Privacy Policy

Last updated: 22 October 2026

      ByteDev is a personal project built and run by one developer in the UK. Your account data, chats
      and saved projects live on privately owned hardware here in the UK — not in anyone's cloud. Nothing
      is sold, used for advertising, or used to train AI models. A small number of services are involved
      in running the site, and section 6 names every one of them.
    

1. Who Is Responsible For Your Data

The data controller for ByteDev, ByteChat, ByteCode and the Byte Discord bot is ByteDev, a sole trader operation based in the United Kingdom.

You can contact us about anything in this policy — including any request about your data — at [email protected]. Emails are read and answered by the person who runs ByteDev.

ByteDev is run by one person rather than a company, and their legal name is not published here for personal safety reasons. If you need it — for example to make a formal complaint, exercise a legal right, or take up a matter with the Information Commissioner's Office — email the address above and it will be provided to you. You can also complain to the ICO directly at ico.org.uk, who hold our registration details.

2. What Byte Is

Byte is an AI assistant available as a Discord bot, a web chat interface (ByteChat), and a web coding assistant (ByteCode). The AI itself runs on privately owned hardware using locally hosted models — your conversations are not sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any other AI provider.

ByteDev also offers the Byte API — paid, prepaid access to the same locally hosted model for developers to use in their own apps and Discord bots. How that data is handled is set out in section 12.

3. What Data Is Stored

Account data (if you create an account):

Username you choose
Password hash — your actual password is never stored, only a one-way bcrypt hash
Account creation date, and your confirmation that you are 13 or older

Session and chat data:

ByteChat conversation history (your messages and Byte's responses)
ByteCode project sessions (code, filenames, chat history)
Discord conversation history and minigame progress (wordle, riddles, debates, races, predictions, and similar)

Memory data:

Byte may remember things you mention about yourself — for example, if you say "I like horror films", it may store that to give more relevant responses later. This is lightweight context, not a detailed profile. Notes about you are only used in your own conversations with Byte and are never shown to other users. On Discord, Byte can also keep short notes about a server itself (such as its rules or regular events), which can come up in Byte's replies to anyone in that server. All of it can be deleted at any time (section 4).

File uploads (ByteCode):

Files you upload to the editor are processed in-session
File contents may be included in your session history if saved

Technical data (web services only — the Discord bot has no access to IP addresses):

IP addresses, used in memory to rate-limit login attempts and written to short-lived server logs. They are never stored in the database or linked to your account.
Basic error and request logs, used for debugging, not profiling

4. How Memory Works

Byte's memory stores short notes from your conversations — things like preferences, interests, or context you've shared ("I'm studying game design", "I prefer Python"). Byte only brings a note up when it is relevant to what you are talking about.

On Discord there are two kinds of note:

Notes about you. Byte takes these from messages you send to it (in DMs, or messages addressed to Byte in a server), or when you ask it to remember something. Notes learned in DMs are only ever used in DMs.
Notes about a server and its community, such as its rules, regular events or shared projects. These are only used in that server, and can come up in Byte's replies to anyone there.

Byte does not read general server chat into memory, only messages sent to it. When it picks up notes on its own, it skips health, sexuality, religion, political views, contact details, and anything about a person's age or school.

To manage Discord memory, say byte memories (in a DM for notes about you, or in a server for that server's notes), byte forget #number to remove one note, or byte forget me to delete everything Byte holds about you, including notes taken from your messages. A server note can be removed by whoever added it or by a server admin. In ByteChat you can view and delete individual memories from the memory panel, and deleting your account removes them all.

5. How Data Is Used, And Our Lawful Basis

To provide the service — your chat history lets Byte maintain conversation context
To save your progress in minigames and projects
To personalise responses where you've shared preferences
No data is used for advertising, profiling, or training AI models

Lawful basis for processing (UK GDPR Article 6):

Account data, chat history, and session saves — contract (Article 6(1)(b)): processing is necessary to provide the service you signed up for
Memory notes — legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): to make responses more relevant to you. You can object at any time by deleting them or asking Byte to forget.
Server logs, rate limiting and error data — legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): to keep the service secure and working

Providing your data is necessary to use the relevant features. You can choose not to provide it, but those features won't function without it.

6. Who Else Is Involved

ByteDev is self-hosted, but a few external services are unavoidably part of running it. This is the complete list. None of them are given your data to use for their own marketing, and none of them receive your account credentials.

Cloudflare — all traffic to bytedev.co.uk, ByteChat and ByteCode passes through Cloudflare's network, which provides the encrypted connection and protects the server from attacks. Cloudflare therefore processes your IP address and the requests you make. It does not store your chats.
Tavily — when you ask ByteCode something that needs current information from the web, it performs a web search. The search query — generated from your request, and which may therefore contain text you wrote — is sent to Tavily, a search API provider. Your identity, username and IP address are not sent. If Tavily is unavailable, DuckDuckGo is used as a fallback in the same way.
Discord — if you use the Byte Discord bot, your use of Discord is governed by Discord's own privacy policy. We receive your Discord user ID and the messages you send to the bot.
Ko-fi — if you choose to make a donation, that is handled entirely by Ko-fi as a separate data controller under their own privacy policy. We never see your payment details, and donation data is not stored on our systems or linked to your ByteDev account.
jsDelivr — ByteCode's code editor and its in-browser Python runtime are large open-source components loaded from the jsDelivr network when you open ByteCode. Your browser therefore contacts jsDelivr and it can see your IP address. Nothing about you or your code is sent — it only serves the software the editor is built from.

This site uses no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts of any kind. On bytedev.co.uk and ByteChat, every file a page needs is served from our own server, so visiting them discloses your IP address to nobody except Cloudflare. ByteCode is the one exception, for the reason given above.

7. Where Data Is Stored, And International Transfers

Your account, chats, memories and saved projects are stored in an SQLite database on privately owned hardware located in the United Kingdom. AI processing happens on privately owned hardware on the same local network. This data is not stored in any cloud service.

Two of the services in section 6 — Cloudflare and Tavily — are based in the United States, so a limited amount of data (your IP address and requests in Cloudflare's case; search queries in Tavily's) is transferred outside the UK. These transfers are covered by the international data transfer terms in those providers' standard data protection agreements, which is the safeguard UK GDPR requires under Article 46.

8. How Long Data Is Kept

Accounts and their data — kept while your account is in use, and automatically erased after 24 months of inactivity. You can delete your account sooner at any time (section 10).
Discord memories and minigame progress — kept until you ask for them to be deleted.
Raw Discord conversation logs — automatically deleted after 12 months.
Server and error logs — automatically deleted after 30 days.

These periods are enforced automatically by a scheduled job, not manually.

9. Age Requirement

ByteDev is not intended for children under 13, and you must confirm you are 13 or older to create an account. This matches Discord's own minimum age. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account or used the Discord bot, contact us and we will delete the account and all associated data.

10. Your Rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

Access — request a copy of data held about you
Erasure — request full deletion of your account and all associated data
Correction — request correction of inaccurate data
Restriction — request we stop processing your data
Portability — request your data in a portable, machine-readable format
Object — object to processing based on legitimate interests (e.g. memory notes, server logs)
Complain — lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk if you believe your data has been handled unlawfully

Deleting your account: you can erase your account yourself at any time at chat.bytedev.co.uk/account — enter your username and password and confirm. This immediately and permanently deletes your account, your saved ByteChat conversations, your saved ByteCode projects and sessions, and any memories stored about you on the web apps. It cannot be undone.

Discord data is stored separately and is not covered by that page. To have Discord data erased, or to make any other request, contact us below. We will respond within one month, as UK GDPR requires.

11. Cookies, Browser Storage and Analytics

ByteDev uses no advertising or tracking cookies, and nothing is set just for visiting. What can be stored in your browser, and why:

Theme choice. If you press the light/dark toggle, a cookie called byte_theme remembers your choice for a year across bytedev.co.uk and its subdomains. It holds only the word "light" or "dark", and it is only set when you press the toggle.
Signing in. If you create an account, a sign-in token is stored in your browser's localStorage so you stay signed in. It is used only for that, and is removed when you sign out.
Your chats and projects. ByteChat and ByteCode save your conversations, files and settings in your browser's localStorage so they are still there when you come back. If you are signed in, they are also synced to your account.
Byte's Historia. Signing in, or playing as a guest, sets a cookie that keeps you signed in or holds your guest game. The guest cookie ends when you close your browser.
Security. Cloudflare, which protects these sites, may set a short-lived cookie to tell people apart from automated bots.

To count page views, ByteDev uses Cloudflare Web Analytics. It does not use cookies or browser storage, does not build a profile of you, and does not follow you to other websites.

None of these are needed for anything except making the sites work the way you chose, so there is no cookie banner. You can clear them at any time in your browser's settings.

12. The Byte API

ByteDev offers a paid API that lets developers send requests to the locally hosted model from their own applications (for example, a Discord bot or a chat app), paying only for what they use from a prepaid balance. This section covers that service specifically.

Two different roles. For your own account with us — your email address and your usage and billing records — ByteDev is the data controller. For the content your application sends through the API (the prompts and messages, which may contain data about your own end users), ByteDev acts only as a data processor on your behalf: you are the controller for that content, you are responsible for having a lawful basis to send it and for telling your own users about it, and we process it solely to generate the response you asked for.

What we collect for the API:

The email address and short description you give when requesting a key, so we can set you up and contact you
The content of your API requests — used only to generate the reply, then not retained beyond the short-lived operational logs described below
Usage and billing records — token counts and your remaining prepaid balance, so the service can be metered
Technical data — your IP address and basic request logs, used to run the service and prevent abuse (the key-request form is rate-limited by IP)

How it is used, and lawful basis (UK GDPR Article 6): account, usage and billing data are processed to provide and meter the service you signed up for — contract (Article 6(1)(b)); IP addresses and security logs are processed to keep the service safe from abuse — legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)). Nothing sent through the API is used to train AI models, for advertising, or for profiling, and it is never sold or shared. As with the rest of Byte, requests are processed on privately owned hardware and are not sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any other AI provider.

Payment. Credit is prepaid and arranged with us directly. ByteDev does not collect or store your card or bank details. If a third-party payment provider is used in future, it will be named in section 6 and will handle your payment details as a separate controller under its own policy.

Retention and your rights. The content of API requests is not stored beyond the brief operational logs needed to run and secure the service, which are rotated and not kept long term. Your account, usage and billing records are kept while your key is active and for as long as needed for ordinary financial record-keeping, then deleted. You have all the rights listed in section 10 — email the address in section 13 to exercise them or to close your account.

13. Contact

For any privacy request, data deletion, or question, contact: [email protected]

You can also delete data yourself: chat.bytedev.co.uk/account for your web account, or byte forget me on Discord to clear Discord memories.