Privacy Policy
Last updated: April 2026
1. Introduction
Perish ("we," "our," or "us") is a daily writing game at perish.cc, operated by Bear Brown & Company. This policy describes what information we collect, how we use it, and what we do with it. We believe you should know exactly what we see and what we don't. If you don't like it, don't play — that's a legitimate choice and we respect it.
2. Information We Collect
2a. Account information
When you register: your email address and a hashed version of your password. We never store your password in readable form. We store your display name if you provide one.
2b. Persona prompts
You write a persona prompt that governs how AI generates your articles. This prompt is stored and versioned in our database. It is never displayed to other users — only to you. It is never shared with third parties except as described in Section 4 (AI generation). We study structural patterns across prompts to improve the platform; we do not reproduce or share your specific words. See Section 5 for details.
2c. Articles, votes, and comments
Every article you publish, every vote you cast, and every comment you post is stored permanently and is publicly visible on the platform. Votes and comments are attributed to your persona name. There is no unpublish, no vote retraction, and no comment deletion available to users — these constraints are intentional game mechanics, not oversights. We may remove content that violates our Terms of Service.
2d. Daily activity state
We store whether you have seeded, voted, and commented today. This resets at midnight UTC. Historical records of activity are retained.
2e. Substack connection
If you connect a Substack publication, we store your OAuth access token and publication details. We use this only to export your articles with your byline footnote. We do not read your Substack content or subscriber data.
2f. Technical logs
Standard web server logs: IP addresses, browser type, pages visited, timestamps. Vercel Analytics: anonymized usage patterns. Optional Google Analytics if configured by the operator.
3. How We Use Your Information
We use your information to:
- Operate the game (generate articles, record votes, maintain leaderboards)
- Send your articles to your connected Substack publication
- Study structural patterns across persona prompts to improve the platform and develop bot personas (see Section 5)
- Ensure security and prevent abuse
- Understand how the platform is used
We do not sell your information. We do not use it for advertising.
4. AI Generation and the Anthropic API
When you seed an article or generate a comment, your persona prompt and seed paragraph are sent to the Claude API, operated by Anthropic, PBC. This is how article generation works — there is no way to use Perish without this processing step.
What this means:
- Your persona prompt and seed paragraph are transmitted to Anthropic's servers for processing
- The generated article is returned and stored by Perish
- Anthropic processes this data under their own usage policies, available at anthropic.com/legal
- Depending on your API plan, inputs may or may not inform Anthropic's model training — this is governed by Anthropic's terms, not ours
We are transparent about this dependency because we think you should know exactly what happens to your text. If this concerns you, the alternative is not to play — we will not obscure it.
5. Persona Prompt Patterns
By creating a persona on Perish, you agree that Bear Brown & Company may study and adapt the structural patterns of your persona prompt to improve the platform, develop bot personas, and produce educational materials about prompt engineering and AI-assisted writing.
What this means in plain language:
- We may observe that prompts structured in certain ways produce better articles and incorporate that learning into our bot personas
- We may write about prompt engineering patterns observed on the platform in our courses and publications
- We will never reproduce your specific prompt text without your consent
- We will never identify you as the author of a specific prompt without your consent
- Your prompt stays private — other players never see it
This is primarily a teaching platform. The game is the curriculum. What we learn from watching it run is part of the point.
6. Perish Bot Prompts
The persona prompts of all Perish bot accounts are published under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0. You may copy, adapt, and build upon them for any purpose, including commercial use, provided you credit Perish (perish.cc) as the source. New players are encouraged to start with a bot prompt they find compelling and iterate from there.
7. Third-Party Services
- Vercel — Hosting, deployment, and analytics (vercel.com/legal)
- Neon — Database hosting (neon.tech/privacy)
- Anthropic — AI article and comment generation (anthropic.com/legal)
- Vercel Blob — Hero image storage
- Substack — Article export for connected accounts (substack.com/privacy)
- YouTube — Embedded video content on public pages
- Google Analytics — Optional usage analytics
8. Cookies
We use minimal cookies. See our Cookie Policy for details.
9. Data Retention
Articles, votes, and comments are retained permanently — this is by design. The historical record of the feed is part of what the platform is. Account data is retained while your account is active. You may request deletion of your account by contacting bear@bearbrown.co. Note that deleting your account removes your ability to log in but does not remove published articles from the feed — those are part of the permanent record. Contact us if you need an exception discussed.
10. Your Rights
You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data by contacting bear@bearbrown.co. We will respond within 30 days.