Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy describes how Hoelscher Automation LLC handles information collected through hoelscherautomation.com (the "Site").

1. What We Collect

Contact form submissions

When you submit the contact form, we collect the name, email address, and message you provide. The form is processed by Formspree (see Section 3).

Scheduling

When you book a discovery call through our Google Calendar Appointment Schedules link, Google collects your name, email, and any additional information you provide on the booking form. We receive a calendar invitation containing this information.

Analytics

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand aggregate Site usage. Cloudflare collects pageviews, referrer, country, and device type. Cloudflare Web Analytics does not use cookies, does not collect IP addresses, and does not contain any personally identifiable information.

Cookies

Hoelscher Automation LLC does not set any first-party cookies on the Site. Embedded third-party services (Formspree, Google Calendar) may set their own cookies; see their privacy policies for details.

2. How We Use Information

• To respond to contact-form inquiries
• To schedule and conduct discovery calls
• To understand which parts of the Site are useful and improve them
• To comply with legal obligations

We do not use collected information for advertising, profiling, or any marketing not initiated by you.

3. Service Providers We Share With

• Formspree processes contact-form submissions. Formspree privacy policy
• Google provides calendar booking, font hosting, and (if you click to book) videoconferencing through Google Meet. Google privacy policy
• Cloudflare provides analytics and CDN delivery. Cloudflare privacy policy

We do not sell your information. We do not share information with data brokers, marketing networks, or any third party not listed above.

4. Data Retention

Contact-form submissions are retained until your inquiry is fully resolved, plus twelve (12) months for reference. Calendar bookings are retained for the duration required by Google Calendar's own retention policies. Cloudflare analytics data is aggregated and does not contain personal information; it is retained per Cloudflare's policies.

5. Your Rights

You may request that we delete the contact-form submission or scheduling information we hold about you by emailing consulting@hoelscherautomation.com.

If you are a resident of the European Union or the United Kingdom, you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including the right to access, rectify, delete, or restrict processing of your personal data, and the right to data portability.

If you are a resident of California, you have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the right to know what personal information is collected, the right to delete personal information, and the right to opt out of any sale of personal information (note: we do not sell personal information).

6. Cortex Knowledge

This Privacy Policy covers hoelscherautomation.com. Cortex Knowledge is a separate self-hosted software product with its own data handling characteristics, summarized here for transparency. The product is governed by its own license and installation documentation; the summary below should not be relied upon as the complete description.

What runs on your infrastructure

The Cortex Knowledge application, your uploaded documents, and the search index built from them all run on your hardware. Hoelscher Automation LLC does not have access to these artifacts. Embeddings used for retrieval are generated locally and never transmitted.

What happens at query time depends on the LLM mode you choose

To synthesize a cited answer from retrieved document chunks, Cortex Knowledge sends those chunks plus your query to a large language model. The product supports three LLM configurations, selected by you at install:

• Local (Ollama): your query and the retrieved chunks are processed entirely on your hardware. No content leaves your firm.
• BYO API key: your query and the retrieved chunks are sent directly to the LLM provider (currently Anthropic) under your own account and contract. Hoelscher Automation LLC has no involvement and no access.
• Hoelscher proxy: your query and the retrieved chunks transit our proxy infrastructure to the underlying LLM provider. We do not persist query content, document chunks, or generated answers, but they pass through our systems in transit, and we retain billing-related metadata (token counts, timestamps, and the originating installation ID).

Scope of data sent at query time

In all three modes, only the chunks selected by retrieval for a given query are transmitted (typically 5–10 chunks per query). Your full document corpus is never transmitted, and your documents, indexes, and prior query history remain on your infrastructure.

7. Changes to This Policy

Hoelscher Automation LLC may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The "Effective" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision. Material changes will be highlighted at the top of this page for at least 30 days following the change.

8. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy or requests regarding your personal information: consulting@hoelscherautomation.com