, and why

• Your account. Email address, name if a sign-in provider sends one, and the fact of your subscription. Needed to run the service you asked for.
• Helping you get going. We can see your series’ name, what you type when you set it up, and how far you’ve got, so we can help you get going. We never watch your recordings or read your transcripts unless you ask us to.
• Recordings and transcripts. Video and audio of you, and the text Whisper makes from them, so the interview can happen and an episode can be cut.
• Day context. The note you type, and — only if you connect them — things like commit messages, calendar titles, meeting transcripts, the Slack channels you invite underway to, the Google Drive files you pick, or a payment landing. Used to aim the questions. Never used as footage unless you choose a commentary take.
• Setting up your series before you sign up. On some of our pages you can answer a few questions, type them or say them, and give your website before you have an account. Your answers stay in your own browser, not on our servers, and are cleared after seven days or when you start over. To show you a preview we pass them to the services that write the preview and turn speech into text (listed below), and we read the public pages of the website you give us for its name, logo, colours and words. We keep none of it until you sign up; then it fills in your series and your brand, and it is kept with your account and deleted with it. We also count, without knowing who you are, how many people reach each question.
• How far you get in the app. Which first steps your account has reached and when: signing in, opening Today, playing the welcome film, setting up your series, writing questions, recording an answer, making an episode. Never what you typed, said or filmed. Kept with your account so we can see where new founders get stuck and fix it, and deleted with it.
• Looking around the demo. If you look around underway’s own account without signing up, we count what you open and press there, under a random number with no meaning: the pages, the buttons by their words, the actions the demo stopped, where the visit came from (the page or ad, never anything about you), and the country your connection reads as. Never an email, never anything typed. If you then sign up from the same browser, we link the visit to your account, so we can see whether looking around helps people start. Kept for twelve months, then deleted. Where the cookie rules ask first, the number is kept only after you press Allow (see cookies).
• Technical logs. Brief server logs, including IP address, so the site stays up and we can see abuse.

If we wrote to you first

Sometimes Rich writes personally to a founder whose public post on X or LinkedIn about building their business suggests underway might help. To do that we keep your name, your public handle or LinkedIn profile, that one post and its link, your business’s website, the location, role and company on your public profile, and, outside the UK and EU only, a work email at your business, and the LinkedIn or Instagram profile your own website or bio links to. We use them to write to you: a short email from Rich’s own mailbox and a few follow-ups, and a message on X, LinkedIn or Instagram, all of which stop the moment you reply. Only if you say yes do we set up a private page showing what your series could look like, built from that post and your website and nothing else. We may also show our ads to the same list of businesses on X and Meta. Our reason is our legitimate interest in telling founders about a product made for them; we never email personal addresses. Replying to say no is enough to stop everything.

The page has an Opt out link that deletes everything about you except your handle or LinkedIn address, which we keep only so we never contact you again. Or email hello@underway.life and we will do the same. The searching is done through treg (treg.to), which relays requests to the services that hold public posts and work emails.

Rich also answers public Reddit threads where founders ask about building in public. For that we keep the thread, its link and the poster’s Reddit username, and nothing else. We never contact anyone found on Reddit outside that public thread.

The lawful bases we rely on

UK GDPR asks us to name the legal reason for each use. In ordinary language:

• Contract. Running your account, storing what you ask us to store, transcribing takes, generating questions and assembling the cut. This is the service you signed up for.
• Consent. Optional connections — calendar, GitHub, meeting tools, Stripe and the rest — only after you connect them. Disconnecting withdraws that consent and deletes the stored key.
• Legitimate interests. Keeping the site secure, short-lived server logs, and stopping abuse. And, when you sign up, a note of which of our pages or emails you signed up from, so we can see which of them lead to people actually filming; it stays with us and is never shared. We do not use this basis to send your data to advertisers, and we do not think those limited uses override your interests.
• Legal obligation. Records we have to keep for tax and accounting, if any arise from a paid plan.

Your recordings stay on your device

Video and audio you record are stored locally in your own browser (IndexedDB) or on your phone. They are not uploaded to our servers for storage, and we cannot watch them.

If you turn on sync so your episodes appear on more than one device, your recordings are stored in our Supabase project for that purpose alone. You can turn sync off and delete what it holds.

Recording is always opt-in

The camera and microphone are only ever active after you press record, and a visible indicator shows when capture is happening. There is no ambient or all-day recording, and the app never listens in the background.

Your face and voice are not biometrics we identify you with

The diary is a recording of you. We do not do face recognition. We do not identify who is in the frame, we do not enrol a face or voice print, and we do not send footage to a recognition service. Optional on-device framing or light retouching may look for a face in the picture so a crop sits in the right place; that happens on your device, it does not identify you, and it does not store a biometric template.

What we send to other companies, and why

• OpenAI (transcription). Audio from your takes is sent to OpenAI’s Whisper API to be turned into text, and an episode with the AI co-host, audio or on camera, is a live conversation with OpenAI’s voice model, which hears your side of it. If you share your screen during that conversation with “Your co-host can see it” ticked, a still of the window you chose is sent to the same model every few seconds while it changes; your camera is never sent. All of it is processed for that request and is not used to train their models.
• Anthropic (the interview). The note about your day, your transcripts and your chosen angle are sent to Anthropic’s API so Claude can propose angles, write questions and assemble the cut. Not used for training.
• Supabase (accounts and optional sync). Your email address and sign-in session. If you turn sync on, the recordings you asked us to hold. If you sign in with Whop, we receive your email address and name from Whop, nothing else, and we never gain access to your Whop account.
• Vercel (hosting) and Fly.io (renders). Standard server logs, including IP addresses, kept briefly for security and reliability. When a render runs on our worker, the media needed for that job is processed there.
• Whop (payments, optional sign-in and the community). Membership status so we know which plan you have. Card details stay with Whop; we never see them. When you sign up with the email box ticked, we send Whop your email address so it can invite you to the free underway community; nothing happens on Whop unless you accept, and unticking the box means no invite.

Help (our support inbox). When you use the Help button, we keep your message, your email address, the page you were on and your browser or app version, so we can answer you. It goes to our support inbox, hosted by AgentMail, and is used for nothing else. We send you one short email to say it arrived, and then a person replies.

Help (Ask). The Ask tab in the Help button sends your question, our help pages and, if you are signed in, your email address, your plan and the page you are on to Anthropic, who write the answer. We do not keep the conversation. Nothing is stored unless you choose to send it to our team, and then it goes to our support inbox as above.

Resend (email). Sign-in links and account emails are sent through Resend, which sees your email address for that purpose. If you join our community, we may also send a short series of emails about building in public; every one carries an unsubscribe link, the series stops when you make an account, and we send nothing else.

Sentry (error reports). When something breaks, we send Sentry a report of the error so we can fix it: what failed, where in the code, your browser or app version and the page. Email addresses, sign-in tokens, cookies and what you typed are taken out first. It never receives your recordings or the contents of an episode, and there is no screen replay.

Optional connectors — Google Calendar, GitHub, Zoom, Fathom, Fireflies, Stripe, Linear, Plausible, PostHog, Vercel deploys, Kit, beehiiv, Shopify, Figma, Patreon, Gumroad, Squarespace, Printful, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and X — only see data when you connect them, and only so the interview can ask about your day or so an episode can go where you sent it. Meeting transcripts are context for questions. Other people’s voices do not go in an episode. If you use your forwarding address, each email you send to it is read once to write a one-line note of what it was, and that line is kept in your day log; the email itself is not stored. Slack reads only the channels you invite underway to: every message there, and as much of the channel’s history as Slack allows, is kept for as long as your account exists so the interview knows what happened, with one line per channel per day in your day log. It is context for your questions only, never public and never footage; removing underway from a channel stops it, and deleting your account deletes what it read. Google Drive reads only the files you pick in Google’s own file chooser (the drive.file permission, which cannot open anything else in your Drive): each is read as text when you pick it and again when it changes, the latest copy is kept so the next read can say what changed, and one line a day per changed file goes in your day log. Stop reading a file and its copy is deleted; disconnecting deletes all of them.

Where a connection uses Google data (Google Calendar, Google Drive, YouTube), underway’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Calendar data is read only to ask about your day, and Drive files only to say what is in them and what changed. None of it is used for advertising, sold, used to train AI models, or shared with anyone else, and no human at underway reads it except to fix a problem you have asked us to fix.

YouTube. underway uses YouTube API Services. When you connect YouTube, we use it to upload the episodes, clips and assets you choose, keep them in a playlist and set their thumbnails; to read the views, likes and comments on what you posted, so Reach can show you what it did; and to read YouTube’s public search results for phrases your audience types (the titles, view counts, ages and channel sizes of the top videos), so Promote can suggest videos to film and the clip finder can choose which moments to cut. We keep those search results with your suggestions and refresh them each week; anything older than 30 days is deleted. We also read YouTube’s public search suggestions, which carry no information about you. By connecting YouTube you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google’s Privacy Policy applies to what Google does with it. You can stop underway’s access at any time with Disconnect on Account, under Connections, or from Google’s security settings; when you disconnect, we delete the YouTube access we held and the search results kept for you.

ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Hume AI, Google and Cloudflare. OpenAI speaks the interviewer’s questions aloud from their text. ElevenLabs writes down what you recorded, with word timings; when it is unavailable Deepgram does, and then OpenAI. Deepgram also times the words in a clip precisely. Hume AI is a standby for the co-host that is not in use. Google’s Gemini API describes a fragment or a moment when video understanding is on, and generates nothing. Cloudflare relays the live picture when your phone is the camera and stores none of it.

The full list, including those optional connectors, is on subprocessors. We do not sell your data, and we do not use your recordings or transcripts to advertise or to train any model of our own. Visit and signup events can go to the advertising platforms named on the cookies page, so we can tell whether an ad brought you here: in the UK, the EU, the EEA and Switzerland only after you press Allow, and anywhere never after No thanks.

International transfers

Audio and text may be processed in the United States by the providers named above. When that is an international transfer we rely on the contractual safeguards they publish: the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum, as each provider offers them. We checked each provider’s position on 4 September 2026: OpenAI, Anthropic, Supabase and Vercel each publish a data processing addendum that applies to us through their terms of service, and those addenda carry the transfer safeguards above. Whop publishes no standalone data processing addendum; its written processing terms, including Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers, sit in its privacy policy, a signed agreement is by request to its privacy team, and it acts as the merchant of record for payments under its own terms. This page does not claim a certification status we have not verified.

What you choose to publish

Nothing you record is public until you publish it. When you do, the episode, its cover, its title and its transcript go on your public archive page, may be listed in the directory, and, if you turn the podcast on, are distributed by RSS to any podcast app that subscribes. If you post an episode to your own YouTube channel it is governed by YouTube’s terms from then on. Taking an episode down removes it from your page, the directory and the feed; copies that other services or people have already made are outside our control.

Under Company Record, the company you belong to owns what you record there, as the note you read before your first episode says. The company’s owner and admins see who is a member and how many episodes each person has made, and nothing else: not your private memory, not unpublished takes, not your streak. If you leave, your series stays yours to keep or delete; the company’s bible keeps what you had already chosen to share with it.

How long we keep it

• Recordings on your device stay until you delete the session, clear the browser, or delete the app.
• Synced recordings stay until you delete the session or the account, or turn sync off and delete what it holds.
• Account details stay while the account exists.
• Connection tokens stay until you disconnect.
• Transcription and interview requests are processed for that job. We do not keep a separate copy beyond the transcript in your session.
• Server logs are kept briefly.
• Billing records stay as long as the account exists and for as long as tax or accounting rules require.

Cookies

In the UK, the EU, the EEA and Switzerland the public site sets analytics and advertising cookies only if you press Allow in the bar at the foot of the page, and none without your yes. Elsewhere they load with the page, and No thanks in the same bar stops them. Google Analytics, the ChatGPT Ads pixel, the Meta pixel, and, when an X ads campaign is running, the X pixel. Signed-in use needs a session cookie, and connecting an account sets a short-lived cookie to finish the sign-in safely. The current list is on cookies.

Deleting things

Deleting a session removes it and everything derived from it, the takes, the transcripts and every render. Deleting your account removes your account record and anything synced with it. Because recordings live on your device, clearing your browser data or deleting the app removes them too. Email the address above if you want us to delete the account record we hold.

Your raw footage is downloadable at any time, on every plan. It is your face and your voice; we are not going to hold it hostage.

Requests from the police, courts and regulators

We only disclose your data to a public authority under a valid legal process, we read every request against the law it cites, we disclose the least that satisfies it, we tell you unless we are legally forbidden to, and we keep a record of every request. The full policy, and the count of requests received, is on data requests.

Delete your data

You do not need to ask. Everything can be deleted from inside the app, at once or piece by piece:

• Delete an episode from its page in the vault. The footage, the transcript and every render made from it go with it, on the device and in sync.
• Disconnect a tool (Google Calendar, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, X, Kit, beehiiv) from the Connections tab of Account. The stored key is deleted at once, and we keep nothing that came through it beyond what is already in your episodes.
• Delete the account from the Account tab. Every session, render, setting and connection is removed, and synced footage is deleted from storage.

If you would rather we did it, email the address above from the address on the account and we will delete it within one month and confirm when it is done.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask us to:

• give you a copy of the personal data we hold (access)
• correct it if it is wrong (rectification)
• delete it (erasure)
• restrict how we use it for a time
• send you what we hold in a usable form (portability) — your footage is already downloadable in the app
• object to uses we make on legitimate interests
• withdraw consent, by disconnecting a tool or asking us to stop

Email the address above and we will respond within one month. We do not make solely automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. Personal Works Ltd is registered with the ICO as a fee payer, reference ZC208067.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects how your recordings are handled, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect, not quietly update this page.