Privacy Policy

Production Engine is production-management software for commercial video production companies: estimates, crew and client contacts, schedules, call sheets, budgets, invoices, and related workflow. This policy covers the account holders and team members who sign in to a Production Engine workspace ("tenants"), and the people whose information a tenant stores in that workspace, such as crew, cast, clients, and vendors.

Production Engine is operated by Geared Like A Machine LLC, a Texas limited liability company.

We collect:

• Account and workspace data: name, email, password hash, and role for each signed-in user; company name and workspace settings for each tenant.
• Production data you or your team enter: client and crew contacts, estimates and rate cards, schedules, call sheets, budgets, invoices, purchase orders, and uploaded files (contracts, W-9 forms, location photos, and similar documents).
• Billing status from Stripe: plan, subscription state, and invoice history. Production Engine does not receive or store card numbers; Stripe's hosted checkout handles those directly (see Security, below).
• Support messages you send us and records of email we send you (password resets, document sends, W-9 requests, and similar transactional mail).
• Technical and usage data: IP address, browser and device information, pages viewed, and the request logs every web application generates for debugging and abuse prevention.
• On public marketing pages, limited usage events: page viewed, referring host, campaign parameters, and which request-access or estimator link was used.
• Inside the signed-in workspace, detailed product analytics and session replays of how members use Production Engine. See Analytics, below, for exactly what is recorded and what never is.

We use this information to:

• Authenticate users and keep each tenant's data isolated from every other tenant.
• Operate the product: render schedules, generate estimates and documents, send the emails a tenant's workflow triggers (a call sheet send, a W-9 request, a password reset), and process subscriptions through Stripe.
• Maintain and improve reliability, including diagnosing errors from request logs.
• Understand how the product is used on real productions, so we can improve its design and usability. Analytics, below, describes exactly what is recorded.
• Prevent abuse: for example, rate-limiting repeated requests to public endpoints like password reset and file upload.
• Respond to support requests and legal or compliance obligations.

We do not sell tenant data, and we do not use a tenant's production data to train any AI model.

Production Engine's estimator generates a scoped budget from a brief you describe. Generating that estimate sends the text of your brief, and, inside a signed-in workspace, your tenant's own rate configuration, to a language-model provider through the Vercel AI Gateway (which routes to providers including Anthropic and OpenAI depending on the model configured). That provider processes the request to return the generated estimate; Production Engine does not authorize the provider to use that content to train its models. Do not include information in an estimator brief that you would not want processed by a third-party model provider.

Production Engine uses PostHog for product analytics, in two very different ways.

On the public marketing site, analytics is privacy-hardened: which pages are viewed and which links are clicked, with automatic interaction capture, session replay, and browser persistence (cookies and local storage) all turned off, and no person profile ever created.

Inside the signed-in workspace, analytics is comprehensive. Production Engine is used by production companies on real projects, and watching that use closely is how we find where the product is slow, confusing, or missing something. For signed-in members we record page views and page leaves (including scroll depth), clicks, taps, and form interactions, rage clicks and clicks that had no effect, heatmap samples, browser errors, page performance and network timing, console output, and session replays: a reconstruction of the screens a member saw and the actions they took, including the production data on screen and the requests the page made. Replays never show password fields, and requests that carry credentials or one-time links keep no request or response body. This data is tied to your account (email, name, role) and your workspace, and is used only to improve the product. Analytics is optional infrastructure; if it is not configured in a given deployment, every analytics call is a silent no-op.

We use the following service providers to operate Production Engine. Each processes data only as needed to provide its service to us:

• Vercel: application hosting, edge functions, and file storage (Vercel Blob) for uploads such as W-9 forms.
• Neon: the Postgres database that stores tenant and account records.
• Resend: transactional email, including password resets, document sends, and W-9 requests.
• Stripe: subscription billing and payment processing.
• Vercel AI Gateway and its underlying model providers (for example Anthropic, OpenAI): AI estimate generation, described under AI processing above.
• PostHog: product analytics and session replay, described under Analytics above.

A tenant may also connect optional third-party integrations (for example Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Contacts, Vimeo, or QuickBooks) from inside their own workspace. Those integrations only run, and only share data with that third party, if and when a tenant turns them on, and are scoped to that tenant's own connection.

We keep a tenant's data for as long as the workspace is active. If a subscription lapses or is canceled, the workspace becomes read-only rather than being deleted immediately, so a tenant that reactivates does not lose its records. There is currently no automated self-service deletion; if you want your account or a specific record deleted, contact us (below) and we will process the request, subject to what we are required to retain for security, billing, or legal reasons (for example, financial records tied to a completed subscription).

Depending on where you are located, applicable law may give you rights to access, correct, export, or delete personal information we hold about you, or to object to certain processing. To exercise any of these, contact us below. We will need to verify your identity, or your relationship to the tenant workspace in question, before acting on the request.

Our subprocessors (listed above) may process data in the United States and other countries where they operate. Where applicable law requires a specific transfer mechanism, we rely on the mechanism our subprocessor makes available (such as standard contractual clauses) for that transfer.

Production Engine is a business tool for production companies and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.

We will update the effective date above when we make a material change to this policy. Continued use of Production Engine after a change takes effect means you accept the revised policy.

This policy is governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

For privacy questions, data requests, or deletion requests, email privacy@production-engine.com, or reply to any email you have received from Production Engine.