Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 September 2026

This policy explains what personal information Forge collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

Who we are

Forge is the brand name for the business of Stuart Loone (ABN 26 098 233 496), who builds custom AI agents for Australian businesses. In this policy, "we", "us" and "Forge" mean that business, and "you" means anyone who uses this site or our services.

What we collect

• What you tell us in the chat / booking: your name, email or phone, your business name and type, roughly how big your team is, and the problems you'd like help with.
• If we emailed you first: we found your business, and the contact address it publishes, on your public website or a public business directory. We use that address only to send you a short note about what we saw on your site. Reply "unsubscribe" and we'll never email you again.
• Your public footprint (free Harvest): during the free scan we look only at publicly available information on your website. We do not access your internal systems, accounts or private data at this stage.
• Forge Scout (the free on-PC scan): Scout runs on your computer and reads only the folders you pick — file names and dates, and the column headings of your spreadsheets, never what's in the rows. Your full report is written to your machine and stays there. What comes back to us, automatically when the scan finishes, is a redacted summary: the kinds of process we spotted, some counts, the column headings of your spreadsheets, an hours estimate, and the crew we'd build. It contains no file names, no file paths, no file contents and nothing about your customers. You're told this before the scan starts, and starting it is how you agree to it.
• A financial file, if you choose to share one: typically a profit-and-loss or a transaction export. We don't keep the file. It's read, personal details are stripped out of it automatically, our engines compute the findings, and only those findings are stored. The file itself is never written to our disks or our database.
• The Shadow (the paid week): an agent watches how work actually moves through your business — which jobs are done, how long they take, and where things wait. It runs inside your systems and what it learns is used to design your crew. It records processes, never individual people: no per-person output is produced at any point.
• If you go ahead with a build: you may choose to share deeper information about your systems so we can design the right agents. We collect this only when you choose to share it, treat it as strictly confidential, use it only for that purpose, keep it no longer than needed, and never sell it.
• Payment details: card payments are handled by Stripe. Your card number never reaches us — we're told the payment succeeded, for how much, and the name, email and phone you gave at checkout.
• Basic technical data: standard information your browser sends (such as approximate location and pages viewed) so the site works and stays secure.

How we use it

• To prepare your free scan and the crew of agents we'd recommend, and to give you a ballpark.
• To contact you about your enquiry and the results.
• To run and improve our service and keep it secure.

We do not sell your personal information, and we don't use it for unrelated marketing without your consent.

Where it's stored & who can see it

Your information is stored securely and access is limited to Forge. Any sensitive business or financial information you share with us is kept strictly confidential, used only to design and run your agents, and held no longer than needed for that purpose. When we build and deploy agents for you, those agents run on your own machines — your business data stays with your business and doesn't leave it.

We use a small number of trusted providers to run the service — for example, email delivery and AI processing. They only handle what's needed to provide the service and are bound to keep it confidential. Some of them are based overseas — mainly in the United States (email delivery, AI processing and card payments) — so information you give us may be processed there. We may also disclose information where required by law.

Your rights

You can ask us to access, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you. Just email us and we'll sort it out. If you're not happy with how we've handled your information, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).

Cookies

We keep this to a minimum — only what's needed for the site to function. We don't run third-party advertising trackers. To see whether the site is working, we count visits to each page and the website they came from. We keep only the totals: no cookie, IP address or device details are stored, and nothing is shared with anyone.

Changes

We may update this policy from time to time; the "last updated" date above shows when. For anything about your privacy, email us at hello@forgeagents.com.au.