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Privacy policy

Last updated: 2026-07-19

papio is a local paper-acquisition tool. It runs on your own machine and, for the institutional handoff, inside your own browser. This policy covers both the papio application (daemon and CLI) and the papio browser extension.

The short version

papio collects no personal data. Nothing is sent to OrgMentem or any third party. The extension talks only to the papio application running locally on your computer, over the browser's native-messaging channel. There is no papio server, no account, no telemetry, and no analytics.

What the extension does and does not do

  • No data collection or transmission to us. The extension has no backend. It communicates solely with the local native-messaging host com.orgmentem.papio on your own machine.
  • No credentials are stored. You sign in to your institution and solve any MFA or CAPTCHA yourself, in your own browser session. papio never sees, stores, or transmits your usernames, passwords, cookies, or session tokens.
  • No bulk scraping. The extension downloads only the papers you explicitly request, one at a time, as part of a specific acquisition job. It does not crawl, harvest, or mass-download from publishers.
  • Your real session, not a bot. The extension uses only standard extension APIs and native messaging — no WebDriver, CDP, or automation frameworks — so it operates as an ordinary part of your browsing.

What is stored, and where

  • In your browser: the extension keeps its own settings and short-lived job and tab state (via the storage API) so it can survive service-worker suspension and reconnect to the local app. This never leaves your browser.
  • On your computer: the papio application stores the papers it acquires, along with their metadata and job records, in its local data directory. These files stay on your machine (and go only to your own Zotero library if you enable that integration).

Permissions

Each browser permission the extension requests is used solely to perform a requested download and report the result to the local app — for example, nativeMessaging to reach the local daemon, downloads to save the one requested PDF, and host permissions to read the library/publisher pages needed for a specific job. A per-permission explanation is available on the extension's store listing.

Third parties

papio does not sell your data, does not share it with third parties, and does not use or transfer it for advertising, creditworthiness, or any purpose unrelated to performing the acquisition you requested. When you request a paper, your browser contacts your institution and the relevant publisher directly, exactly as it would if you visited those sites yourself; papio adds no intermediary.

Changes

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change and the current version will always be available at this URL.

Contact

Questions about privacy: open an issue at github.com/OrgMentem/papio.