DevelopChess
Privacy
DevelopChess keeps the MVP deliberately simple.
Game data
When you analyze a game, its PGN, positions, and generated lesson are saved so your private report link can work. Do not paste private personal information into a PGN.
Analysis services
Chess positions are evaluated locally with Stockfish. For generated coaching, up to three selected positions, move details, engine lines, evaluation loss, and a broad rating band are sent to OpenRouter and its selected OpenAI model. Account emails, connected usernames, and full PGNs are not included in that AI request.
Accounts and progress
You can sample DevelopChess without an account. Guest progress and daily access counters are stored in your browser. If you create an account, we store your email, optional username and avatar, secured password, puzzle progress, Path levels and stars, Chess DNA, trophies, historical lesson completion records, and idempotent daily usage entries so your learning and allowances follow you across devices.
Guest play activity
When a signed-out player completes an activity, DevelopChess sets a random HttpOnly guest cookie and records a one-way hash of it, the activity mode, and the completion time. We may also store the coarse country and state or region supplied by Cloudflare. We do not store the raw IP address, exact location, chess moves, or raw completion identifier in this guest activity record. The cookie and associated guest record expire after 180 days of inactivity.
Puzzle activity
We record puzzle starts, wrong-move attempts, solves, reveals, and requests for or views of wrong-move explanations with the puzzle ID, mode, and time. These records are visible only to administrators and are associated with your account or a pseudonymous guest ID derived from the guest cookie.
Path leaderboard
The Path leaderboard is a casual, prize-free ranking. Verified accounts with a username and at least one cleared Path level appear automatically unless they switch off leaderboard visibility. It shows only username, stars, highest cleared level, and rank. It never shows account email or private avatar data. Guest stars synced after sign-in count toward all-time totals but not the current weekly ranking.
Connected chess accounts
If you use Coach, we store the public Chess.com or Lichess username you connect, copies of imported public game PGNs, Stockfish findings, and your private training plan. We never ask for or store your Chess.com or Lichess password. Disconnecting stops future sync; deleting your DevelopChess account removes the connection and imported Coach data.
Payments
Premium is currently free for signed-in accounts. No trial or payment is required. Historical trial or subscription records may be retained with your account; DevelopChess does not store full card numbers.
Visit analytics
We use only AnotherLaunch Analytics on public product, comparison, about, privacy, and terms pages. It records page paths and titles, campaign tags, external referrer information, broad browser, operating-system and device details, approximate network-provided location, visible-page engagement time, and the visible text of buttons visitors click. It does not store raw IP addresses, create advertising profiles, fingerprint visitors, or use tracking cookies. Analytics requests do not include account emails, form contents, PGNs, chess moves, or private report IDs. AnotherLaunch Analytics is not loaded on generic not-found pages, saved reports, private Coach reviews, password-reset, account-deletion, API, or admin pages. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control disable it. An administrator can also set a browser-exclusion cookie or exclude the current public IP for up to 400 days; only a keyed one-way hash and its address family are stored for IP exclusion, not the raw address. Shared or changing public IPs can affect who is excluded.
Account emails
We use your email for verification, password recovery, and important account messages. We do not sell your email address.
Account deletion
You can permanently delete your DevelopChess account and associated data from the Delete account page in the app or at developchess.com/delete-account. This removes your account profile, authentication records, learning and Path progress, leaderboard entries, training history, and connected notification devices. Short-lived infrastructure logs may remain until normal log rotation for security and abuse prevention.