Data & AI at the Lab
Who touches what, which robots we run, and what we never train on.
Grown-up companies send their customers pages of legal notices about "sub-processors." We are a kid and his dad, but the idea underneath is right: you should be able to see every service that touches data when you use this site, and exactly what our robots do with what you type. This page is that list, kept current. When it changes, the changelog at the bottom says so.
On this page
Services that process data for us
The full list, our equivalent of a sub-processor register. "What it touches" is everything that service can see.
| Service | Job | What it touches | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thinking Humans (a separate company Joseph’s dad also runs) | Runs the Imaginator, Reachy’s first brain, the print queue, the text-line drafts and the inbox sorting, on its own rack | Toy ideas, generated 3D models, chat questions, print requests, customer texts and emails | our house, TX |
| The relay (a rented server at Thinking Humans) | Forwards Imaginator, chat and fleet traffic between this website and the Lab’s computers | The requests passing through; nothing is stored there | rented server |
| Google Analytics | Counts page views and where visitors come from (Google signals, ad personalization and optional data sharing switched off) | Page views, IP addresses, device and browser details, analytics cookies | US cloud |
| Vercel | Hosts this website and its serverless functions, with its privacy-friendly analytics (no ad trackers) | Visitor requests (IP addresses), page views, form submissions in transit, short-lived technical logs | US cloud |
| The Lab’s console and Printer Ranch apps (on Vercel) | Where Dad approves things and where paid orders become print jobs | Order names and what was ordered become print jobs; approvals and their records | US cloud |
| Shopify | The shop: checkout, orders, the Lab List | Orders, shipping addresses, emails, newsletter signups; card details go to Shopify’s payment processors, so we never see card numbers | US/CA cloud |
| Resend | Sends our emails (welcome codes, order notes, form deliveries) | Email addresses and the contents of emails we send you | US cloud |
| Quo (formerly OpenPhone) | Our phone line, (512) 399-2625: calls and texts, the automatic acknowledgement, the missed-call text, model-drafted routine replies (sent after a five-minute pull window), MARKET reminders, and a contact record for each number that texts us | Phone numbers, the contents of calls and texts, voicemail transcripts, MARKET opt-ins and STOP requests | US cloud |
| xAI (Grok) | Reviews the Lab’s plan documents for Dad | Plan documents only; no customer data, no visitor data, no child data | US cloud |
| Anthropic | Claude: backup brain for the Reachy chat and the Imaginator's custom-part quotes | Only the text you type to those two robots | US cloud |
| Delivers this site’s fonts; handles the mailbox behind joseph@texastoylab.com, which the Lab’s own server reads through the Gmail API to sort the inbox and draft routine replies; your browser’s voice input | Font requests (IP only); emails you send us; if you use the microphone, your browser vendor converts speech to text | US cloud | |
| Porkbun | Our domain and email forwarding | Email routing to our mailbox | US cloud |
We also post on Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook and LinkedIn, those platforms only see what you do on their sites, under their own policies. Our 3D printers run in LAN mode inside our house and do not send your data anywhere.
The AI stack, completely
Everything with a brain at the Lab, and where each brain lives:
| Robot | Model / software | Runs where |
|---|---|---|
| The Imaginator (idea → picture) | SDXL-Turbo (open-source image model) | our rack |
| The Imaginator (picture → 3D toy) | Hunyuan3D-2 (open-source 3D model) | our rack |
| Idea safety check | Open-weights language model screening every prompt before printing | our rack |
| Photo safety check | Open-weights vision model asking only "person / unsafe / OK" about an uploaded photo before it is used | our rack |
| Reachy chat | Open-weights language model first; Anthropic Claude as backup when the rack is busy | our rack / Anthropic |
| The Imaginator (custom-part quotes) | Anthropic Claude | Anthropic |
| Text-line replies | Open-weights language model on the rack drafts routine replies from the facts on this site; a second model checks every sentence; a grown-up can pull it for five minutes | our rack |
| Inbox sorting | Open-weights language model on the rack sorts the Lab mailbox and drafts routine replies; anything else waits for a grown-up | our rack |
| Plan review | Grok (xAI) reads plan documents for Dad; never customer or visitor data | xAI |
| Voice input | Your browser’s built-in speech recognition (e.g. Google’s, in Chrome) | your browser’s vendor |
The training statement
Training policy: The Lab never trains on visitor or child interactions. Any future model learns only from the Lab’s own photographs and prints.
What we may use to improve our own models: Joseph’s own designs, and real photographs of printed toys. Never toy ideas you typed or spoke, never the 3D models drawn from them, never whether you pressed "I love it!" or sent something to print: those run the Imaginator and let Joseph review and print your toy, nothing more. That happens only on Thinking Humans’ computers (Joseph’s dad’s other company, same house). Photos uploaded to "From a photo" are never one of these either: they are checked for people on the Lab’s own rack, used once to draw that one toy, and never written to disk or kept, accepted or refused. We do not attach names or emails to any of it, and we tell you not to type personal details into the robots because they genuinely don’t need them.
What is never used for training, by anyone: your emails, contact-form messages, texts, calls, orders, addresses, the Lab List, and every visitor or child interaction named above. Full stop.
Where it actually runs: chat and the Imaginator are processed by Thinking Humans, a separate company Joseph’s dad also runs, with Anthropic’s commercial API as backup for chat; under Anthropic’s terms it does not train its models on our inputs or outputs. We do not send your data to any unrelated outside AI company, and we will update this page before that ever changes.
Kids’ data
This site is built for families, so we collect as little as possible on purpose: the one account here, My Lab, is a grown-up's password-free email-code sign-in for lesson progress and points, never a child's; no ad trackers; forms marked grown-ups-only; robots that are told not to ask for personal details. The one place a child’s first name is the point, the Imaginator’s name-tag tab, asks for a first name only and uses it only to shape the letters. Under-13s are asked to have a grown-up submit any form. Details in the privacy notes.
Changelog
- Google Analytics added to count page views and where visitors come from, with its advertising features switched off
- register extended: the relay, xAI (Grok) for plan documents, the console and Printer Ranch apps on Vercel, the Gmail API reading the Lab mailbox on the Lab’s own server; the short version now says typed toy ideas are never used to train anything
- the text line, (512) 399-2625, automated: automatic acknowledgement, missed-call text, model-drafted routine replies released after a five-minute pull window, MARKET reminder list, contact records in Quo
- Vercel’s privacy-friendly analytics recorded in the register; Happy Robot mark on the site (no data change)
- unpkg removed (the 3D viewer is now served from our own /assets/vendor); the toy maker renamed the Imaginator; TTL Robot chat now called Reachy chat
- page created; full register and AI stack published
- Quo added (phone/SMS); Lab List welcome emails via Resend
- Resend engaged for transactional email
Formally
Formally: Crabtree Ventures LLC (dba Texas Toy Lab) is the data controller for this site. The services above act on our instructions as service providers. We keep this register current and date every change below; if we ever engage a provider whose role meaningfully changes how your data is handled, we will update this page before the change takes effect. Questions or objections: joseph@texastoylab.com or (512) 399-2625; a parent answers both.
- Where
- Austin, Texas
- Made at
- The Printer Ranch, the Lab’s own printers
- Run by
- Joseph, the inventor, and his dad
- Company
- Crabtree Ventures LLC
The small print: Licenses (whose designs we print, and how) · Privacy · Terms · Data & AI · Accessibility