What we collect, and mostly don't.
elems.ai runs lean on purpose: fonts and code are self-hosted, there are no ad pixels, no advertising networks, no session recording, no data brokers, and nothing about you is ever sold or shared. There is exactly one third-party script on the site, and it is measurement, not advertising.
Analytics — the one exception
We use Google Analytics 4 to count what a small publisher needs to count: how many people arrive, which pages they read, and which links they follow out. It sets cookies in your browser and Google receives your IP address, which we ask it to truncate before storage. We look at it in aggregate — page-level totals, referrer sources — and we never attempt to identify an individual reader or connect analytics data to a stack-builder submission or an email address.
If you'd rather not be counted, that's completely fine and the site works identically without it: any content blocker, the browser's tracking protection, or Google's opt-out add-on will stop the script loading. Nothing on this site is gated behind analytics, and nothing behaves differently when it is blocked. Google's own handling of the data it receives is governed by its privacy policy.
The stack builder
The quiz runs entirely in your browser. Your five answers never leave your device unless you choose to submit your email for the written report. If you do, we store: your email address, your five answers (stage, builder type, team size, budget, focus), and the element stack that was recommended — because the report is built from them, and because aggregated, anonymized answer data feeds the public State of the AI Stack research. We never store names, IP-based profiles, or anything you didn't type.
Email delivery runs on beehiiv with double opt-in: nothing is sent until you confirm from your inbox. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing also stops any future use of your address. We never sell, rent, or share addresses; sponsors — if the newsletter ever carries any — receive audience-level numbers only, never addresses.
The MCP server and open data
The MCP server at mcp.elems.ai is read-only: it serves the public dataset and computes stack recommendations from the parameters an agent sends in the moment. It stores nothing about you or your queries beyond standard operational logs.
Links out
The element pages link to roughly 1,150 vendors and 1,500 sources. Following one takes you to somebody else's site under somebody else's policy. Where a link is a referral link it is marked ° and disclosed on the page — and per the charter, whether a link earns us anything never affects a ranking.
Deletion and questions
To see or delete what we hold about you, email [email protected] from the address in question — deletion within 30 days, usually much faster. This policy changes only in public: amendments are logged in the changelog.
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