Baklog Privacy and Security: Local-First Data Handling

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/Ogrods/BAKLOG/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Baklog is a local-first desktop tool. The “server” in the README is a http://127.0.0.1 Python process that serves files to your own browser tab — nothing more. Your game library, personal notes, and store credentials live on your machine under profiles/<id>/ and are never transmitted automatically. When you click Refresh or run a fetcher, Baklog makes direct requests from your machine to the storefronts, authenticated as you, from your own IP — exactly as if you had done it by hand in a logged-in browser tab. There is no project-owned cloud backend that holds your data.

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TL;DR

• Everything is stored locally on your computer. Library files, personal annotations, cached API responses, and store credentials all live on disk in the Baklog project folder.
• Baklog talks to storefronts on your behalf. Each store sees its own normal API or web-session traffic coming from you — not from a shared server or pooled credentials.
• There is no remote backend for your library. The project authors never receive your catalog, notes, or credentials automatically.
• baklog.app is separate. The marketing website has an optional waitlist, a bug-report endpoint, and a public free-claims feed. None of these receive your library data. See Hosted surfaces below.
• Backups are local. The last 10 successful writes of each games_*.json and rotated copies of data/personal.json are kept on disk and never transmitted.

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Credential storage

Baklog handles several classes of credentials, stored in different places depending on their type. Credentials are never written into fetched games_*.json files, never logged in plain text to stdout, and never included in the bug-report bundle payload.

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Library and personal data

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games_*.json

One file per store. Contains library titles, your playtime and last-played timestamp as the store reports them, store cover-art URLs, genre tags, and enrichment data (Steam reviews, HowLongToBeat hours, ITAD prices, ProtonDB tiers). Owned by the corresponding fetch_*.py script. The last 10 successful writes of each file are kept in data/games_backups/<stem>/ so a bad fetcher run cannot wipe your data. These backups are local only.

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data/personal.json

Your personal annotations: status (backlog, next, playing, unfinished, live service, finished, skip), notes, priority score, HLTB hour overrides, and the hidden flag. Keyed by store:id. Rotated backups are written to data/personal_backups/personal-<timestamp>.json on every PUT /api/personal call. All local only.

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localStorage

The browser tab mirrors personal.json plus UI preferences (sort order, picks tab, collapse state, etc.) in localStorage. Nothing in localStorage leaves the browser tab. Neither games_*.json nor data/personal.json is transmitted automatically. They leave your machine only if you copy them somewhere.

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OS keyring

The encrypted Connections credential document (cache/auth/secrets.bin) is protected by a key held in your OS keyring: The .master_key fallback is a plaintext key file protected only by OS file permissions. It is weaker than a real keychain. Prefer enabling a master password (Connections ⋮ menu) if no keyring is available — the master password derives the encryption key via scrypt and is never written to disk. Encryption details: AES-256-GCM with a fresh random 12-byte nonce on every write; authentication tag verified on read. Source: auth/secrets.py.

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Portable secrets bundle

The Connections ⋮ menu → Portable bundle… → Export bundle… creates a single file you can carry to a new machine or keep as a backup. The bundle never leaves your machine unless you copy it somewhere yourself. Baklog does not upload it. On import, the existing cache/auth/profiles/ tree is moved to cache/auth/profiles_pre_import_<timestamp>/ before overwriting, so a bad import can be rolled back manually.

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Hosted surfaces (baklog.app)

The marketing website at baklog.app has a small number of optional, separate surfaces. The local dashboard does not upload your library or credentials to any of these.

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Bug reports

When an uncaught error fires in the dashboard, Baklog captures it locally and surfaces a sticky toast with Send report, Copy bug bundle, Errors only, Details, and Dismiss options. Nothing is sent automatically. Send report opens a consent dialog that shows the exact JSON payload before sending. The bundle is a strict whitelist — only these fields are included: The bundle deliberately does not include state.personal (your notes, statuses, priorities), manualGames, library or wishlist JSON, credentials, .env contents, cookies, or any path containing your home directory. Copy bug bundle places the same sanitized JSON on your clipboard without any network request. Nothing is sent until you explicitly confirm in the Send report dialog.

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Optional Supabase auth

Supabase auth is opt-in and only active when you set BAKLOG_SUPABASE_URL and BAKLOG_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY in .env. When enabled, Supabase stores your account email and session metadata on their hosted service. Your library JSON and Connections secrets remain local — only the login handshake talks to Supabase. Without those environment variables, Supabase is not contacted and behavior is unchanged (local profile switcher, no sign-in gate).

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Third-party data sources

When you run fetchers or open the dashboard, Baklog’s enrichers and deal-price scripts contact these services directly from your machine. No project-owned server proxies these requests. Store logos and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Baklog is not affiliated with Valve, Epic, GOG, Sony, Microsoft, or other storefronts.

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What does not happen

• No telemetry or analytics. No silent crash reports. The error log stays in your browser until you copy it or explicitly send it via Send report.
• No third-party ad or tracking scripts in the dashboard.
• No project-owned cloud service holds your library or credentials.
• No automatic sync between machines. Use the portable secrets bundle (Connections → Export bundle…) to move to a new PC.

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Removing your data

Everything is on disk. Delete these to remove all Baklog data: To rotate or revoke individual credentials, do so on the storefront’s account settings page, then delete the matching file in cache/ or the corresponding row in .env.