How we use AI

What Coach is, and isn't

• Coach is an AI. It answers rules questions from the rulebook and documents of the game you're playing, and tags each answer with the page it came from. Tap the tag and the real page opens, so you can check it.
• Coach isn't a person, and it can be wrong. If an answer and the rulebook disagree, the rulebook wins. When the rulebook doesn't say, Coach is built to tell you so instead of guessing.
• Coach searches the web only when you ask: tap Search the web for this, or ask in words. Then a web search service gets the search words, and Coach answers from the results, with links.
• Photos you ask about, and score sheets you scan at a Game Night, are read by an AI model.
• In Voice Mode, your browser or a speech-to-text service turns what you say into text, and Coach answers aloud in an AI voice.
• Scanned rulebook pages are read into text by an AI so Coach can search them. The page you see is always the publisher's own page.

Turn AI off

The library, Game Night planning and the Table Tools use no AI, whatever this is set to.

What AI writes

• The game helpers: Quick Reference, Setup, Beginner Tips and How to Teach. An AI writes them from the rulebook and cites its pages. They are labeled “AI-written from the rulebook”. No person checks them before you see them, and the printed sheets say so.
• The Coach's Playbook. An AI writes it from the rulebook. Then a second AI model checks every line against the page it cites. A line it can't confirm is rewritten once or removed, and a Playbook that loses too much isn't shown at all.
• The Game Night recap story: a short story of the night, a title and a line about each game. An AI writes them from the night's results: the games, who won, and players' names as they joined. Scores, winners and stats are counted, never written by AI. If the host rewrites the story, the label says so.
• Names for uploads. When an uploaded file has no usable name, an AI suggests one from its first pages.

What AI never makes

• The rulebooks. They are the publishers' own files, uploaded by players.
• Game art. We never generate game art. Box covers come from BoardGameGeek, the publisher's rulebook, or the person who added the game.
• Our look. The logo is a founder's own design. The recap and invite designs are patterns drawn in code, not made by an image generator.
• Scores, plays and stats. They are what you and your friends enter, counted. A scanned score sheet is read by an AI, and the host checks it before it counts.
• Your shelf and your notes. They are yours, in your words.

AI audio

• Coach's voice in Voice Mode and Read aloud is a synthetic voice, made with an AI voice service. It isn't a real person, and it isn't a copy of anyone's voice. Some older Read aloud recordings were made the same way with another voice service. Both are labeled “AI voice”.
• Coach's Ambiance is AI-generated music. We made each game's loop ahead of time with an open-source music model, on our own computer, from a short description of the game's mood. Nothing about you goes into it. It is labeled “AI-generated music” while it plays.

The AI services we use, and what they get

Most AI requests go through a gateway we run ourselves. If one service fails, the same request can go to the next in a fixed backup order. This is a summary. The privacy policy has the details: what each service gets, where it processes data, and what it may keep.

We don't sell your information, and we don't send these services your email address or account details.

What never goes to an AI

• Your shelf: notes, house rules, ratings, plays, prices, loans and shelf photos.
• Anything you import from BoardGameGeek.
• Game Night planning: invitations, email addresses, answers, date votes, game suggestions and the plan's messages.
• People: your connections, connect requests and their notes, blocks, toasts, comments, messages and reports.
• Con Mode: the name you show a convention table, the conventions you're going to and what you're bringing, your gamer card, your convention page and Players wanted. The one exception is a guest's photo at a convention table, which gets the safety check above.

Automated tests check this on every release: they fail if the code that talks to an AI reads any of it.

How we check Coach is right

• Every answer shows its pages, so you can check any answer in a tap.
• Coach Confidence is the die on each game: three pips for 80 and up, two for 60 to 79, one for under 60, and a hollow die when it isn't rated yet. To make it, an AI writes test questions from the rulebook, Coach answers them, and a different AI model grades each answer against the rulebook text. The score is mostly that pass rate, plus how often Coach couldn't answer real questions about the game.
• In our last broad check (September 2026: 40 games on the current Coach model, graded by an AI model), 98% of the page tags Coach showed pointed to a page that supports what it said, at least in part. Of 108 questions the rulebooks can't answer, Coach avoided making one up on 105, checked by hand.
• An AI grader can be wrong too, so treat these as estimates, not guarantees.
• Spot a mistake? Tell us from the game's menu (Something off with this rulebook?) or from the link on any printed sheet.