The short version
- Your notes belong to your team. Only members of a project can see its notes and pictures.
- We send a note to Claude, made by Anthropic, only when someone on your team asks Claude to read, summarize or fix it.
- We don’t sell your information, we don’t run ads, and we don’t use tracking or analytics tools.
- You can ask us to delete your account and data at any time.
What we collect
Account details
Your email address and a password (stored only in scrambled, hashed form by our sign-in provider), or your Google account email if you sign in with Google. You also choose a display name that teammates see.
Your legal name
When you first join, we ask for your legal first and last name. Only the owners of projects you ask to join can see it, so they know who they’re letting in.
What you put in projects
Project names and descriptions, sections, notes, pictures you paste into notes, Claude’s summaries and fix requests, review decisions, and comments. We also record who created or last edited each note and when.
Join requests and membership
Which projects you belong to or have asked to join, and whether the owner approved you.
Claude Code connections
If a project is linked to Claude Code, we store a private access key (only a scrambled version of it), the name of the linked code folder, and when it last checked in. Claude Code reports back what it changed in your project, which is saved on the note.
Who’s online
While you have a project open, teammates can see that you’re there and the title of the note you have open. This is shared live and isn’t stored once you leave.
How we use it
- To run CommonNote: sign you in, show your team’s notes, keep everyone in sync and send the emails you ask for, like sign-in links and password resets.
- To produce Claude’s summaries, answers and fix requests when your team asks for them.
- To keep the service safe, fix problems and stop misuse.
We don’t sell or rent your information, and we don’t use it for advertising.
Claude and AI processing
When someone presses Save & send, Read this note or Ask, we send that note, its pictures and some project context (the project and section description and the titles and opening lines of related notes) to Anthropic’s API so Claude can write a response. Anthropic processes this to produce the response under its commercial terms. You can read how Anthropic handles API data in Anthropic’s privacy policy.
If your project is linked to Claude Code, the Claude Code session your team connects can read the project’s fix requests and notes so it can make the changes. That session runs on your own computer, under your own Claude account.
Who can see your notes
Projects are invite-only. A project’s notes, pictures and summaries are visible to its approved members and to no one else on CommonNote. Pictures are kept in private storage and shown only through short-lived links. Projects can have up to 4 people on the free plan.
The owner of a project can see the legal names of people asking to join, approve or remove members, and review notes sent for the team’s review.
Services we rely on
We use a small number of providers to run CommonNote. They handle data only to provide their service to us:
- Supabase: our database, sign-in, file storage and the live updates you see between teammates.
- Vercel: hosts the website.
- Anthropic: Claude, which reads notes when your team asks it to.
- Google: only if you choose to sign in with Google.
Our providers may store and process data in the United States.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and your team’s notes for as long as your account and projects exist. When a note, picture or project is deleted, it’s removed from our database. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete your account details and remove you from your projects. Notes you wrote inside a team’s project stay with that project unless the project owner deletes them or you ask us to.
Your choices and rights
- You can change your display name and password in Your account.
- Project owners can remove members, and anyone on a project can delete its notes. To leave a project or have a whole project deleted, email us and we’ll do it for you.
- You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account by emailing philipw455@icloud.com. We’ll reply within 30 days.
Depending on where you live, you may have extra rights under laws like the GDPR or California’s CCPA. We’ll honor those requests the same way.
Security
Everything travels over an encrypted connection. Database rules make sure people can only read projects they belong to, and Claude Code access keys are stored only in scrambled form. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong password and don’t paste passwords or secrets into notes.
Children
CommonNote isn’t meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email us and we’ll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top of the page. For bigger changes, we’ll let you know inside the app before they take effect.
Contact
Questions about privacy or your data? Email philipw455@icloud.com.