What happens to
your documents.

Four steps, in order. Nothing else happens to the file.

1. 01

   Your file uploads to private storage

   The file goes from your browser straight into private, encrypted storage, in a folder only your account can reach. There is no public link to it. Files are capped at 15 MB — a scope sheet as PDF, Excel or Word; a bid as PDF.

2. 02

   The AI reads it

   Our server sends the document to the AI to read your leveling sheet into scope lines, or to read a bid and check it against those lines. An Excel or Word sheet is converted to plain text first. File size and document structure are checked before processing. These checks reject unsupported content, but do not provide antivirus scanning or guarantee that a file is harmless.

3. 03

   The results come back and are shown

   What comes back is structured: your scope lines, each bid's terms, and the line-by-line calls with the bid's own quote and page. Those results are saved to your account and shown in the app. The file itself is not copied anywhere new.

4. 04

   Opening a document in the app

   When you open a PDF in the app, the server checks that it is yours and checks the file. Your signed-in browser then downloads the verified bytes without a shareable link. An Excel or Word sheet has no pages to show, so the server reads it on the spot and returns its rows; no link is issued and nothing extra is stored.

The AI receives the document itself and the names you typed: the project, the bid package, the sheet and its file name. A historical clarification implementation sends the subcontractor's name, the scope lines it asks about, and the response-by date you set. Nothing identifies you to the AI provider — no account, no email address.

Under Anthropic's commercial terms, what we send is not used to train their models. Their standard retention applies; we have not arranged a zero-retention agreement. We link their terms rather than restate them.

• Account access. Every record is tied to your account, and the database itself refuses any other account's request. There is no master key in the app that could bypass that check.
• Files are private. Storage requires your signed-in account. The application confirms ownership and checks the file before displaying it, and does not issue shareable file links.
• Verified email signup. Accounts require email verification. CAPTCHA, server-enforced daily allowances, private storage, and shared spending limits help reduce abuse. The request form on this site records an email, company, and optional role, and nobody can read those rows back through the app.
• The people who run Prestead. The operator has administrative access to the underlying database and can read your data. It is used to operate and debug the service, and for nothing else — our Terms bind that.
• Limits on use. Each account has a daily ceiling on AI runs, and the AI steps can be switched off at once. These bound what a stolen login could do.

Deleting a project deletes the files, not just the records. Every package, scope line, bid, assessment and clarification draft under it is removed, and then the project's storage folder is swept so that every bid PDF it ever held goes too — including a file left behind by an upload that failed midway.

Your saved scope sheets are not part of that sweep. They belong to your account, not to one project, so deleting a project leaves your Templates library intact. Deleting a sheet there removes its file; the lines you already confirmed on a package stay, because by then they are your work.

Deleting a single bid removes its PDF as well. If the file cannot be removed at that moment, the app says so rather than reporting a clean delete. A durable cleanup record remains and removal is retried when you return to the application. Account deletion also includes an operator check for remaining files.

Every project deletion offers a receipt to download: a plain-text record of the project, the account, the time, and the number of packages, bids and PDFs removed. The counts come from what the deletion actually did. Keep it for your own compliance file.

Deleting your whole account is not yet self-serve. Email help@presteadai.com and we will delete the account and everything under it, then confirm in writing. Our deletion reaches our own stores; it cannot reach what the AI provider or our hosting providers retain under their own schedules — the Privacy Policy names them.

If you find one, email help@presteadai.com — it reaches a person, not a queue. We aim to acknowledge a report within two business days. We will not pursue legal action against anyone who reports a problem in good faith, does not access or modify another account's data, and gives us reasonable time to fix it before disclosing. We do not run a bug bounty.

Related reading: sample output from a real run, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.