Your data
What ALF keeps
Why it keeps each thing, what it sends to write a unit, and how you remove it.
The short version
ALF keeps your units and every change you save, so your next draft can start closer to how you teach.
ALF never asks for anything about your students, and has nowhere to put it.
How you adapt, on your units page, shows the habits ALF has noticed, and one switch decides whether they shape your drafts.
You can remove any unit for good, and ask for your whole account to be deleted.
This page is the plain version. The privacy policy has the formal wording.
What ALF keeps, and why
Everything ALF keeps about you, in one list. Each thing has a reason.
Your account
Your name and email address from Google, the town you type on the form, your time zone, your curriculum, and US or UK spelling.
So ALF knows which units are yours, fills in the form the way you left it, and gets your day right.
Kept until your account is deleted. To delete it, write to kyle@alflearninglabs.com.
Signing in
Your Google account's ID, the access and refresh tokens Google gives ALF (stored encrypted), and a session for each browser you sign in on: a random key, when it ends, and the browser's name as it reports itself. No IP address, no Google photo, and not the ID token Google also sends, which carries your photo's address.
To keep you signed in, safely.
A session ends 30 days after your last visit in that browser, or when you sign out. The rest goes when your account is deleted.
Your units
Each unit's form answers (curriculum, grade, subjects or the name of an Other subject, weeks, your lessons a week and their length, topic, town, and the standards, your own goals or the skills you chose), and every version of the unit, from the first draft on. A version holds any lessons ALF built for its weeks: the lesson pages, each week's task sheet and its attachments.
So you can open, edit, print and copy it, teach from its lessons, and go back to any version.
Kept until you remove the unit. Remove this unit deletes it at once. A draft that stopped and was never finished isn't on your units page, so it is kept until your account is deleted.
Your classes
The name of each class you make, which of your units sit in it, and the order you put them in. A class holds no students.
So your units page shows your units grouped and ordered the way you teach them.
Remove class deletes it at once. Its units stay and move to Not in a class.
Your changes
Each change you save: what that part of the unit said before and after, where it sits, a label for what changed, such as Added a scaffold, and a suggested reason where ALF has one: its guess, or the one you picked. The guess stays when you pick another or dismiss it, so Undo can put it back.
For the line under each change, the unit's history and Restore, and for How you adapt, which ALF works out from them each time rather than storing on its own.
Removed with their unit, not one by one.
Your learning switch
Whether Start my drafts this way is on or off. It is off to begin with, while ALF is being tested. It decides whether your habits shape your drafts. ALF keeps noticing your changes either way, so your habits are ready if you switch it back on.
So your choice holds in every browser.
Kept until your account is deleted. Switch it either way at any time.
Adapt this week and Check in
Each check-in and each time you ask Adapt this week: the week, the choices you picked, the line you typed, the changes ALF suggested, and which you kept. A change you keep is saved like one of your own, with what you picked and what you typed as its reason.
So you can keep or undo the changes, and see your check-ins on the unit. How you adapt counts the changes you keep, and says on its own line how many were ALF's suggestions; they never become habits.
Removed with their unit.
Lesson builds
Each time ALF builds a week's lessons: the week, how many lessons, how long it took, whether it finished or what stopped it, and ALF's notes on each step.
So the week shows the build while it runs, even if you leave and come back, and says what stopped one that couldn't be finished.
Removed with their unit.
Facts you tick
On each lesson, the facts you tick under Before you teach, by their words. A fact that is reworded later comes back unticked.
So your ticks are still there when you come back, and Print can say how many are left.
Removed with their unit.
Daily counts
How many times a day ALF drafted a unit, labeled a change, built a week's lessons, or answered Adapt this week, a check-in or a Help question for you, and when. No unit text and no question.
The daily limits are counted from them.
They stay when a unit is removed, because they hold nothing from it, and go when your account is deleted.
In this browser
Changes you have typed but not saved (a class name you are still typing, your answers on the new unit form until its draft starts, and what you type into Adapt this week or Check in, included), your dashboard's Group by and Sort choices, a note of units you removed so an old backup never comes back, and a sign-in cookie.
So changes you have typed but not saved are still there when you come back in this browser, and your units page stays arranged your way.
Signing out clears every unsaved backup. The rest stays until you clear this browser's data for the site.
Help questions
Questions you type into the box on the Help page.
Not kept. Each one is sent to Gemini to choose which help entries answer it and write a short answer from them, then it is gone; only the day's count above is kept.
Nothing to remove.
All of it, apart from what stays in your browser, is stored in a Neon database on Amazon Web Services in the US East (N. Virginia) region. Vercel runs the site in its Washington, D.C. region, and Google handles sign-in and the AI. ALF uses no analytics service, shows no advertising, and sells nothing about you.
How ALF learns how you teach
There is no questionnaire. ALF notes the changes you save and counts the kinds that keep coming back.
01
A change becomes a habit
When you save, ALF labels what changed, by its own rules first and with Gemini when they can't tell, and suggests why where it can. Your top three kinds, each with at least two changes still standing in any of your units, are your habits. A change you restore away stops counting, and a change you kept from Adapt this week or Check in never becomes a habit: it was ALF's suggestion, so your drafts don't learn from it.
02
The habit shapes the next draft
Four habits can shape a draft: a tighter scope, sentence starters in week one, examples from your town and groups of three. Each needs the change itself in your units, such as an activity removed, and examples from your town need a town on the form. Your next draft starts with the ones that qualify.
03
You can switch it off
How you adapt, on your units page, shows each kind of change by unit and what your next draft starts with. Start my drafts this way is off to begin with, while ALF is being tested: choose Change that and switch it on, and your next draft starts with your habits; switch it off and drafts start the usual way. ALF keeps noticing your changes either way, so your habits are ready if you switch it back on. Units you already have stay as they are.
The kinds of change ALF notes
Made it easier, Made it harder, Added a scaffold, Gave it more time, Trimmed it, Cut, Added, Swapped, Reordered, Made it local, Changed what students make, Changed the grouping, Gave students a choice, Made it hands-on, Changed the assessment, Changed the standards and Made it safer. Reworded is noted too, but never counted as a habit.
Trimmed it and Cut count as one habit, and so do Swapped and Made it local. Reordered, Changed what students make, Made it hands-on and Made it safer show in How you adapt but never become habits.
Most changes also get a reason, only ever as a suggestion, marked Probably or Maybe: Support, Challenge, Time, Clarity, Fits my students, Local context and What I have. Reworded and Changed the standards never get one. Pick your own, or dismiss it; your pick is kept with the change, and so is ALF’s guess, so Undo can put it back.
We may study the kinds of changes teachers make across ALF, never who made them, to make drafts better for everyone.
What the AI sees
To draft a unit, label a change, suggest changes, build a week’s lessons or answer a question, ALF sends a request to Google’s Gemini API. This is everything in it.
Sent
- To draft a unit: your curriculum, grade, subjects or the name of an Other subject, number of weeks, and your lessons a week and their length
- To draft a unit: the topic you typed, and your town if you gave one
- To draft a unit: the standards, with their official wording where the publisher allows it (for NGSS, the code and topic), or your own goals or the skills you chose
- To draft a unit: your habits, as short instructions, while Start my drafts this way is on
- When you save: each change its own rules can't label, as its text before and after, where it sits, the label its rules lean toward if they have one, and the unit's grade, subjects and town
- Adapt this week and Check in: the driving question, the standards, goals or skills, the weeks involved, grade, subjects, town, your lessons a week and their length, the choices you picked, the line you typed, up to ten of your own saved changes still in the unit (where each is and what it now says, so ALF keeps them), and your habits while Start my drafts this way is on. Try again with a note adds your note and what ALF suggested before
- To build a week's lessons: your curriculum, the unit's grade, subjects, town, number of weeks, your lessons a week and their length, and its title, driving question, overview, final product, teams, schedule, rubric, and standards, goals or skills; that week, the week before and next week's goal; and short notes of the changes you saved to earlier weeks, with their labels. Then the lessons Gemini wrote, to read them again, repair them, and reword any line that opens the same way as the one before it
- Help: your question, with ALF Studio's own help text
Not sent
- Your name or email address
- Your Google account or sign-in details
- Your other units
- Your history, labels and How you adapt counts, beyond the habit instructions, a lesson build's notes, and the saved changes Adapt this week and Check in are told to keep
- Your browser's name or your IP address
ALF uses Google’s paid Gemini API. Google’s terms for the paid service say Google “doesn’t use your prompts … or responses to improve our products” (last updated April 28, 2026). Its abuse monitoring policy says it keeps them for 55 days, only to detect and prevent misuse.
What ALF never asks for
Nothing about your students.
ALF plans units for you, not records about the children in your room. It never asks for anything that identifies a student, and there is no field anywhere to put it. Please describe groups, not students, and keep names out of your units and your Help questions.
No place in ALF for
- Student names
- Student work
- Grades
- Photos
- Student accounts
If a student’s name ends up in a unit, edit it out and save. Earlier versions and the record of that change still hold it, so to remove it from ALF, remove the unit. When you saved the change, its text may also have been sent to Gemini to label it, and Google keeps what it is sent for up to 55 days for abuse monitoring. Removing the unit does not remove that copy.
How standards are matched
ALF’s standards come from their official publishers and are kept inside ALF, each with its official wording and its code where there is one: England publishes no codes, so its statements show their key stage and subject. NGSS standards show their code, their topic and a link to nextgenscience.org.
Once you choose a grade and subject, the form suggests standards by plain word matching on your topic, with no AI involved. You remove any, or choose your own, up to three. Above Generate unit, Using these standards lists exactly the ones the draft uses, and it uses no others. The draft is asked to teach each standard in an activity and assess it in a rubric row, and the unit shows where. Instead of standards you can choose Use my own goals, or No standards and up to three skills; for a subject that isn’t listed, Other subject takes its name.
Standards noticesDeleting things
A unit is removed inside ALF. A whole account is deleted by email.
A unit
Where
Open the ··· menu on the unit, or on its card on your units page, and choose Remove this unit.
What happens
It is deleted at once, with every version, lesson, change, label, reason and suggestion it held, its lesson builds and the facts you ticked, and this browser's backup of it. How you adapt is worked out again without it. It can't be undone.
Your account
Where
Email kyle@alflearninglabs.com from the address you sign in with.
What happens
It is done within 30 days. Everything in the list above goes with it.
For anything about your data, write to kyle@alflearninglabs.com.