Privacy Policy

Last updated 23 September 2026

This policy covers the RIVET 3.x desktop app and this website, get-rivet.com. RIVET XP is a separate app: it has no assistant and makes no network connections at all, so nothing it stores ever leaves your PC.

Who is responsible

RIVET is made by William Edward Kirby, trading as Kirby Systems, in the United Kingdom. For anything about your data, email [email protected].

The RIVET app

Data RIVET stores

RIVET keeps a small amount of state on your device so it can remember your settings and history:

• Your preferences (theme, options)
• The action log (a record of changes you made, so you can review or undo them)
• Progression data (XP / rank), if enabled
• The optional AI model, if you choose to download it
• A small record of when your Pro trial started (see The trial, below)

All of it is stored on your computer under %LOCALAPPDATA%\KirbySystems\RIVET — the settings, log and progression as plain, human-readable JSON. You can read, back up, or delete it at any time. None of it is ever uploaded. The trial record is also kept in %APPDATA%\KirbySystems\RIVET and in a single registry value under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\KirbySystems\RIVET, for the reason given below.

System information RIVET reads

To do its job, RIVET reads live information about your PC — running processes and services, startup entries, disk usage, and hardware telemetry (CPU, memory, GPU, network, etc.). This information is shown to you in the app and is never transmitted off the device.

When you explicitly confirm an action, RIVET can change your system — for example stop a service, end a process, adjust a Windows setting, or delete cache files. Every such change is previewed before it happens and recorded in the local action log. Most can be reverted while RIVET is open; changes to Windows settings (registry tweaks) can also be reverted after RIVET is closed and reopened, because the log records the previous value. Deleting files and ending processes cannot be reverted.

The on-device assistant (Ask RIVET)

RIVET 3.x includes an assistant that answers questions about your PC in plain English. It runs a language model on your own machine. Your questions, the system readings the answer is based on, and the answers themselves never leave your computer — there is no account, no server, and no cloud service involved in answering.

The model is not shipped inside the app. The first time you use an AI feature, RIVET offers to download it and shows you the exact size beforehand; nothing is downloaded until you agree. If you already run a local model runtime (such as Ollama or Foundry Local), RIVET uses that instead and downloads nothing. RIVET XP has no assistant.

Network use

RIVET does not connect to the internet in normal use. The only outbound connection it ever makes is the optional AI model download described above:

• It happens only after you explicitly consent to a stated download size.
• It is a direct download of the model file from its public host. Nothing about you or your PC is sent — no telemetry, no identifiers, no query string. As with any download, the host sees the IP address the request comes from.
• You can delete the downloaded model at any time from the AI module or CONFIG, which also clears your consent, so nothing is fetched again without you asking.

If you never use an AI feature, or you decline the download, RIVET makes no network connections at all.

Separately from RIVET, Windows and the Microsoft Store may send crash reports and install information to Microsoft according to your Windows settings. That is Microsoft's processing, not RIVET's, and Microsoft's privacy statement applies.

The trial

RIVET gives you 14 days of Pro when you first run it. That evaluation is once per computer, not once per installation — uninstalling and reinstalling RIVET does not start it again.

To do that without accounts or a server, RIVET keeps a small record on your PC holding three things: when the trial started, when RIVET last ran, and an identifier for the computer it started on. It is stored in three places so that reinstalling does not erase it.

About that identifier:

• It is not your name, your Microsoft account, your email, your IP address, or any hardware serial number.
• It is a one-way cryptographic hash of a value Windows provides for exactly this purpose. That value is scoped to the publisher, meaning the number RIVET sees is different from the number any other developer's app sees. It cannot be used to recognise you anywhere else.
• Only the hash is stored, never the original value, and it is truncated. It cannot be reversed back into anything about your machine.
• It is never transmitted, never logged, and never shown. It is read on your PC and compared with a file on your PC. Nothing about it leaves the device.

The "when RIVET last ran" timestamp exists so that changing your system clock does not shorten or extend the trial. It records a date only, not what you did.

When the trial ends, nothing is taken away, disabled, or locked. RIVET keeps working as the free version, and everything you changed while on trial stays changed.

Purchases

RIVET Pro is sold through the Microsoft Store, and Microsoft is the seller. We never see your payment details; Microsoft's privacy statement applies to the purchase. RIVET 2.1 (legacy) is sold on itch.io, whose privacy policy applies to purchases there.

This website

• No cookies, no analytics, no advertising trackers.
• Hosting. The site is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes your IP address and basic request details (such as the page requested and your browser type) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. We see only aggregate traffic statistics in Cloudflare's dashboard, not information about individual visitors.
• Fonts and scripts from other sites. Some pages load fonts from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com) and open-source script libraries from unpkg.com. When they load, your browser sends your IP address to those services, and their own privacy policies apply. This page loads neither.
• Campaign tag. If you arrive through a link containing a campaign tag (for example utm_source), a short tag such as the name of the campaign is kept in your browser's session storage and added to Microsoft Store links on the page, so the Store's own reports can show which campaign a download came from. It contains nothing about you, is never sent to us, and is cleared when you close the tab.
• Links. Download and purchase links take you to the Microsoft Store or itch.io; their privacy policies apply once you are there.

If you email us

If you write to [email protected], we receive your email address and whatever you choose to send, and use it only to reply to you and deal with your message. The mailbox is hosted by Microsoft (Outlook). We keep correspondence only for as long as we need it to deal with your message, then delete it.

Legal basis and your rights

We rely on legitimate interests to deliver and secure this website and to reply to messages you send us. The trial record is kept on your own device, on the same basis, to stop the free evaluation being repeated.

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask what personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to object to how it is used. Because the RIVET app never sends your data to us, in practice the only personal data we can hold about you is email you have sent us. To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected]. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

RIVET is a general-purpose utility and is not directed at children. It collects no personal information from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be published at this address with a new date.