Privacy
Last changed 27 September 2026
Walden is an idea book: you write ideas down and work them out, alone or with a team. This page says what Walden keeps about you, why, who else handles it, how long it stays, and how to have it removed. Walden is made by Virtu Studios, which is responsible for your data. Write to privacy@walden.so about anything here.
What Walden keeps
- Your account. Your name, email address and profile picture, from signing in. Your workspaces, and the role you have in each.
- What you write. Ideas, pages, canvases, sketches, files you upload, chats with the AI, and questions left in the margin or on a canvas. A note on a canvas carries the name of whoever put it there, for the people who can open that canvas. This is the point of Walden and stays until you delete it.
- Billing. Your plan, credits, and what each AI request cost. Card details go to Stripe; Walden never sees the number.
- Use. Which days you opened the app, and the AI requests you made, to count active people and to charge credits.
- Visits to the site. Counted as described next.
How visits are counted
Walden counts visits to learn how people find it and whether they come back. It sets no cookie for this and stores no IP address. When a page loads, the server takes your IP address and your browser’s description of itself, mixes them with a secret key and the current month, and keeps only the result: a code that lets the same browser be recognised until the month ends, and then never again. With it Walden keeps the page, the site that linked you, if any, and your country and region as guessed from the IP address.
That code is not your name, but it can single you out, so it is treated as personal data. If you sign up, the code from that visit is kept beside your new account, to know which link brought you. Visit records are deleted after 180 days, and at once if you delete your account.
If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, your visits are not counted at all. You can also object by writing to privacy@walden.so.
AI
When you ask the AI for something, and when Walden reads a saved page to suggest what to ask next, the text needed (and, when a UI sketch is checked before you see it, a picture of that sketch, taken on Walden’s own servers) goes through Vercel’s AI Gateway to the model that answers: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or TypeSafe AI, depending on the job and on your choice. Walden asks the gateway to send it only to providers that have agreed not to train on it, and all four have. Walden does not use what you write to train models either. If you add your own model key, requests go under your account and your terms with that provider. Walden checks the key with that provider when you add it, keeps it encrypted, and deletes it when you remove it or the paid plan ends.
Cookies
Walden sets only the cookies it needs to work, so it doesn’t ask first:
walden-sessionkeeps you signed in, for up to 30 days.walden-signincarries a sign-in to its end, for up to 10 minutes.color-schemeremembers light or dark, for a year.sidebar_stateremembers whether the sidebar is open, for a week.
No advertising cookies, and no analytics or tracking scripts from anyone else.
Who else handles it
These services process data for Walden, only to run it:
- Vercel hosts the site and routes AI requests (the AI Gateway).
- Convex stores everything Walden keeps.
- WorkOS handles sign-in, teams and single sign-on.
- Stripe takes payments.
- LaunchDarkly decides who is let in while Walden opens, by account and email address.
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and TypeSafe AI run the AI models.
- Resend sends the operator’s own emails about the service.
- GitHub, only if you connect a repository.
Walden does not sell your data or share it for advertising.
Where it is kept
Mostly in the United States. Data sent from the UK or the European Economic Area is protected there by the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, as each provider offers.
Why Walden may use it
- To provide the service you signed up for: your account, what you write, billing, and the AI you ask for.
- Walden’s legitimate interest in knowing how people find it and keeping it secure: counting visits and active days, stopping abuse. You can object, as above.
- Legal obligations: payment records, which Stripe keeps for as long as tax law requires.
How long it stays
Your account and what you write stay until you delete them. A deleted idea can be brought back for a day, then it is removed. Visit records go after 180 days. You can delete your account yourself, in Settings under Account. That cancels your plan, removes your name, email and picture, deletes your personal idea book with its files, and deletes the visit and activity records tied to you, all at once. Work you did in a team’s workspace stays with that team, shown as a deleted account. Stripe keeps payment records for as long as tax law requires.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask to see the data Walden holds about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to have a copy you can take elsewhere, and to object to or limit how it is used. Under the GDPR and UK GDPR these are your legal rights, and you can complain to your data protection authority. Californians have the same rights under the CCPA, and Walden will not treat you differently for using them. Write to privacy@walden.so; you will have an answer within 30 days. Any idea can also be exported from Walden at any time.
Children
Walden is not for anyone under 16, and does not knowingly keep data about them. If you believe a child has an account, write to privacy@walden.so and it will be deleted.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that matters, the date above changes, and people with an account are told before it takes effect.