Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: Aug 27, 2026

This page explains what Decoder Labs collects, why, and what choices you have. It's short and specific on purpose — there's no ad network here, no analytics dashboard, no data broker relationship to disclose.

What This Site Is

Decoder Labs is a personal, MDX-authored writing site run by Neel Ratn. Comments, likes, and view counts are backed by Supabase; there is no other backend, no CMS, and no third-party analytics installed anywhere on this site.

Information You Provide Directly

Email address, if you sign in. Signing in uses Supabase's magic-link flow: you enter your email, Supabase emails you a one-time sign-in link, and clicking it authenticates you. Your email is stored by Supabase (the auth and database provider for this site) and used only to identify your account — it's never shown publicly, sold, or used for marketing.

Comments. If you're signed in and post a comment, the comment body and a display name derived from your email (the part before the @) are stored and shown publicly under the post. You can delete your own comments at any time from the comment itself.

Likes. Liking a post records that your account liked that specific post's slug — used only to show your own like state and the total count.

Information Collected Automatically

View counts. Each post has a public view counter. It's anonymous and aggregate: your browser stores a small flag (see below) so a single visit only counts once, but nothing tying a specific view to your identity is ever stored on the server.

Standard hosting logs. This site is hosted on Vercel, which — like virtually any web host — logs basic request data (IP address, user agent, requested path) for operating and securing the service. There's no separate analytics dashboard layered on top of this; it's Vercel's own infrastructure-level logging, not something built into this site.

Stored in Your Browser, Never Sent to Us

A few small preferences live only in your browser's local storage and are never transmitted anywhere:

  • Which posts you've recently viewed — powers a "recently viewed" convenience, nothing more.
  • Whether YouTube embeds should start muted or unmuted — remembers your last choice.
  • A per-post flag that prevents the view counter above from double-counting a single visit.

You can clear all of this at any time by clearing your browser's site data for this domain — it costs this site nothing, since none of it lives anywhere else.

Third-Party Services

  • Supabase — provides authentication, the database, and the comments/likes/views backend. See Supabase's privacy policy for how they handle data on their end.
  • YouTube / Google — journal video entries show a thumbnail image (loaded automatically from YouTube's CDN) with a play button; the actual video, and any cookies or tracking YouTube attaches to it, only loads if you click play. Once you do, Google's own privacy policy governs that embedded player.
  • Google Fonts — this site's typefaces are loaded from Google's font CDN, which sees your IP address like any font/CDN request would.

No advertising network, analytics platform, or data broker has access to anything on this site.

Cookies

This site does not set any first-party cookies. Supabase's auth session is stored in your browser's local storage, not a cookie. If you activate a YouTube embed, YouTube/Google may set their own cookies per their own policies — that's between you and Google, not something this site controls.

How Long Data Is Kept

Comments and likes persist until you delete them yourself or ask for them to be removed (see below). View counts are aggregate numbers with no identity attached, so there's nothing per-user to delete there.

Your Choices

  • Delete a comment — remove it yourself, any time, from the comment.
  • Sign out — clears your local session immediately.
  • Delete your account or data — email erneelratn@gmail.com and Neel will remove your account, comments, and likes.
  • Clear local preferences — clear this site's data in your browser at any time.

Children's Privacy

This site isn't directed at children, and doesn't knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.

Changes to This Policy

If what this site collects changes, this page will change with it — check back here.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: erneelratn@gmail.com