How Russell handles your data

What Russell stores

• Your account, school, courses, lecture transcripts, and study notes are stored in Russell's cloud database.
• Audio you record or upload is stored temporarily in private cloud file storage (Vercel Blob). It is never public, and it is deleted seven days after your transcript is ready. Your transcript and notes stay until you delete the lecture.
• In-app recordings also save audio chunks in this browser for recovery. Local backups are shown under Courses for your signed-in account and remain until you remove them. They are separate from cloud retention. Clearing website data can erase them; they are not a substitute for a downloaded copy or a native recorder backup.

Who processes it

• Deepgram transcribes your audio into text.
• OpenRouter routes your transcript text to GLM 5.3 Flash, with OpenAI's Luna model as a fallback, to create your outline, summary, flashcards, and suggested tasks. Provider data collection is turned off for these requests.
• Ordinary chat with Russell uses the same text-model path.
• Brief weather comes from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0); Russell sends it your school’s campus location, never yours.

Recording responsibly

Only record a class when you have permission to record it. Russell asks you to confirm this before your first recording and stores the time you confirmed.

Your controls

• You can delete any lecture now; that removes its audio, transcript, notes, and unaccepted suggested tasks. Tasks you accepted remain yours. Remove any device-local recording backup separately under Courses.
• You can change your school and remove a saved LMS address at any time in Settings.
• You can delete your account in Settings or in the app under Account. Deleting signs you out everywhere at once, and within a few hours removes your recordings, audio, photos, transcripts, notes, chats, tasks, courses, connections and settings. Russell keeps a log of what happened and when, plus usage and cost numbers, with no name, email or content. Data already sent to Russell's transcription and AI providers follows their retention. Database backups that still contain your data age out within 7 days.

What Russell does not do

• Saving a Canvas or other LMS address does not connect Russell to that system. Russell only stores the address.
• Russell does not sell your data or use it to train models.

Text messages

If you give Russell your mobile number and confirm it with a 6-digit code, Russell can send your brief and your own deadline reminders by text. How Russell's texts work sets out what it sends, how often, and how to stop.

Who runs Russell

Russell is built and operated by Kieran Kilgo, Burlingame, California, as an individual (Russell is the product name). Questions about your data, or a request to export it, go to politicalpenguin27@gmail.com.