Who we are
Takhrij Hadith Lab operates Shamela Agent and this site. Contact: [email protected].
What stays on your computer
Your chats, projects, Space pages and files, memory, settings, logs and cached images are kept on your computer, in ~/Library/Application Support/Shamela-AI (Mac) or %APPDATA%\Shamela-AI (Windows). We can’t see them.
Shamela Agent talks to your account through Claude’s and ChatGPT’s own command-line tools, which may also keep a history of each chat in their own folders (such as ~/.claude and ~/.codex). Deleting a chat in Shamela Agent doesn’t remove those copies.
What goes to your AI provider
When you ask a question, your question, any text you quote, files you attach, and passages Shamela Agent reads from your books are sent to Anthropic (Claude) or OpenAI (ChatGPT) through their official tools, under your own account. Their privacy policies apply to that data. We don’t receive it.
If you use your own API key, it is stored in your computer’s keychain (Windows: encrypted for your Windows account) and is sent only to Anthropic or OpenAI.
Other connections the app makes
- Updates: about every 6 hours, the app asks our site whether a new version exists. The request carries your IP address and app version.
- Licence check: when the app opens and every 12 hours, it asks our site to check your licence (or whether the free preview is on). The request carries your licence key, the activation ID and a one-way code made from your computer’s hardware ID, so a licence works only on the computers it was activated on; your computer’s name is sent once, when you activate. Our site checks paid licences with Lemon Squeezy, and invited or sponsored licences in our own records. We keep a daily count of computers that check in, with their plan and the date first seen, under a further one-way code made from that code, never with your licence key, computer name or IP address; a computer’s record is deleted after 60 days without a check.
- Downloads: we count how many times each installer is downloaded per day, without your IP address.
- Book pages and PDFs: page scans, covers and book PDFs are fetched from Shamela’s servers when you open them.
- Pictures: fetched from Wikipedia and Wikimedia when an answer includes an illustration.
- Web grounding: off by default. When you turn on Web in the composer, the agent’s web searches go through your AI provider’s search service, and pages you open in the Side agent load directly from those sites. See Web grounding.
- Built-in browser: pages load directly from their sites, searches typed in its address bar go to Google, and site icons are fetched from those sites.
- Reference lookups in Space: a DOI, ISBN or web address you look up is sent to Crossref, OpenAlex, Open Library or Google Books, or to that page. An image you drag in from a web page is downloaded from that site.
- Feedback: only when you send a report or idea from Settings › Report a problem. It carries what you write and the email you give, and reaches us by email through Cloudflare. If you leave Include technical details on, it also carries your app and Shamela versions, your system and the recent app log, which records technical events, not your questions or answers.
Like any web request, these reveal your IP address to the server you contact. To limit abuse, our site keeps your IP address for about an hour when you check a licence, share, send feedback, join the waitlist or publish a form.
Shared links
Only when you press Share, the answer’s title, question and answer are stored on our site and become public to anyone with the link. We also keep a hashed key that lets your app stop sharing. Stopping sharing deletes the stored answer, and a shared answer is deleted on its own after one year.
Shared Space pages and forms
When you share a Space page, its content, comments, attachments and who’s viewing it are encrypted on your computer before they reach our site, so we can’t read them. To run the page, our site does see some details: the sizes and times of changes, how many edits there are, the link’s expiry settings, attempts with a wrong access code, and your IP address, as with any web request. A shared page is deleted when its link expires, when it goes unused for the period you chose (180 days at most), or when you stop sharing it, after which we keep a small marker for 30 days. The app’s requests for shared pages and forms carry a signed proof of your licence with its one-way computer code, which we use to limit how many pages one computer can create in a day.
When you publish a form, its questions and settings are stored on our site for up to about 16 months after you last change or close it. Each answer is encrypted in the respondent’s browser and deleted once your app collects it, or 120 days after it was sent if it isn’t collected, so collect answers regularly. Respondents’ IP addresses aren’t stored; a one-way code made from them is kept for an hour to limit spam.
This website
No cookies or ads. We count page visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and doesn’t identify you. Fonts load from Google Fonts. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which may keep standard logs (such as IP address and browser) for security. Your light or dark choice is stored in your browser.
Waitlist
If you join the waitlist, we keep your email and the answers you choose to give (your name, role, the computer you use and the feature that matters most to you), with your language, the computer type your browser reports, whether you confirmed, and the date. We use it only to invite you when your spot opens, and, if you later buy, to see that you came from the waitlist. We send one email to confirm you joined, then nothing until your spot opens. We don’t share it or use it for anything else. Leave anytime with the link in that email, or email us.
Scholars and ambassadors
If you apply to or accept a place in our scholar or ambassador programme, we keep what you send (your name, email, country and answers such as your role, institution, profile link or social accounts), the links to posts you add as an ambassador, and a count of visits through your personal link (without visitors’ IP addresses). We use it only to review your application, manage your access and check the programme’s terms. If you sponsor scholars, we keep your name, email, payment record and preferences to place your gift and tell you where it went; we show your name (or the name you choose, such as your company) to a scholar, and list it with any logo you send on our supporters page, only if you allow it, and we never share the scholar’s name or email with you, only their role, field and country. If you nominate a scholar, we keep the details you give and email them once to ask whether they want to be considered. We don’t share any of it otherwise. Ask us anytime to delete it.
Purchases
Payments, including sponsorships, are processed by Lemon Squeezy, our merchant of record; we never see your card details. We receive your name, email and order details to issue and support your licence, and keep them as accounting rules require.
Your choices
Delete chats and Space pages in the app (a deleted chat goes to Trash first), stop sharing any answer or page, or remove Shamela Agent. To ask about records we hold, such as your waitlist entry, programme details or purchases, email us.
Children
Shamela Agent isn’t directed at children under 13.
Changes
We’ll post changes here with a new date.