HydraTerms — hydraterms.com
Last updated: 2 August 2026
This service ("HydraTerms", "we", "us", or "our") is operated by HydraTerms Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17356884), incorporated on 23 July 2026, with its registered office at Flat 59, Panoramic Tower, 6 Hay Currie Street, London E14 6GF, United Kingdom.
For the purposes of UK data protection law, HydraTerms Limited is the data controller where we determine why and how Hydra account, device, connection, support, and operational data is processed. Stripe and Link may act as independent controllers for Hosted Checkout, Link accounts, and Managed Payments transaction processing that they determine. Their processing is also governed by Stripe's Privacy Policy. For questions or rights requests about Hydra-controlled processing, contact us at privacy@hydraterms.com.
HydraTerms is a local-first, agentic terminal that lets you run, monitor, and remotely connect to AI coding agents running on your own machine from a single interface. The desktop application runs on your own computer; our cloud service exists mainly to let your web browser connect securely to your own enrolled desktop. This means we handle only a limited amount of personal data and do not have access to the content of your sessions.
| Category | Examples | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Account & identity data | Name, email address, authentication identifiers, and login metadata | Provided by you and managed with our authentication provider, Clerk |
| Device enrolment & trust data | Device identifier and label, public device key, enrolment and revocation status, passkey trust records, and recent presence state. Private device keys remain on your device. | Provided by the Hydra desktop and browser when you enrol and use remote access |
| Connection & signalling metadata | Source and target device identifiers, online or offline state, timestamps, short-lived opaque WebRTC signalling data, and relay-credential metadata. This is connection metadata, not terminal content. | Generated when your browser and enrolled desktop establish a remote connection |
| Billing data | Opaque Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, subscription plan, trial and subscription status, and relevant trial, billing-period, and cancellation dates. We do not receive or store your full card or bank details. Stripe and Link separately collect the customer, billing, payment, and tax information needed for a Managed Payments transaction. | Generated through your account use and received from Stripe |
| Technical & operational data | IP address, browser and operating-system information, request timestamps, bounded error details, and content-blind security audit events | Collected automatically when you use the cloud service |
| Support communications | Messages and their contents when you contact us | Provided by you |
| Agent and terminal session content | Prompts, commands, and output within your agent or terminal sessions | We do not collect or receive this in readable form; see Section 4 |
We cannot read the content of your terminal or agent sessions. HydraTerms is designed so that this content is not accessible to us or our staff.
| Purpose | Lawful basis (UK GDPR Article 6) |
|---|---|
| Creating and managing your account; providing the service | Performance of a contract |
| Enrolling devices, maintaining trust state, and connecting your browser to your desktop | Performance of a contract |
| Handling short-lived signalling and relay credentials | Performance of a contract; legitimate interests in reliable and abuse-resistant connections |
| Providing paid access and maintaining our subscription and accounting records | Performance of a contract; legal obligation for records HydraTerms must retain |
| Maintaining content-blind operational and security logs, preventing abuse, and debugging | Legitimate interests in keeping the service safe and reliable |
| Responding to enquiries and support requests | Legitimate interests; performance of a contract |
| Complying with legal and regulatory obligations | Legal obligation |
| Sending essential service and product updates | Legitimate interests in communicating changes to the service |
We disclose personal data only to providers and transaction parties needed to deliver HydraTerms. Their roles differ: some process data on our behalf, while for Managed Payments transactions customers see Link as merchant of record and Stripe or Link may determine parts of the transaction processing as independent controllers. We do not sell your personal data.
| Provider | Purpose | Privacy policy |
|---|---|---|
| Clerk | User authentication and account management | clerk.com/legal/privacy |
| Stripe and Link | Hosted Checkout and subscription billing through Stripe Managed Payments. For those transactions, customers see Link as merchant of record. Stripe handles payment processing, fraud and disputes, transaction-level support including refund requests through Link, and sales tax, VAT, and GST compliance for the transactions and countries covered by Managed Payments. HydraTerms remains the product developer, licensor, and service provider responsible for access to the Software, product-level support, and legal obligations not assumed by Managed Payments. | stripe.com/privacy |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Cloud hosting and connection relay infrastructure | aws.amazon.com/privacy |
We may also disclose personal data where required by law, or to protect our rights, users, or the security of the service.
AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic are not our sub-processors. As explained in Section 4, your desktop connects directly to the AI provider you have chosen and configured, using credentials for your own provider account. We do not send your content to those providers and do not process it on their behalf or theirs on ours. Your use of any such provider is governed by your own agreement with it.
Hydra's primary cloud control plane is hosted by AWS in the United Kingdom. Clerk, Stripe, AWS, or their sub-processors may process some personal data in the United States or other countries outside the UK. The transfer safeguards that apply to those providers are:
| Provider | Safeguard for restricted UK transfers |
|---|---|
| Clerk | The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework while it remains valid; otherwise Clerk's UK Addendum to the Standard Contractual Clauses, incorporated into its Data Processing Addendum. |
| Stripe | Stripe's Data Transfers Addendum, which prioritises the Data Privacy Framework where applicable and otherwise incorporates the UK International Data Transfer Addendum and relevant Standard Contractual Clauses. |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | The AWS UK GDPR Addendum, incorporated into the AWS Service Terms, including the relevant Standard Contractual Clauses and UK international-transfer addendum. |
You can request a copy of the safeguards that apply to your personal data by emailing privacy@hydraterms.com. We may redact confidential commercial information where the law permits, while still providing a meaningful description of the safeguards.
We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes above. The current periods or criteria are:
| Data | Retention period or criterion |
|---|---|
| Account, profile, device, passkey-trust, presence, and saved remote-layout data | While your account or enrolled device is active, then deleted or anonymised within 30 days of account closure unless a narrower retained record below applies. |
| Enrolment codes | An enrolment code is valid for 5 minutes. Hydra stores only its hashed authority record; that content-blind record remains while the account is active and is removed on account deletion. |
| WebRTC signalling | Offers, answers, and ICE metadata expire after 2 minutes, after which their signalling rows are removed by automated cleanup. |
| Relay and connection credentials | Relay credentials are valid for 2 minutes and signed connection tokens for 10 minutes. Hydra does not persist the returned credential or token value; only content-blind audit metadata may remain under the security-audit criterion below. |
| Browser sessions | A Hydra browser session is valid for 24 hours. Its hashed expired or revoked session record remains as content-blind audit history while the account is active and is removed on account deletion. |
| Cloud application logs | Hydra's infrastructure limits these logs to no more than 30 days; the normal configured period is 14 days. |
| Support communications | Until the request is resolved and then only while reasonably needed for follow-up, security investigation, legal claims, or regulatory obligations. We periodically review whether continued retention is necessary. |
| Hydra billing and accounting records | Hydra generally retains its opaque subscription and accounting records for six years where required by UK tax and accounting law. Stripe and Link determine separate retention periods for transaction, indirect-tax, fraud, dispute, and support records they control, subject to their legal obligations and privacy notices. |
| Deletion, revocation, and content-blind security audit records | The minimal deletion tombstone, monotonic revocation marker, and append-only security events may be retained for the life of the service, or until they are no longer needed to prevent recreation of a deleted account, reject old authority, investigate abuse, meet legal obligations, or resolve disputes. |
| Encrypted database backups | Rotated after 14 days. If a backup is restored, deletion and revocation controls are reapplied. |
Use Account → Delete account to request permanent deletion and complete the identity check. If the control is not shown or you cannot use it, email privacy@hydraterms.com from the address associated with your account; we will verify the request before acting. Account deletion blocks further account access and removes Hydra cloud product data, including browser sessions, enrolled-device records, enrollment codes, saved remote layouts, passkey trust records, presence, and signalling metadata. Managed sign-in deletion may finish asynchronously after the Hydra account has become inaccessible.
The Hydra account-deletion control governs Hydra-controlled product data. It does not exercise your rights over a Link account or guarantee deletion of every Managed Payments record controlled by Stripe or Link. Use Link support or the rights and contact routes in Stripe's Privacy Policy for that processing. Stripe or Link may retain transaction, indirect-tax, fraud, dispute, or support records where their legal obligations permit or require it.
To prevent a deleted account from being recreated and to reject previously issued authority, Hydra retains a minimal opaque deletion tombstone and monotonic revocation record. We may also retain content-blind security audit records and limited operational logs where needed for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, or dispute handling. These records do not contain terminal content, commands, files, or private keys.
We do not store the content of your terminal or agent sessions. Deleting your Hydra account does
not delete terminal sessions, projects, files, private keys, or other data stored locally on your
computers. Ordinary app uninstall is not a secure-erasure action and does not guarantee removal of
local Hydra support data or an enrolled device identity. Use the desktop's
Remove Remote action or the documented
hydra-agent service uninstall --forget workflow to remove a device's enrolled remote
identity. Neither action deletes your terminal sessions, projects, or files.
We use technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, authenticated device enrolment, and an architecture that keeps the content of your sessions end-to-end encrypted and inaccessible to us. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and to meet our legal obligations if a breach occurs.
Under UK data protection law you have the right to access your personal data; have inaccurate data corrected; have your data erased; restrict or object to processing; data portability; and to withdraw consent where we rely on it. To exercise these rights for Hydra-controlled processing, email privacy@hydraterms.com. We will respond within one month. For Stripe- or Link-controlled transaction processing, use the rights and contact routes in Stripe's Privacy Policy or contact Link support.
Where we rely on legitimate interests, you may object to that processing. You have an absolute right to object to the use of your personal data for direct marketing at any time; if we send such marketing, we will stop when you object. HydraTerms does not currently send optional direct marketing messages.
You also have the right to complain to the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk or by calling 0303 123 1113, though we would appreciate the chance to resolve any concern first.
On pages controlled by HydraTerms, we use only essential cookies needed for authentication, security, and operation of the service. HydraTerms does not currently use analytics or marketing cookies on those pages. Hosted Checkout and Link are controlled by Stripe or Link and follow their own cookie and privacy practices, shown on those services and described in Stripe's Privacy Policy.
HydraTerms is not intended for, and may not be used by, anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.
We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here and revise the "Last updated" date. Where changes are significant, we will take reasonable steps to notify you.
Privacy, data, and account-deletion questions:
privacy@hydraterms.com.
Security reports: security@hydraterms.com.
General and company enquiries: info@hydraterms.com.