Privacy & Data Retention
Generated from the firm's machine-readable retention policy. Behavior in code is bound to the prose below.
What we keep, and for how long
The firm holds the following classes of data. Each row below shows the retention period, what happens at the end of that period, and the founder's authority to override it.
| Class | Retention | At end of life | Override |
|---|---|---|---|
| Observability spans | 30 days | aggregation, then deletion of raw rows | the founder can adjust this lifecycle freely |
| Public contact-form submissions | 180 days | deletion | the founder can adjust this lifecycle freely |
| Public responses to published conclusions | 7 years | deletion with founder confirmation | the founder must confirm each deletion individually |
| Vector embeddings | indefinite | retention while the source document exists | the founder can adjust this lifecycle freely |
| Interview transcripts | indefinite | deletion with founder confirmation | the founder must confirm each deletion individually |
| Draft (unpublished) conclusions | 90 days | deletion | the founder can adjust this lifecycle freely |
| Retired claims and conclusions | 1 year | archival with a tombstone marker | this lifecycle is locked: it cannot be auto-executed or shortened |
How each class is handled
Observability spans
Internal trace/span records — used to debug pipelines and track latency — are kept for 30 days. After 30 days the raw rows are deleted; only aggregate per-method timing rollups survive.
Basis: firm policy: bounded observability cost.
Public contact-form submissions
Messages sent through the public contact form are kept for 180 days so the firm can follow up on a thread, then deleted. You can request earlier deletion; see the data subject request section below.
Basis: firm policy: bounded inbox surface.
Public responses to published conclusions
When you submit a response to a published conclusion, the firm retains your submission for 7 years so the public record of dialogue around that conclusion stays intact. After 7 years, the firm reviews and deletes the raw row with founder confirmation; aggregate counts may persist.
Basis: legal: reasonable record of public dialogue.
Vector embeddings
Vector embeddings exist for as long as the underlying source document exists. When a source is deleted, its embeddings are deleted within 30 days.
Basis: firm policy: derivative of source.
Interview transcripts
Interview transcripts (uploads) are retained indefinitely as part of the firm's working corpus. Deletion requires founder confirmation per record; you can also request deletion via the data subject request channel.
Basis: firm policy: research corpus.
Draft (unpublished) conclusions
Internal draft conclusions that are never published are deleted 90 days after they go stale. Published conclusions are retained as part of the public record.
Basis: firm policy: bounded draft surface.
Retired claims and conclusions
When a claim or conclusion is retired (refuted or withdrawn), the firm archives it for 1 year with a tombstone marker so the audit trail of what was retracted and why remains visible. After 1 year the archive may be compressed but the tombstone remains permanently.
Basis: firm policy: retraction transparency.
Data subject requests
You can ask for a complete report of what the firm holds about you, or request deletion. The firm provides a JSON "everything we have" report and, on confirmation, a deletion plan that walks every class above.
Send the request to privacy@theseus.example. Identify yourself by email or ORCID. The request runs against the same retention table shown above; nothing is held back.
This page is generated from noosphere/decay/retention_policies.py. If the machine-readable policy and this page disagree, the deploy build fails.