Privacy

Effective 30 August 2026

Orthodox Forge is a reading and listening site. There are no accounts, no logins, and no advertising or analytics trackers. Two things you do here send data anywhere: joining the email list, and asking a question.

What we collect

Your email address, and only if you type it into the signup form. We store the address itself, the fact that it came from this site, and the date. Nothing else — no name, no location, no profile.

The question you ask. Text typed into Ask the Forge is sent to our own retrieval system to be answered. Do not type anything private or identifying into it. It is a question box about the Church Fathers, not a confessional and not a support channel.

Ordinary request information. Our host records standard web server logs, including IP addresses. We also derive a short-lived identifier from your IP to enforce the daily question limit and to keep bots off the signup form. We do not use either to build a profile of you.

Who receives it

These are every third party this site actually sends data to. If that list changes, this page changes with it.

• Supabase — stores the email list.
• Vercel — hosts the site and keeps standard request logs.
• Cloudflare — runs the bot check on the signup form.
• Upstash — holds the counters that enforce rate limits.
• Alexandria — our own corpus and retrieval system, which receives the text of questions asked here.
• Anthropic — the model provider Alexandria uses to draft an answer, so question text reaches them too.
• Substack — sends the newsletter to the addresses collected here.

We do not sell your information, share it for advertising, or hand it to data brokers. There is no advertising on this site and no pixel tracking you across the web.

Google, and what it is not used for

Orthodox Forge is published with an internal tool that uses two Google services on a single account belonging to Andrew Assad. It is named here because that tool’s Google authorisation screen points at this page, and it should say plainly what it does.

The tool writes drafts into that account’s own Google Drive as Docs, reads back the edited text once a draft is approved, and sends a review notice by email to that same account. It holds only the narrowest permissions for this: it can see and change only the files it created itself, not anything else in that Drive, and it can send mail but cannot read any.

No visitor to this site ever connects a Google account, and nothing you do here reaches Google. Your email address is not sent there; your questions are not sent there. The Google account involved is a working account for producing the writing you read, not a place your information goes.

How long we keep it

Email addresses stay until you ask us to remove them or unsubscribe. Rate-limit counters expire on their own within a day. Server logs follow our host’s retention, which we do not extend.

Removing your data

Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link, which stops the sending. To have your address deleted outright, or to ask what we hold, email theorthodoxforge@gmail.com. A person reads it, and we will delete the address rather than merely suppress it.

Children

This site is written for adults and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us an address, write to the address above and we will remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the effective date at the top changes with it. We do not backdate.

Questions about any of this go to theorthodoxforge@gmail.com.