Privacy and retention

When you create art, the protected service holds an anonymous active session containing the current population, a short generation history, your rankings and control choices, and the private mathematical data needed to render and evolve the work. Mathematical genomes and seeds stay on the protected server; the browser receives rendered images, friendly names and opaque identifiers only.

The current beta normally expires an active session after roughly six hours without activity. That window is an operational setting, not a promise: capacity limits, maintenance, restarts or later configuration changes can end a session sooner. Starting a new population does not guarantee immediate deletion of the abandoned server session; it becomes unreachable from the app and expires through the normal process.

Add to My Collection is a private retention action, not publication. The protected service stores a reference to the exact source generation under a one-way hash of an opaque Collection token. A Collection is limited to 64 artworks. When it is full, the app asks you to remove an item; it never silently removes the oldest artwork.

The current anonymous Collection remains available for up to 180 days after its latest valid Collection use. After that inactivity period, collected-only entries become eligible for deletion under the service's backup and removal process. An artwork with a separate unlisted or published page follows that page's retention rules instead.

The Collection token is held only by this browser. Clearing site data, losing the token or changing device can make the Collection unrecoverable, even before the inactivity period ends. This beta has no account, recovery code or cross-device restoration. Keep named PNG copies of anything important.

Learn from my rankings is optional and starts off. When enabled, ranked favourites and deliberate replacements update a compact preference model used to shortlist later candidates. Your own ranking remains in control. The durable profile is stored under a one-way hash of an opaque preference token and does not contain an account identity, raw artwork, raw ranking history or an IP address.

Preference profiles are currently accepted for reuse for up to 180 days after their last update. Reset learned preferencesreplaces the current model with an empty one and turns learning off for the current population. The beta does not yet provide an account-level data dashboard or a separate immediate-delete endpoint.

Creating a population share or publishing an artwork is a deliberate action. It stores an immutable snapshot of the exact source generation, including private server-side mathematical data, so recipients can view it and create an independent branch. Production shares and publications are designed to survive ordinary restarts. Local development links may instead be temporary.

These links are unlisted, not secret: anyone who obtains one may open or forward it, but it is not eligible for Discover. Publishing to the public Discover catalogue is a separate, explicit confirmation which explains that the image and exact source generation become publicly accessible and listed. Collecting, saving, evolving and downloading never publish an artwork as a side effect. There is no self-service expiry or deletion action for a population share yet.

An artwork publisher receives a private management token on that device. It can be used to Unpublish the artwork page. Unpublishing prevents public access but retains the protected source and audit record. Visitors can use Report on an available publication; a bounded reason and the opaque publication ID are recorded for review.

Instagram and other campaign links may carry a short campaign label. The beta records limited aggregate funnel events such as opening an artwork, starting or completing a generation, saving or sharing, and choosing an intended use after collecting or saving. Engagement-event payloads use a versioned event name, signal class and bounded public campaign, publication or generation context. Reports and creator unpublishing are moderation events, not positive engagement. Event payloads exclude genomes, rendered pixels, rankings, free-text, opaque session, preference and Collection tokens, IP addresses, referrers and browser user-agent strings.

Discover uses the named engagement-v1 policy to order deliberately published work. Positive engagement families, confidence, recency, diversity, exposure fairness and editorial Featured placement remain separate. Exact internal scores and moderation records are visible only in the authenticated operator dashboard. Engagement affects Discover presentation and never changes rendering or genetic evolution.

An intended-use or print-ready-interest answer is research only. It is not an order, reservation or payment, and this version collects no card details or email address. Commercial intent is kept separate from artwork popularity and never changes the protected genetic engine.

The app uses essential browser local storage for opaque session, preference and Collection tokens, interface settings, current rankings, the one-time intended-use-question state and any publication-management token issued to that browser. These values help resume the experience but do not contain the mathematical genome.

Formlings does not intentionally set advertising or marketing cookies in this beta. You can remove the device copy through your browser's site-data controls, but doing so may make a session, preferences or an unpublish key or Collection unrecoverable. Removing local storage does not itself erase a durable share, publication or server-side Collection record from the protected service; a Collection instead becomes eligible for expiry under its inactivity rule.

Railway and related hosting infrastructure deliver the site, protected API and private object storage. Like most web infrastructure, they may process routine request information such as IP address, user agent and request timing for delivery, security and operational logs. Formlings does not intentionally copy those fields into its demand-event records.

Beta records are used to provide and secure the service, understand aggregate demand and improve the experience. They are not sold and are not used to build advertising profiles. Opaque identifiers are bearer credentials: keep management tokens private and share population or artwork links only with people you are comfortable giving access to.

• Clear current selections without deleting the population.
• Reset learned preferences independently of the population.
• Remove individual artworks from My Collection.
• Start a fresh population and let the abandoned session expire.
• Remove locally stored tokens and settings using browser controls.
• Report an available artwork publication.
• Unpublish your artwork when this browser still holds its management token.

The beta does not yet offer accounts, a data export, a way to enumerate records belonging to a person, self-service deletion of population shares, or recovery after an anonymous token is lost. Those are known limitations, not promises of future availability. The public beta contact is the current Formlings beta account on Instagram. A legal operator identity and dedicated privacy and support channel must be published before a broader or commercial launch.