What Synkeet does
Synkeet is a scripture platform for churches, run by SOTCHIA LLC. Synkeet Studio, the desktop app a church runs in its booth, listens to the sermon, recognizes scripture as it is spoken, and shows it on the church's screens and livestream. Taper, in the browser and as a phone app, lets people follow a service, save verses and notes, read a recap afterwards, and host or join small-group gatherings.
Information we collect
We collect only what is necessary to run the service:
- Account details: your email address, used to create your account, send sign-in codes and invitations, and, for people who follow a church, the weekly recap. Your first and last name, if you give them. If you sign in with Google or Apple, the name, email address and profile picture link they share with us. If you choose a password, it is stored only as a secure hash by our authentication provider.
- Saved verses and notes: content you choose to save, stored to your account so it syncs across your devices.
- Church membership: which church you belong to or follow, your role in it, and when you started following it. A church's team can see who is on the team and how many people follow the church.
- Church details: what a church's team enters in Studio, such as the church's name, campuses, outputs, themes and settings, and the logo it uploads. The logo is stored as a public file, so that screens and phones can show it.
- Following a live service: when a phone or browser follows a church's live service, it registers a random identifier the app made for that device, your account if you are signed in, and when it joined and left. The church's team uses it to see how many phones followed each service.
- Booth presence: while you have Studio open, the others on your church's team who have it open see your display name (or "An operator" if you have not set one) and whether you are capturing, so two booths do not listen to the same service at once. Only members of that church can see this, and your email address is never part of it.
- Service records: which passages a church put on its screens and when, so the church can look back on its services. A church may publish a written summary of a service to its congregation.
- Gatherings: when you host a gathering in Taper, its title, join code, settings and the passages you put up. People who join a gathering do not need an account, and joining does not create a record of them; an amen they say is recorded as described under Amens below.
- Licensing counts: a phone following a church service reports how many passages it displayed in each translation, and whether each was licensed. It is filed under a code derived from the phone's anonymous identifier and the month, so it cannot be traced to a person or followed from one month to the next. We use it to report our usage to the publishers who license scripture to us.
- Amens: when someone following a service or a gathering says amen to a passage, their phone tells us once. We keep one entry per phone per passage, filed under a code derived from the phone's anonymous identifier and that one service or gathering, so it cannot be traced to a person or matched from one service to the next, and tapping many times still counts once. No account is needed and none is recorded. We use it only to show in the recap how many in the room said amen, and which passage drew the most. To stop one device or one network from flooding a recap with amens, a one-way code made from the network address a request comes from is kept only in the server's memory: for about two minutes to limit how fast it can send, and, with the service it is for, for as long as that service can take amens (at most twelve hours) to limit how many new phones one network can add. It is then cleared, and neither the address nor the code is ever stored.
- Usage records: how much listening time a church or host has used, how many summaries were written and how many questions were asked of Steward, so that plan allowances and listening credits work.
- Diagnostics: when you report a problem in Studio, the details you review before sending (such as the app's release channel, your browser's name and version, and recent errors) and any screenshots you attach. Screenshots are kept in private storage. Studio can also send a log of failures after each service, with the app version and a short error message from which email addresses are removed; it never contains scripture, audio or conversations, and a setting in Studio turns it off.
- Taper feedback: when you send a note from Taper's Help and feedback screen, the message, the topic you chose and, if you are signed in, your account email. Nothing is sent until you tap Send. We use it to answer you and to improve the app, and it is kept as a support request, as described under Data retention below. A note you have started but not sent stays on your device only, and is cleared when you sign out.
- Waitlist: before launch, the email address you give on synkeet.com to hear when Synkeet opens, when you gave it, whether you asked for updates before launch, and which of Studio and Taper you told us you're interested in, if you ticked either. It is kept in our database and on our mailing list with Resend. People who joined before we offered updates get the launch email only.
- Payment information: payments are processed by Stripe. We do not see or store card numbers. When you take Taper Plus in a place where sales tax or VAT applies, Stripe also asks for your billing address and, if you have one, a tax ID, to work out the tax.
We do not keep IP addresses in our records, and we do not collect your location. Like any website, our hosting and network providers see the address your device connects from.
Audio and transcripts
Studio, and a Taper host running a gathering, listen through the microphone to recognize scripture. With the cloud engine, audio is streamed from the computer, browser or phone straight to our speech provider, Deepgram, and turned into text as it is spoken. Every request we send Deepgram, for listening and for Aura, opts out of its model improvement program: we ask Deepgram not to use our audio or text to improve its models. With Studio's offline engine it never leaves the computer. We do not store the audio.
While a service runs, Studio keeps the text of what it heard in the computer's memory, so that the service summary can describe what was preached and not only which verses were shown. It is never saved to disk or to our servers, and it is gone when the app closes. Each time an operator asks for a summary, that text is sent with the passages to Synkeet, which passes it to Anthropic to write the summary and keeps nothing. Practice runs in rehearsal mode are never included.
A Taper host's gathering works the same way. While the host listens, the text of what their microphone heard stays in the memory of that browser tab or phone, for that gathering's summary. It is never saved to the device, to our servers or to the host's account, and it is gone when the tab is closed or reloaded, the app is closed, or the host signs out. Each time the host asks for a summary, that text is sent with the passages to Synkeet, which passes it to Anthropic to write the summary and keeps nothing. A host who has asked for many summaries in one day gets the later ones from the passages alone, and then the text is not passed on.
Questions asked of Steward, Studio's in-app guide, and any screenshots attached to them, are sent to Anthropic to write the answer. We do not keep the questions, the answers or the screenshots; we only count how many questions were asked.
Aura, the read-aloud voice, is generated by Deepgram from verse text. It reads public-domain translations, and the American Bible Society's Good News Translation (GNT) and Contemporary English Version (CEV) when a church has them. A public-domain reading is kept, so the same verse is not made twice. A GNT or CEV reading is made each time an operator asks for it, played, and never stored, by us or by Studio, and the translation's name and copyright notice are on screen while it plays. The generated audio contains the verse, not anyone's voice.
What is public
Some things are made to be seen without signing in, by anyone who has the link:
- A service's or gathering's recap (its title, date and passages, the amen counts and any summary the church or host published), for 30 days after it.
- A gathering's stream overlay link, which shows the verse on screen while the gathering is live, for the host to add to a livestream.
- A church's logo.
Links to recaps and overlays contain a long random code that cannot be guessed, but anyone the link is passed to can open it.
How we use your information
- To authenticate you and keep your account secure.
- To sync your saved verses and notes across your devices.
- To show a live service's verses on the phones following it.
- To send sign-in codes, invitations, the weekly recap, a reminder before a Taper Plus trial ends, and replies to your support requests. The weekly recap goes to people who follow a church, at their account address, and every recap has a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in. You can also turn it off, and back on, with the Weekly recap switch in Taper Settings. We keep that choice with your account until the account is deleted.
- To tell people on the waitlist when Synkeet opens and, if they asked for them, to send a few updates before then. Every update has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing stops them at once.
- To show in a recap how many in the room said amen.
- To write service and gathering summaries when an operator or host asks for one, and the weekly recap.
- To answer questions asked of Steward.
- To process payments and apply plan allowances.
- To report scripture usage to the publishers who license it to us.
- To find and fix problems before churches have to report them.
We do not sell your data. We do not use your data for advertising.
Cookies and storage on your device
We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.
- synkeet.com keeps your light or dark choice in your browser's storage and, if you sign in there, a sign-in cookie. We count visits with Vercel's analytics, which does not use cookies.
- Taper, in the browser and as a phone app, keeps on your device: your sign-in, a random identifier for the device (used for the viewer count, licensing counts and amens described above), your theme and default translation, the churches and gatherings you opened recently, your attendance streak, and any feedback you have not sent. The phone app also keeps a copy of your saved verses and notes. Signing out of the phone app clears your personal items; the device identifier and your display choices stay.
- Studio keeps its settings on the computer, including a Planning Center connection if the church makes one.
Third-party services
Synkeet uses these providers to operate. Each has its own privacy policy.
- Supabase: database, authentication, file storage and live updates.
- Stripe: payments for church plans, Taper Plus and listening credits.
- Resend: email delivery, and the waitlist's mailing list.
- Deepgram: speech recognition for the cloud engine, and the Aura read-aloud voice.
- Anthropic: writes service and gathering summaries from the passages and, when the booth or host heard it, the text of the sermon; writes the weekly recap from the church's name and the week's passages; and answers questions asked of Steward, including any screenshots attached to a question.
- API.Bible: licensed scripture text, and the usage reporting its licenses require. The reports carry codes derived from the church, not people's identities.
- bible-api.com: public-domain scripture text, which Taper's phone app and our servers fetch from it.
- Google and Apple: sign-in, if you choose to sign in with them.
- Planning Center: service plans, if a church connects its account in Studio.
- Vercel: hosting for the website and Taper, and visit statistics for the website.
- Railway: hosting for the Synkeet API.
- Cloudflare: the network in front of the Synkeet API, and delivery of mail sent to synkeet.com addresses.
- GitHub: hosts Studio's installers and updates, which Studio checks for and downloads.
- Hugging Face: hosts the speech model Studio downloads for its offline engine.
- Google Fonts: fonts Studio loads.
Data retention
Your account and saved data are kept while your account is active. You may delete your account at any time: in Studio from your profile, in Taper from Settings, or by contacting us. Deleting your account removes your login, your profile, your saved verses and notes, the gatherings you host, every invitation you sent, and any listening credits you bought as a host, which are forfeited, and ends any Taper Plus subscription you hold. It removes you from every church team you are on; the church, its records and its plan stay with the church. Deleting an account never deletes a church: a church has one owner, who first hands the church to another member or deletes it. Support requests, problem reports and records of activity in a church are kept, no longer linked to your account, until they are deleted as described below. Deletion takes effect at once, and copies in our backups expire within 30 days.
A church's owner can delete the church in Studio's Settings. The subscriptions we set up for the church end at once; anything else on its payment account is reviewed by our support team. Deleting the church also deletes its team's access, invitations, outputs, logo, services and their summaries and amens, projection history, congregation followers, viewer records, and any listening credits it bought, which are forfeited. The owner and the team keep their own accounts. Support requests, problem reports, records of activity in the church and purchase records are kept without the church attached. A record that the church was deleted is kept too: its name, its payment references, and who deleted it (until that person's own account is deleted). Licensing counts are also kept without the church attached: they are anonymous per-phone codes that cannot be traced to a person, and they are needed for the month's report to the publishers.
Congregation recaps and published summaries are readable for 30 days after a service; the church's own record of what was projected is kept for as long as the church's account exists. The record of each phone that followed a service (its device identifier, the account if one was signed in, and when it joined and left) is deleted after one year; the service's counts of how many followed are kept. A gathering's record is kept for as long as the host's account exists. Amens are kept with the service or gathering they belong to, and deleted with it or with the church's or host's account; like the recap, their counts are readable by anyone with the recap for 30 days, and by the church's team or the host for as long as the record exists. Licensing counts are kept for the current month and the twelve before it, including after the church is deleted. We do not delete payment records for church plans, Taper Plus or listening credits when a church or account is deleted; Stripe, our payment processor, keeps them under its own retention policy.
Support requests and problem reports, with any screenshots attached to them, are deleted one year after they are sent. Studio's automatic log of failures is deleted after 90 days.
A waitlist address is kept until you ask us to remove it. Unsubscribing from the updates stops the emails; to have the address itself deleted, write to support@synkeet.com.
Everything else described in this policy is kept for as long as the account or church it belongs to exists, and is then deleted or kept as described above.
Your rights
You have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have your account and its data deleted, and to export your saved verses and notes. Email support@synkeet.com to exercise any of these rights. A church's owner can also export the church's records from Studio's Settings.
Children
Synkeet is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us so we can delete it.
Changes to this policy
We update this policy when the product changes what it collects or shares, and post the revised version here with a new date. Continued use of Synkeet after a change means you accept the revised policy.
Contact
Synkeet is run by SOTCHIA LLC, a Texas limited liability company, 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731.
Questions about this policy, or requests about your data: support@synkeet.com. Anything else: hello@synkeet.com.