How your answers are handled

Who runs this

Year Well Built is run by Matt Rutherford, a career and leadership coach based in Ireland. For anything on this page, email matt@mattrutherfordcoaching.com.

While you answer

Your answers are saved in your own browser as you type, so you can stop and come back. They stay on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere until you choose to build your plan. "Start again" on the first page clears them.

If you dictate your answers

Dictation uses the speech recognition built into your browser. To turn your voice into text, your browser may send the audio to the company that makes it, such as Apple or Google. Year Well Built receives only the words, never the audio. If you would rather not, type your answers instead.

When you build your plan

Your six answers, your first name if you gave one, and the year you chose are sent securely to Year Well Built's server. From there, Year Well Built uses Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, to read them and draft your plan.

• Your answers are used for that one request and are not stored by Year Well Built. They are never written to a database or a log.
• Anthropic does not use them to train its models. Anthropic processes them under its commercial terms and deletes them after a limited period. You can read Anthropic's privacy policy.
• Nobody at Year Well Built reads your answers.

The draft comes back to your browser. You can change any of it before it becomes your plan.

If you ask for your plan by email

When you enter your email address and press "Send me the full plan", Year Well Built stores:

• your finished plan (the version you edited, not your answers)
• your email address and first name, if you gave one
• the dates for your day-ninety check-in and for deleting the plan

This is used to send you the plan as a PDF, to show it to you at its private link, and to send one check-in email about ninety days later. That is all it is used for.

Your plan is kept for thirteen months, so you can come back to it when you plan the following year. Then it is deleted automatically.

Emails are sent by Resend, from their servers in Ireland.

If you tick the newsletter box

You are sent one email asking you to confirm. When you confirm, your email address and first name are added to the Stuff that MattRs newsletter at mattrutherford.co.uk, which runs on Ghost. If you do not confirm, you are not added. None of this happens unless you tick the box. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link.

Your choices

• Stop the check-in: use the link in your plan email, or on your plan's page.
• Delete your plan: use the link in your plan email, or on your plan's page. It is removed straight away and cannot be brought back. The PDF you were sent stays yours.
• Anything else: to see, correct or delete what is held about you, email the address above. You can also complain to the Data Protection Commission in Ireland.

Everything else

• No cookies and no tracking. Visits, and how far through the questions people get, are counted with Umami, a privacy-friendly analytics tool running on Matt's own server. It sets no cookies and stores no personal data. It never sees your answers or your email address.
• Usage records keep the size and cost of each request to Claude, never its content.
• To prevent abuse, the number of requests from each internet address is counted for a short time in memory, then forgotten.
• Hosting is on a server in the European Union, run by Hetzner.
• Year Well Built is not therapy or medical advice. If you are struggling, please talk to someone you trust or a professional.