Privacy

SyntaxCue records almost nothing. Your interview audio is transcribed locally on your machine and is never saved to disk or sent anywhere — the only thing that ever leaves your computer is the text of a transcribed question, sent directly to your own LLM provider with your own key. The desktop app has no analytics, no telemetry, and nothing from your interview ever passes through infrastructure we operate — the only exceptions are a minimal free-trial hint counter and an optional feedback form, both described below. This marketing website uses basic page-view analytics (GA4), but only after you accept the cookie banner. That’s the whole picture — the specifics are below.

At a glance

What	Recorded / stored?
Interview audio	No. Transcribed locally, held in memory, never written to disk, never transmitted.
Transcribed question text	Sent directly to your own LLM provider (OpenAI/Anthropic) only when you submit it. Not stored by us — we have no server.
Your API key	Stored in OS-native secure storage (macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager), never a plaintext file.
Hint history	Resets when you close the app. Not kept between sessions by default.
Settings & license state	Plain local JSON files on your own machine, in the OS per-app data directory.
Free-tier hint count	A hashed device identifier — never anything about your interview — while you’re on the free tier only. Stops entirely once you activate a license.
App telemetry / analytics	None. No product-usage tracking of any kind.
Website analytics	GA4 page views, only after you click “Accept” on the cookie banner. Decline = no analytics script loads.
Payment / card details	Handled by LemonSqueezy (Merchant of Record) and Stripe. We never see or store card numbers.

In the app: what’s handled, and where it lives

Audio. Captured and transcribed on your own device with a local model (whisper.cpp), kept in memory only. It is never written to disk and never transmitted — nothing audio-shaped ever crosses the network. The only thing that leaves your machine is the text of a transcribed question, plus an optional screenshot image if you choose to capture one, sent straight to your chosen LLM provider using your key.

Your API key. Stored in your operating system’s secure storage — macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager — not a plaintext file. When you clear the key field in the app, it actually deletes that Keychain/Credential Manager entry rather than just hiding it from view.

Hint history. The hints you see during a session are cleared when you close the app. They aren’t persisted between sessions by default.

Settings and license state. Your provider choice, interview context, hotkeys, and license state are stored as plain local JSON files in the OS’s standard per-app data directory. These are preferences, not secrets — which is exactly why they live in ordinary files while your API key lives in the Keychain.

Free-tier hint count. While you’re on the free tier, the app sends a hashed identifier for your device — never your name, email, or anything about your interview — to track how many of your 12 free hints you’ve used, so the count survives reinstalling the app. This stops entirely once you activate a license; a licensed copy never contacts this at all.

The app makes four network connections total — to your LLM provider, to LemonSqueezy for licensing, to GitHub to check for updates, and — only during the free trial — to our own free-tier hint counter described above. The full list, with exact endpoints and how to verify it yourself with a network monitor, is on the Security page.

On this website: analytics and cookies

This marketing site (syntaxcue.com) uses Google Analytics 4 for basic page-view analytics — which pages get visited and where visitors came from. This is scoped to the website only; it has nothing to do with the app, which remains zero-telemetry as described above. Almost every website does this.

It’s gated by consent: GA4 does not load until you click “Accept” on the cookie banner. If you decline, the analytics script never loads at all. This is a working mechanism, not a promise — decline and nothing is collected. It’s standard page-view analytics: no cross-device tracking, no ad personalization, and no sale of your data to third parties.

Payment and licensing data

SyntaxCue is sold through LemonSqueezy acting as Merchant of Record. Your payment details — card information and billing address — are collected and processed by LemonSqueezy and Stripe, not by SyntaxCue. We never see or store card numbers.

Your license activates against a license key and a device label (your machine’s hostname), capped at 1 device, with self-serve deactivation from your own LemonSqueezy portal. If you’re in the EU, you also have a statutory 14-day withdrawal right for digital goods — the mechanics of that are covered on the Refund Policy.

The optional screen-share setting

SyntaxCue has an optional setting that keeps the hint window out of your own screen-capture stream, so that if you share your screen, your private hint window isn’t part of what your machine broadcasts — the same way notifications stay off a shared screen. It’s off by default, and you can turn it on or off at any time. It’s a display preference about your own screen; it stores nothing extra and sends nothing anywhere. For the mechanical details, see Does SyntaxCue Show Up When I Share My Screen?

What this page does not cover

Being plain about the current limits, because that’s what makes the rest trustworthy:

• There is no product-usage telemetry, opt-in or otherwise. SyntaxCue does not track a funnel of what you do in the app (downloaded → launched → entered a key → got a hint). That feature simply doesn’t exist today — we’re not describing a hidden or optional one.
• The cookie banner is a simple accept/decline, not a granular per-category consent manager. There are no per-category toggles; you accept website analytics or you don’t.
• This page describes what’s collected and stored. For how to verify the app’s network behavior and download integrity (checksums, code signing), see the Security page. For questions about your data, contact us directly.