Legal
Cookie policy
This site sets no advertising or tracking cookies, and it has no third-party trackers to consent to — which is why there is no cookie banner. What it does set is listed below in full.
Last updated 15 September 2026.
Cookies
Reading the course sets no cookie at all. Cookies appear only when you use a feature that needs one: the assistant, signing in with GitHub, or the instructor queue.
| Name | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|
northwind_assistant | A random identifier tying your messages to your own assistant conversation. Holds nothing about you. Set on .mlynn.dev so the course and the storefront share one conversation. HTTP-only, so page scripts cannot read it. | 7 days |
nw_session | Keeps you signed in with GitHub, so the site knows whose free credit or whose API key pays for an AI request. A random token; the server stores only a hash of it. HTTP-only, and set on .mlynn.dev so the course and the storefront share it. Only set if you sign in. | 7 days |
nw_oauth | Holds an encrypted, one-time value that protects the GitHub sign-in redirect from being forged. Deleted as soon as sign-in finishes. | 10 minutes |
nw_queue | Remembers the access token for the instructor queue, so it need not be pasted into the URL on every visit. Only set if you open the queue with a token. | 8 hours |
Each is strictly necessary for the feature that sets it. None follows you to other sites.
Browser storage
Most of what the site remembers is not a cookie at all — it is local storage, which stays on your device and is never transmitted to a server.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Mission and lab progress | So the course picks up where you left off |
| Slide deck position and presenter timer | So a talk survives a reloaded tab |
| Light or dark theme | So your choice sticks between visits |
| Which free-credit warnings you have already seen | So the “you have used 80%” notice appears once, not on every page |
Clearing site data in your browser erases all of it.
Analytics
Page views are counted with Vercel Analytics, which sets no cookie and no cross-site identifier and does not build a profile of you. It reports how many people opened a page, not who they were.
Turning them off
Blocking cookies in your browser leaves the entire course readable — only the assistant and the other AI features stop working, because without a session cookie the site can tell neither one conversation from another nor whose credit a request should use.
More detail on what is stored server-side and for how long is in the privacy policy. See also the terms of service.