What English sends, and where it goes

If you're putting this in front of a class, you'll want to know what leaves the machine. Here it is, plainly.

Translating

Your plain-English text is sent to OpenAI, relayed through our own server. On a small edit we also send the previous English and the program it produced last time, which is what keeps the rest of your code from being rewritten.

Nothing else about you goes in that request. Not your name, not your email, not your order history. We ask OpenAI not to retain the request for later retrieval, though that's a flag we set on the call rather than a promise we can make on OpenAI's behalf. If your school has a policy about AI services, treat it as "text typed by the student goes to OpenAI".

Clicking explain on a line of code sends the generated program plus the English line it came from, the same way.

Compiling

Pressing Verify or Upload sends your sketch and the board you picked to our compile service, which runs on AWS in the United States. It goes straight from your browser rather than through littlebirdelectronics.com.au. The sketch is written to a temporary directory, compiled, and the compiled firmware is sent back. It isn't kept.

Flashing

Nothing leaves your machine. The compiled firmware is written to your board over USB by the browser itself.

Your browser will not let any web page see your serial ports until you pick one from its own dialog, and that dialog is drawn by the browser, not by us. We can't enumerate your ports, and we can't reach a board you haven't handed us.

Saving

Signed in, your project is saved to your Little Bird account: the English, the generated code, the App tab's HTML and your settings. Saved projects are private to the account that made them.

Signed out, nothing is sent at all. Your work stays in the browser's local storage.

What stays on your machine either way

• Everything on the Data tab. Logged readings go to a database inside your browser, are never uploaded, and aren't part of a saved project.
• Your board pairing, board choice and baud rate.
• Any work done while signed out.

Do students need an OpenAI account or key?

No. The translation goes through our server, which adds our key at our end. No key is ever sent to the browser, and there's nothing for a student to sign up for beyond a free Little Bird account.

Networks and firewalls

The editor and console components load from public CDNs. On a school network that blocks cdnjs.cloudflare.com or cdn.jsdelivr.net, English still runs but drops back to plain text boxes: no line numbers, no click-to-link highlighting, no explain. Translating, Verify and Upload all still work.

If you're allow-listing, the hosts worth adding are littlebirdelectronics.com.au, the CDNs above, fonts.googleapis.com, and the compile service on lambda-url.us-east-1.on.aws.