Privacy Policy

Who we are

Metacenta is published by Sico Software Ltd, a company registered in Scotland. Metacenta produces a Data & AI technical review of a dbt project and its repository, and Migration Assurance, a comparison of a data estate before and after a migration. Both read named artefacts you send and repository metadata, and neither needs access to your warehouse or your production data. If you choose to grant a temporary, read-only connection, it reads metadata such as query history, never the contents of your tables. For Migration Assurance, and only if you choose, you may also send reconciliation results: counts and relative changes your own warehouse computed from the tables being migrated. We are registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) — registration number ZC106029. Privacy questions: privacy@sico.software.

Data we collect

Account data. Your email address, and your name if you give us one, held so you can sign in and retrieve your review. Access is by invitation only — there is no signup — and an address we have not invited never receives a sign-in link. We also record when you last signed in.

dbt artefacts you send us. manifest.json, and optionally run_results.json, sources.json and catalog.json, sent to us or uploaded through the portal. These describe the structure of your project: models, sources, tests, columns, and what your last build did. They are read to produce the review, and the SQL a manifest or run_results.json carries is dropped at the reader.

Repository metadata. Through a read-only token you supply: the file tree, languages, contributor counts and which CI configuration exists. Nothing is cloned. The only file contents fetched are named configuration files — dbt_project.yml and packages.yml (or dependencies.yml) in the dbt project, and dependency manifests at the repository root (requirements.txt, pyproject.toml, environment.yml, package.json) — and, only where you ask us to review a SQL directory, the .sql and Dataform .sqlx files under that one path, each reduced to the tables it reads and writes with its text dropped. profiles.yml is excluded by filename, because it is the one dbt file that holds warehouse credentials.

Other artefacts, only if you choose to send them. An orchestration file (an Airflow DAG, or a Dagster or Prefect definition), a LookML project, a Power BI or Tableau semantic model, Terraform files, an OpenLineage export, a BI usage export, a warehouse query-history collection, and a change history produced by one command we publish. Each is read for structure only: SQL bodies, DAX and M expressions, dashboard titles, query text and rows are dropped at the reader; in an orchestration or SQL file, a credential-shaped value is reported as a line number and never read out; Terraform variable and state files are refused by name; and the change history holds commit hashes, dates and file paths — no names, emails or messages.

Read-only warehouse access, only if you grant it. Not needed for a review. If you grant a temporary, read-only connection instead of running our published query yourself (its credential goes through your engagement contact, never a web form), it reads query history and schema metadata — never the contents of a table — and you can revoke it at any time.

Reconciliation results, only if you choose to send them. For Migration Assurance only. You run a read-only script we publish in your own warehouse console, and your browser reads its output. You then choose what to send: nothing, a verdict per table pair, or the figures, as counts or as proportions. The figures are row counts, null counts, keys found on one side only, the relative change in a column's total and, if you opt in, rows per month. They never include a value from a row, a key or a total itself. Tables and columns appear only as numbered references; their names are in the script you ran, not in what you send.

The findings. The review, the per-finding worklist and the PDF as delivered. These are held per client with database-level isolation, so one client's findings are not reachable from another client's session.

Enquiries. What you type into the enquiry form on our front page — your email address, your company's website and, if you add it, a line about your stack. Used to reply to you. We do not add anyone who sends an enquiry to a mailing list.

How we use your data

• To produce the technical review you commissioned, and to let you retrieve it later
• To confirm who you are when you sign in, and to show your colleagues' access on your own team list
• To reply to an enquiry you sent us
• To write, a few times at most, to people at companies that show a public sign that a review could help them (see "People we contact first" below)

AI processing. By default the review runs with ZERO calls to any language model, and a run with none produces the complete document. An optional interpretive pass sends a findings DIGEST — check identifiers, severities, counts, and example model, source and file names — to a third-party model provider. It is off unless you agree to it, the report states what was sent, and owner names and email addresses are excluded from it by construction rather than by filtering. No file contents, no SQL and no query results leave our systems on either path, and reconciliation figures are never sent to a model provider. A run_results.json does contain compiled SQL; it is read for pass/fail status and discarded at the boundary, never stored and never sent anywhere. The lawful basis for this processing is contract performance — it is necessary to deliver the service you signed up for.

Data sharing

We do not sell your data. We share data only with sub-processors required to operate the service:

• Anthropic — The optional interpretive pass over the findings digest, only where you have agreed to it. Never receives file contents, SQL or query results.
• GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket — Whichever hosts your repository, read via a read-only token you supply, to collect repository metadata. We send them nothing about you.
• Hunter (hunter.io) — Finds and checks the work email address of a person at a company we contact first. Receives the company's domain and, where we have it, the person's name.
• SuperTokens — Self-hosted authentication. Holds the email address you sign in with.
• Hetzner Online GmbH — our server provider (Germany, EU). The live database runs here.
• DigitalOcean LLC — off-site storage for database backups. Backups are encrypted before they leave our server; DigitalOcean cannot read them.
• Resend Inc. — transactional email (account and billing notifications).
• Sentry (Functional Software Inc.) — error monitoring, EU-hosted (stack traces; query strings removed before sending).

Data retention

We keep your review and the artefacts' derived findings for as long as the engagement is live and you want to be able to retrieve them. Ask and they are deleted — there is no period we are obliged to keep them for. The artefacts you sent are not retained beyond producing the review; what is retained is the findings and the documents built from them. Reconciliation results you chose to send are kept, encrypted, with the migration report they support, and deleted with it on request. Answers you give on the AI maturity page are kept, encrypted, with your name and the date, and deleted on request.

Your rights under UK GDPR

As a UK resident you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Rectification — correct inaccurate data
• Erasure — ask us to delete your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we process your data
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests

To exercise any right, email privacy@sico.software. We will respond within 30 days. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the ICO at ico.org.uk.

Security

All data is transmitted over TLS. Our server (Hetzner, Germany) is access-controlled via SSH key and Tailscale VPN. Integration credentials and API keys are encrypted at rest using pgcrypto symmetric encryption.

Cookies

We use one strictly necessary session cookie to keep you logged in. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. PostHog analytics uses a first-party cookie; it does not track you across other sites.

Changes to this policy

Material changes will be communicated by email and by updating the effective date above. Continued use of the service after notification constitutes acceptance.