Privacy policy

Glue Kit browser extension

This section covers the Glue Kit browser extension. Everything above this section describes this website and its visitors; the extension is a separate product and is covered only by what follows.

What it does

Glue Kit has two halves, and the second one is off until you turn it on.

Signed out, it is an inspector. Click the Glue Kit button in your browser toolbar and it reads the page you are currently viewing: the title, meta description, canonical link, robots directives, Open Graph and Twitter card tags, headings and image alt text. It shows them to you and nothing else.

Signed in, on a website your organization manages, it also shows a small admin bar on that site, lets you see which part of your CMS any element on the page came from, and lets you correct that page's search metadata, the value of a single field on it, or an image on it, without leaving it.

What we collect

Signed out: nothing. The extension has no account, makes no network requests, and what it reads is displayed in the popup and discarded when you close it.

Signed in, it talks to one server, specs.atomicglue.co, and to no one else. It sends:

• The address of the tab you are on, so Specs can tell you whether it manages that site. The query string is removed first. Never your browsing history.
• The address of the page you are on, when you switch Comment on, so Specs can tell you which comments are already pinned to it.
• The search metadata you have edited, when you click Save.
• An image you have chosen, when you upload one as a social share image or as a replacement for an image on the page. A large photo is resized on your device first, to at most 2560 pixels wide and 3MB, and only the resized copy is sent.
• The value of a single field, when you click that element to edit it and save a change: a line of text, a number, a date, a switch, which option a setting is on, a link's words and where it points, which image a picture shows (its web address) and that image's alt text, or a longer piece of writing stored as markdown. That last kind sends the field's whole text. The field can belong to the page you are on or to another record shown on it, such as a blog post's card on a listing page or an article's author. When it belongs to another record, the extension names that record before you save, and which record it is (its collection and ID) is sent along with the change.
• A shared heading or label, when you edit one: which one it is, and the new text. These are stored once and drawn on by many pages, so changing one changes it everywhere it appears. The extension tells you so before you save.
• A comment you have written on a page you manage, when you send it: what you wrote, the address of the page, the size of your window and screen, and your browser version. A picture of the page as it looked on your screen goes too, but only if you have switched screenshots on in the extension's options.

Anything after a "#" in an address is removed before any of this leaves your browser, in both directions.

It receives back your name, email address and role, the organizations you belong to, whether that site's CMS is reachable, the names of the content blocks and fields making up the page, the current text of a field you have clicked to edit (for a picture, its web address and alt text), the images in that site's media library when you open it to choose one, and the comments your teammates have pinned to that page with their replies. Your teammates' email addresses are not included: a comment carries their name only.

Nothing is sold, nothing is used for advertising, and nothing is shared with a third party. Specs is ours.

Comments and screenshots

This is the largest thing the extension sends, so it gets its own section.

On a site you manage you can pin a comment to anything on the page, and sending it opens a ticket in Specs. To make that ticket useful to whoever picks it up, the extension attaches a picture of the page as it was rendered on your screen. That picture can include anything you could see on the page at that moment, including anything you were signed in to see.

Four things about it are worth being exact about.

Nothing leaves your browser until you press Send. You can queue a comment instead, and a queued comment is held on that one machine and can be thrown away. The extension never photographs a page on its own, in the background, on a timer, or on a site you do not manage.

The screenshot is off until you turn it on. Chrome only allows an extension to photograph a page if that extension can reach every site, which is a broader permission than the admin bar needs, so we do not ask for it at install and do not ask for it in passing. It lives in the extension's options page, described in plain terms, and you can withdraw it there at any time. With it off, comments work exactly the same and carry no picture from your screen; Specs renders the page itself instead, as described below.

Switching the mode on does send the page's address, so Specs can tell you which comments are already pinned to that page. That happens before you have written anything, and it is the only part of comment mode that does.

Comment mode is the one place we keep the query string. Everywhere else the address is trimmed before it leaves your browser. A comment is about one specific page, and on a filtered or parameterized page the part after the "?" is often the whole reason it looks wrong. The part after a "#" is still always removed.

A second machine renders the page too. Once the ticket exists, Specs asks our own screenshot service at tools.atomicglue.co to load that same public address and render it top to bottom, signed out, as a clean reference shot. That happens server to server and never passes through your browser, and because it is signed out it sees only what any visitor would. It is ours, not a third party, and it keeps nothing: the picture is stored by Specs alongside the ticket, the same as any other attachment.

Page content

This is the part worth being precise about, because the honest answer is "a little, and only when you ask".

The extension does not read your page's content in bulk, and it never sends a page, post or article wholesale. When you click a specific element to edit it, that one field's current text is fetched so it can be put in the editor, and your new text is sent back when you save. One field, chosen by you, on a site you manage. A picture works the same way: opening it sends its web address and alt text, not the image itself, and an image file crosses only when you upload a new one.

One kind of field is bigger than that sentence sounds, and it is worth saying so plainly. A field stored as markdown holds a whole piece of writing, often the body of an article. Opening one to edit it sends its entire text, and saving sends the whole of your new version back. It is still one field, still chosen by you pointing at it, and nothing around it travels with it. But it is not a short line of copy, and you should expect all of it to cross.

A screenshot is the exception to that, and it is why it has a section of its own above: a picture of a page is a picture of whatever was on it.

The list of block and field names it fetches to label what you clicked is deliberately the shape of the page and not its wording: the server removes every stored value before sending it.

What it can access

Signed out, only the tab you are looking at, and only in the moment you click the toolbar button. It cannot read your other tabs, your browsing history or your bookmarks.

It requests three browser permissions, activeTab, scripting and storage, and permission to contact specs.atomicglue.co. Screenshots on comments need one more, the ability to reach every site, and that one is optional: it is not part of installing the extension, it is offered on the options page, and it can be withdrawn there. The storage permission also holds your display preferences: whether the admin bar sits at the top of the page or floats at the bottom, where it floats, and whether it follows your light or dark setting. It also holds comments you have queued and not yet sent. Those stay on that one machine and are never sent anywhere until you send them.

It also requests access to a website at the moment you switch the admin bar on for that site, one address at a time. That access is not granted when you install it, is never requested for "all websites", and is withdrawn when you switch the bar off again. On a site where you have switched it on, the bar loads with the page rather than waiting for a click. Taking the picture that goes with a comment uses that same access and asks for nothing further, and it photographs only the tab you are actually looking at.

Being recognized

The admin bar carries its own font and mark, and a browser will only load those on a website if the extension marks them readable. A side effect is that any site can check whether that file loads and so work out that Glue Kit is installed. It cannot learn anything else that way: not who you are, not which sites you manage, not whether you are signed in. We mention it because it is true of every extension that brings its own styling, and because it is the sort of thing worth hearing from us rather than discovering.

Accounts

Optional, and off until you choose it. Connecting signs you in to Specs and stores a scoped access token on that one machine, which expires after 90 days. You can disconnect at any time, from the extension or from your Specs profile, and doing so revokes the token immediately. The inspector half needs no account and never asks for one.

Copying data

The extension has a "Copy JSON" button that copies what it read to your clipboard. That happens locally on your device when you press it. Nothing is transmitted.

Changes

If a future version of the extension collects or transmits anything not described here, we will update this section before that version ships.