What we hold, what happens to it, and who to ask.

Two jobs, and which one we are doing

Stica Coach has two kinds of user, and we are not responsible for the same things for both. Getting this straight first makes the rest of the page make sense.

If you are a coach, we hold your account and we are responsible for it. You are the customer.

If you are being coached, your coach's practice is responsible for what is kept about you. Stica is the software they use. That is the same sentence you agreed to when you accepted their invitation, and it decides who to ask: if you want your coaching record changed or deleted, ask your coach. They hold the button. If you cannot reach them, write to us and we will help you get to them.

Your own Stica account is a separate thing, and that one is yours. If you are being coached, you can download everything in it and close it yourself, from your own page, without asking anybody. If you are a coach, closing your account is still an email to us rather than a button, and the section on deleting things below says so plainly.

Who we are

Stica is the trading name of Ian Pattison, a sole trader. One person, working from an office in Germany. For anything on this page, or anything you want done with your data, write to hello@stica.co.uk.

What we hold about a coach

Your name and email address, because signing in needs them. If you sign in with Google, we also store the link to your Google profile picture and the fact that Google says the address is verified.

Your profile: how you introduce your practice, your guiding principles, the methods you lean on, how you open and close a session, and what you want from your practice this year. You wrote it and you can change it. It goes to the model that drafts your write-ups, because that is what makes them sound like you rather than like software.

Your settings: how long your write-ups run, and whether you want the app in English or German.

Your work: the clients you add, the sessions, the transcripts you upload, the drafts the app writes and the versions you release, your notes, your messages and the check-ins you send.

What we hold about someone being coached

Your name and email address, in your own account, so you can sign in and so your coach knows who you are.

Whether you agreed to being written up, the date you answered, and the exact wording you were shown when you answered. If you change your mind, that is recorded too, with its own date. We keep the noes and the withdrawals as well as the yeses, because a record holding only the yeses is not a record.

Your write-ups, what you committed to, your answers to check-ins, your notes and your messages. And whether you want the check-in emails at all, which you can switch off on your own page without it touching anything else.

Where your client's name goes

This is the part worth reading slowly. It is the strongest thing the app does, and it has real edges.

What is true. A client's registered identity comes out before anything is stored and before any model sees it. Their name, their employer, their email address and their phone number are replaced with a marker. The transcript, the summary, the write-up, the coach's notes and every message are all held that way, and nothing the app writes ever puts the name back into the text.

That is not a promise made only in prose. The storage layer refuses a write it has not seen stripped, and it refuses by default, so a new column nobody has classified is treated as text needing stripping and its first write fails loudly rather than passing quietly. Uploaded files go down one road, and that road checks too. Nothing leaves for a model unchecked, in either direction, because what comes back from a model is text from outside like anything else.

What is not. The promise covers the client, not everyone they mention. If a client talks about their manager or a colleague by name, that name is in the transcript, and we have never been told who they are. We do not yet run a pass to find and replace those. Until we do, this paragraph is the honest version, and it is here rather than buried because a coach deciding whether to upload needs it.

Stica is new, and it is built by one person. If you coach somewhere regulated, read this section before you upload anything, and write to me if you want it walked through.

Two more edges, named rather than hidden. We can still tell whose session it is: an account holds the real name and email, and the coaching is joined to it, because otherwise nobody could sign in. This is not encryption that locks us out, and nobody should sell it to you as that. And when a coach downloads their client's record, the names go back in, because that record is theirs.

We never have the recording

Stica Coach does not accept audio. A coach records the session with whatever they already use and uploads the text. If a recording is uploaded by mistake, the app names the format and refuses it rather than storing it.

So there is no recording here to keep, to lose, or to delete. The audio stays wherever the coach's own recorder put it, and what happens to it there is between them and that tool.

What writes the write-up

The draft is written by Claude, made by Anthropic. The route it takes is unusual enough to be worth saying plainly.

The app does not call an AI company directly. It puts the job in a queue, and a computer in Ian's own office in Germany comes and collects it, hands it to Claude, and hands the reply back. What travels is the transcript with the identity already taken out, together with the coach's own profile. Both are checked before a byte leaves, and the reply is checked when it arrives.

We do not use anything that reaches Stica to train a model, and we never sell it, share it for anyone else's purposes, or keep it as an example of our own work.

Anthropic does not train on it either. The drafting runs through a Claude account with model training switched off, which also means Anthropic keeps what it is shown for thirty days rather than five years. Being exact about the mechanism, because it matters: that is a setting on our account rather than a clause in a contract. It is switched off, we check it, and if we ever move to an arrangement where it is contractual we will say so here.

Who else handles it

We do not sell data. A short list of companies process it on our instructions, to run the service.

Vercel hosts the website and the app, and holds uploaded transcripts and files in a private store. Neon runs the database. Anthropic provides the model that drafts write-ups, as above. Resend sends the app's email: sign-in links, invitations, write-ups and check-ins. Google handles sign-in for anyone who chooses that button, and carries our own email with you.

Our email service tells us when a message was delivered, bounced, or was reported as spam. It is not told to report whether you opened it or clicked anything in it. That is switched off on purpose, not left at whatever the default was.

Where it is

Vercel, Neon, Anthropic and Google are American companies, so some of this runs on machines outside the UK. Where that happens we rely on the transfer safeguards UK and EU law provide, so the protection travels with the data. The one part we can be exact about is the drafting, which happens on a computer in Germany.

How long we keep it

For as long as you have an account. There is no timer quietly deleting your coaching after a year, because a coach and a client both need to be able to look back at what was said.

Three things outlive the rest, deliberately. A record that an erasure happened, holding counts and a date but no name and no email address, because a receipt reprinting the identity you asked us to erase is a second copy of it. The record of consent given or withdrawn, for as long as the account it belongs to. And short-lived technical logs at the hosting company, which carry account references rather than email addresses.

Deleting things

Three doors, because three different people own three different things.

If you are being coached, you close your own account. On your own page, by typing your email address. Your files go first, then your rows, and you get a receipt. Your name and your email address are wiped everywhere they were held: your account record, the name your coach had for you, and the invitation that brought you in. Every signed-in session is cut off. There is no undo.

One thing to know before you press it, because finding it out afterwards would be horrible. Closing your account does not reach into your coach's records. The sessions and write-ups stay with them, and they no longer name you: they never held your name in the first place, and closing the account takes it out of the last few places that did. If you want the coaching itself gone as well, ask your coach. That is their button, and it takes the lot.

A coach erases one client. On their dashboard, by typing the name they use for that client. It takes the client record, the sessions, every version of every write-up, the comments, the commitments, the check-ins and their answers, the messages, the learning material and every stored file. It leaves that person's own Stica account standing, because closing an account is their act and not their coach's.

A coach closes their whole account. Not a button yet, and the app says so on the coach's own profile page rather than leaving it to be discovered. Write to hello@stica.co.uk and it is done by hand, with a confirmation when it is finished. Which of these are buttons and which is an email is exactly the sort of thing a privacy page usually blurs, so we have said it.

For anything else, ask. We will do it.ask and it's gone

Cookies

Two, and both are doing a job you asked for.

A sign-in cookie, once you sign in. It is signed, sent only back to the site that set it, and not readable by scripts on the page. Signing out clears it.

A light-or-dark cookie, holding one word, so the website and the app agree about which one you picked. Touch the switch and it is stored; never touch it and nothing is stored, and both follow your device.

That is the lot. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixels, nothing that follows you to another site. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing here to consent to.no tracking pixels

Why we are allowed to hold it

If you are a coach, we hold and use your data to provide the service you signed up for, which is our contract with you. If you are being coached, the coaching itself is your coach's practice to justify and they are responsible for it; our part is running the software on their instructions. Everyone's account details sit on the same contractual footing, because without them nobody can sign in. We keep the erasure receipts as a legitimate interest, ours and yours, so that a deletion can be shown to have happened. We do not send marketing. If that ever changes we will ask first.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form.

If you are being coached, two of those need no asking at all. Downloading everything in your account and closing it are both buttons on your own page, and neither goes through us.

If you are a coach, you can download any client's record and erase any client yourself. Your own account is still an email to us rather than a button, and we would rather write that down than let you find it out.

For anything else, write to hello@stica.co.uk. We answer within one month, and usually a great deal sooner. If we get something wrong, tell us so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or to your own data protection authority if you are in the EU.

The older pages

Stica used to be a learning consultancy, and a few of those pages are still reachable if you hold an old link, including an enquiry form. If you use one, we receive what you type and any file you attach, and we use it to answer you and for nothing else. The same deletion promise applies: ask, and it goes. Those pages are being retired.

If something changes

Stica Coach is new and is being tested with real coaches and real clients. When something on this page stops being true, we change the page and move the date below. If a change matters to you, such as a new company handling your data, we will tell you rather than hope you re-read it.

Questions

Write to hello@stica.co.uk. A person answers, and that person is Ian.