Buki Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-08-20

Buki keeps your reading list on your own computer. There is no account, no sign-in, no sync and no analytics. One thing leaves your machine, only when you ask for it, and this page is about exactly what that is.

What stays on your computer

• Your shelf: every book you save, its intent, and the link to the post you found it in. Stored in your browser's local extension storage and never transmitted.
• The recognition log: the most recent 200 attempts. Never transmitted. Clear it any time from the options page.
• Your API key, if you add one. Sent only to the recognition provider you configured, and never to Buki.

What leaves your computer, and where it goes

Three things, and this is all of them. There is no analytics, no telemetry, and nothing Buki reports back about you.

• The picture, and the words around it. Only when you press the Buki button on a post or use the right-click menu. Never in the background, and never for a page you did not act on. Where they go depends on one setting you control.
  • If you have added your own API key, they go straight from your browser to the provider you configured. Buki's server is not in the path and never sees the picture.
  • If you have not, they go to Buki's reader at get-buki.vercel.app, which passes them to Google Gemini and hands the answer back. This is what lets Buki work the moment you install it, with nothing to set up.
• The title and author it read, to openlibrary.org as a search query, to confirm the book exists and fetch its cover. OpenLibrary is a project of the Internet Archive.
• A request for each cover, when you open your shelf. A cover is a picture, and a picture has to come from wherever it lives: openlibrary.org, which redirects to archive.org, and pbs.twimg.com for a photograph you caught yourself. Those requests carry your IP address, the way loading any image on any page does. Buki keeps each cover after the first time, so a shelf you have opened before is quiet.

What Buki's reader keeps

Nothing about the book, and nothing that names you.

• The picture and the words are not stored. They are passed to the model and the answer is passed back. There is no database, which is also why there is no account.
• To count the free readings, the server keeps your IP address in memory with a number beside it. It is never written to disk, the number resets each day, and both are gone when that server instance recycles.
• If you subscribe, it keeps a scrambled short form of your licence key the same way and for the same reason: so a key that leaks cannot be used to lock you out of your own subscription. Your licence key itself is not kept.
• Buki's reader runs on Vercel, which keeps its own request logs the way every web host does.

If you subscribe

Payment is handled by Polar, and Buki never sees your card. Polar issues a licence key, you paste it into the extension, and that is the whole account: no email address, no password, no profile.

To check the key is live, Buki's server asks Polar about it. What comes back to your browser is a pass that lasts a day and says only that the licence was good. It carries Polar's id for the licence and nothing about you, and it is what travels with a cover reading, so your licence key stays on your own machine.

Nothing else is sent anywhere. Buki does not read your timeline, your account, your messages, or any page you have not asked it to act on.

Affiliate links

The Buy link on a saved book is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, Buki may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

• The link appears only on books you have already chosen to save.
• It never changes which books Buki shows you, or in what order.
• Nothing about you is sent when the shelf loads; only when you choose to click.
• You can pick between Amazon and Bookshop.org in the options page.

Removing your data

Uninstalling Buki deletes everything it stored. The recognition log can be cleared separately from the options page at any time.

Your rights over your data

There is no account, so there is almost nothing here to exercise rights against, and that is the point rather than a loophole.

• Access and portability. Your shelf is already on your machine. Export it to Goodreads or StoryGraph from the options page, free, on every plan.
• Deletion. Uninstalling removes everything Buki stored. Buki's reader holds nothing on disk to delete, and the two things it holds in memory, a count against your IP address and a scrambled form of a licence key, expire on their own.
• Correction. Every book on your shelf can be edited or removed by you, and a wrong match can be deleted, which is also how Buki learns its own kept rate.
• Objection. Add your own API key in settings and Buki's reader leaves the path entirely. Nothing of yours reaches us at all.

Children

Buki is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them. It asks for no name, no email address and no date of birth, because it asks for no account.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the new version ships with the extension update that requires it.

Contact

Email kanedaltbuss@gmail.com