Privacy Policy
Last updated October 21, 2026
The short version: CircuitMCP runs on your machine and never sends us your design files, file names or project contents. We collect what we need to run your account, bill you and enforce licenses: your email, billing records from Stripe, and a small amount of data about the machines that use your license. We count page visits and record errors ourselves, without cookies; the IP address you visit from is kept encrypted for 30 days. No advertising, no tracking cookies, no selling data.
1. Who we are
Holley Brothers Design (holleybrothersdesign.com) runs circuitmcp.net and the CircuitMCP license server, and is the controller of the personal data described here. Contact: support@circuitmcp.net.
2. What the CircuitMCP software sends
The software runs on your Windows PC and never sends us your designs. This is the privacy notice included with it, published here unchanged:
What CircuitMCP for Altium sends, and how to stop it
CircuitMCP for Altium is sold by Holley Brothers Design. This notice describes everything the software sends over the network. The license agreement (EULA, section 6) refers to it.
License checks (always)
To check out, renew and release a floating seat, the software contacts the license server (license.circuitmcp.net) with your license key, a fingerprint of the machine (a one-way hash, not the hardware identifiers themselves), the machine's name, the Windows platform string and the software's version. Without these the license cannot work.
Usage statistics (on unless you turn them off)
One event per action, uploaded in batches every few minutes:
| Event | What it carries |
|---|---|
| A tool call | the tool's name, whether it succeeded, its error code, how long it took |
| Start of the server | its transport (HTTP or stdio) |
| Install or update | the version before and after |
| A new Altium build seen | its version, and the one seen before it |
| The Altium script crashed, or was restarted | the dialog's title (for example "Error") and the recovery steps taken |
| Compatibility check | which known Altium behaviours still hold, and the names of Altium's own scripting types that changed |
| Seat taken or released | which of the two |
| Client set up | which client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode or OpenClaw) |
| A tool turned off remotely was called | the tool's name |
Every event also carries the software's version, the Altium version, a random id for the server session, and the time. The license server links them to the license and seat they came from.
Usage statistics never contain: your designs or any file's content; file, folder, project, document, component, net or library names; tool arguments; error messages; or anything you type into your AI client.
Events wait in %USERPROFILE%\CircuitMCP\Altium\telemetry\ until they are sent, so working offline loses nothing. Events older than 40 days that could not be sent are discarded.
Turning them off
Any of these, at any time:
- the control panel: Settings, untick "Send usage statistics";
- the installer: untick the option on the tasks page (silent installs:
/MERGETASKS="!telemetry"); - the command line:
circuitmcp-altium configure --no-telemetry; - the environment variable
CIRCUITMCP_TELEMETRY=0.
Turning them off deletes anything not yet sent, and a running server stops within a minute.
Bug reports and feature requests (only when you send one)
Sent when you press Send in the control panel's "Report a problem" window, or when your AI client files one with the report_issue tool AND you answer yes to the question it then shows you. A client that cannot show that question keeps the report on your machine; you can send it from the control panel.
A report contains what was written, the versions of the software, Windows and Altium, whether the server and Altium were running, and, for a report filed through the AI client, the names and outcomes of the last few tool calls. It includes the end of the server log only if you tick the box to attach it: the control panel shows those lines before sending. The log can contain file names.
Reports are sent even with usage statistics off, because sending one is your choice.
Updates
The control panel asks circuitmcp.net whether a newer version exists, and downloads an update you choose to install using the machine's lease as the credential.
Questions
Use your account at circuitmcp.net.
The license server also records the IP address it sees and an event log of check-outs, renewals, releases and refusals. Usage statistics and reports are stored on the license server with your license; you can see each machine's usage and the status of the reports you sent on your license page. When the control panel checks circuitmcp.net for an update we count the check with the software's version and the country of the address it came from; we don't keep the address.
What your AI client sends to your LLM provider (for example Anthropic for Claude) is processed by that provider under your agreement with them; they are not our processor, and we never see that traffic.
3. What the website collects
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Account: email, optional name, password hash, two-factor secret (encrypted), recovery-code hashes | To give you an account and keep it secure |
| Organizations: name, members and roles, invitations (email and role) | To run Business teams |
| Billing: Stripe customer and subscription records, plan, seats, invoices and payment status, tax ID if you add one | To bill you and keep records the law requires. Card details stay with Stripe. |
| Free-trial records: your email address (lower-cased, without +tags; for Gmail, without dots), its domain, the organization, the subscription it belongs to, the card fingerprint Stripe gives us (not the card number), and whether we allowed or refused the trial and why; if you ask us for an exception, a record of the request with our note | To keep free trials to one per person, card and company (legitimate interests) |
| Licenses: your license, an encrypted copy of the key, and the seats and events from the license server | To show your licenses and seats and to enforce seat limits |
| Downloads: which release, when, your IP address (encrypted) and browser user agent | To protect downloads from abuse |
| Security log: sign-ins, two-factor changes, key views, seat and member changes, admin actions, with IP address (encrypted) | To protect your account and investigate misuse |
| Waitlist and enquiries: email, company, message | To tell you when a product launches, and to answer you |
| Site usage: pages viewed (without query strings), the site that linked you here (its domain only), campaign tags in the link, browser and operating system family, device type, time on page, clicks on a few marked buttons, whether you were signed in (and if so, your account), your IP address (encrypted) and the country it belongs to | To see which pages are useful and where visitors come from, find broken links, fix what doesn't work and spot abuse |
| Requests from crawlers, scripts and scanners: the page asked for, the user agent, the IP address (encrypted) and its country | To see which search engines and AI services read the site, and to spot attacks |
| Errors: the error message and where it happened, with emails, keys, tokens and ids removed, the page, your browser family, and your account if you were signed in | To find and fix bugs |
| Emails we send and your support emails | To deliver account, license and billing messages and to help you |
Usage statistics without cookies. We count visits with our own code on our own servers; nothing goes to an analytics company. It sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser: a visit is a random number that lives only as long as the open tab. We keep the IP address your browser connected from, encrypted, for 30 days, then delete it; the country we look it up in (using a database from DB-IP on our own server, so your address isn't sent anywhere) stays with the visit statistics. To count unique visitors per day we keep a one-way hash of your IP address and browser, made with a random key that changes every day and is deleted after two days, so that hash can't be linked across days. While we keep your address (30 days) we can see that visits came from the same address, and we use that only to spot abuse and our own traffic. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, we don't record your page views or clicks at all (errors are still reported, because they tell us the site is broken).
Cookies. We use a single essential cookie that keeps you signed in. We don't use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, so there is no cookie banner. Stripe's checkout pages, and the Cloudflare Turnstile check on some forms, set their own cookies under their own policies.
4. How we use it, and our legal bases
- To provide the service you signed up for: accounts, organizations, licenses, downloads, support (performance of a contract).
- To bill you and keep financial records (contract and legal obligation).
- To keep the service and your account secure, prevent fraud and enforce our terms (legitimate interests).
- To understand how the website is used and fix errors with the cookie-free statistics above (legitimate interests).
- To send launch announcements to waitlist sign-ups (consent, which you can withdraw any time).
We send account, license and billing emails because they are part of the service. We don't send marketing to customers without consent.
5. Who we share it with
We don't sell or rent personal data. We use these processors, each bound to process data only on our instructions:
- Stripe: payments, invoices and the billing portal.
- Cloudflare: Turnstile bot checks on public forms.
- Microsoft Azure: the network edge that forwards encrypted connections to our servers. It does not decrypt them.
The website, its database, our email server and the license server run on servers we operate. We may disclose data if the law requires it, or to protect our rights or someone's safety, and to a successor if the business is transferred (who must keep this policy's promises).
6. How long we keep it
- Account and organization data: while your account exists. When you delete it, we delete or anonymize it within 30 days, except as below.
- Free-trial records: kept indefinitely, including your email address, so the one-trial rules still apply after you delete your account or organization.
- Billing records: as long as tax and accounting law requires (usually seven years).
- Security log and license events: for as long as they are needed to protect accounts, enforce licenses and investigate misuse. IP addresses in the security log are stored encrypted.
- Site usage statistics: 13 months, then deleted; the IP addresses in them 30 days. Crawler and scanner requests: 90 days (addresses 30 days). Error records: details of each occurrence 90 days; an error's scrubbed message and stack are deleted 6 months after it last happened.
- Software usage statistics and reports you send from the app: for as long as they help us support and improve the software. Ask us and we will delete yours.
- Waitlist entries: until the product launches and we have told you, or until you ask us to remove you.
- Backups roll over and expire on their own schedule.
7. Security
We encrypt traffic with HTTPS, hash passwords with Argon2id, encrypt sensitive fields in the database, and keep one-time tokens only as hashes. More on the security page.
8. Your rights
You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or move it to another service. Email support@circuitmcp.net from your account's address and we will respond within 30 days. Deleting an account cancels its subscriptions first; an organization's owner must transfer ownership or delete the organization before deleting their own account. If you are in the EU or UK you may also complain to your data protection authority. California residents: we don't sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising.
9. Where your data is
Our servers are in the United States. If you use CircuitMCP from elsewhere, your data is transferred to and processed in the United States, with the safeguards described in this policy. Business customers can request a data processing agreement; see the DPA page.
10. Children
CircuitMCP is a professional tool and isn't directed at children under 16. We don't knowingly collect their data.
11. Changes
We will post any changes here with a new date, and email account holders about material changes before they take effect.
12. Contact
Holley Brothers Design, support@circuitmcp.net.