ClipForge — Privacy Policy & Terms

1. What ClipForge is

ClipForge is a desktop application operated by Milk & Ink Studio LLC (“we,” “us”) for one purpose: publishing our own videos to our own YouTube channels, including our gaming channel Cursed Biscuit Games. After a recording session it edits the footage, cuts vertical Shorts, writes the title, description, tags and chapters, and uploads the finished videos to our channel with a scheduled publish time. It also reads our own channel's statistics and YouTube Analytics reports to learn what our audience watches, uses them to steer the next video, and, when our staff ask it to, replaces the titles, descriptions and thumbnails of our own already-published videos.

ClipForge is an internal tool. It runs on a company computer, is used only by our staff, has no server, no accounts and no public sign-up, and is not part of the Milk & Ink Studio product our customers use. Nothing on this page changes our customer Privacy Policy or Terms of Service.

2. Privacy Policy

Information accessed through YouTube API Services

ClipForge uses YouTube API Services, with our authorisation through Google OAuth 2.0, to read and change our own channel only. It requests three scopes:

Upload (youtube.upload): upload videos, with translated titles and descriptions, and thumbnails to our channel.
Channel management (youtube.force-ssl): read our channel name, subscriber and video counts, our list of uploads and, for each of our own videos, its title, description, tags, publish date, duration, privacy status and public view, like and comment counts; read and create our playlists and add our videos to them; post our own comment on our own videos; and replace the title, description and tags and set the thumbnail of our own published videos (the revamp feature described below).
Analytics (yt-analytics.readonly): read YouTube Analytics reports for our own channel and videos, by default covering up to the last two years: views, watch time, average view duration and percentage, shares, subscribers gained and lost, audience-retention curves, traffic sources by type, daily totals, and aggregate audience breakdowns by age group and gender, country, device type, subscribed or not, and content type (Shorts, videos, live).

Every change ClipForge makes on YouTube is to our own channel: uploading videos and thumbnails, creating playlists and adding our videos to them, posting our own first comment on a new video once it is live, and, only when our staff run the separate apply step of the revamp command (drafting the new text changes nothing on YouTube), replacing the title, description, tags and thumbnail of our own existing videos with new ones drafted by Gemini. Revamp keeps each video's previous title, description and tags so they can be restored.

Separately from YouTube API Services, ClipForge reads the public pages of our own channel and videos the way any visitor's browser would, using the open-source tool yt-dlp. It uses this to list our videos, to tell Shorts from long-form videos, to read public figures (views, likes, comment counts) as a fallback when API access is unavailable, and, for the revamp feature, to download a low-resolution copy of each of our own published videos and a short full-quality section for each thumbnail frame. The download tool may also fetch its own open-source helper component from GitHub.

ClipForge never accesses, collects or processes data about any other YouTube user, channel or video. The Analytics reports it requests are aggregate figures about our own audience; it never requests anything about an individual viewer, does not read comments written by other people, does not read subscriber lists (only the channel's subscriber count), and does not access watch history.

Information ClipForge stores

OAuth token: stored only on the company computer that runs ClipForge, used solely to call YouTube API Services on our behalf, and never transmitted anywhere except to Google.
Upload records: the YouTube video IDs and playlist IDs of videos ClipForge itself uploaded, and their scheduled publish times, kept next to each video so the same video is never uploaded twice.
Channel snapshot and playbook: a local copy of the data described above for our own channel (our video list with titles, descriptions, tags and counts, and the Analytics reports including the aggregate audience breakdowns), refreshed automatically about once a day while ClipForge is running and whenever our staff run its insights command; figures from a YouTube Studio export if our staff import one by hand; a plain-text evidence report built from all of that; the audience playbook Gemini writes from the report; and a performance summary (views, watch time, retention and similar figures) beside each video ClipForge produced that it can match to one of our published videos.
Revamp records: for each existing video ClipForge has revamped, its previous and new title, description and tags, its view count at the time, and the low-resolution working copy and thumbnail frames used to draft the new text.

All of this is stored on the company computer only. YouTube API data is not stored on any server we operate, is not sent to any Milk & Ink Studio server, is not sold and is not used for advertising; it leaves the computer only to go to Google: back to YouTube API Services, and to the Gemini API described below. ClipForge has no server, no database, no user accounts, no tracking or advertising code and no cookies.

Other services

ClipForge uses the Google Gemini API, a Google service separate from YouTube API Services that it calls with our own API key, to do its editing and writing work. It sends:

Our own footage: a low-resolution copy of each recording (the video and our commentary audio), still frames from it (including full-resolution frames of the moments picked for thumbnails, which are also sent to Gemini's image model to be restyled), and the cut Shorts, to plan the edit, identify the game, pick thumbnail frames, transcribe captions, and draft titles, descriptions, tags, chapters, a first comment and translations. ClipForge asks Gemini's file storage to delete each copy it uploads as soon as the request finishes.
YouTube data about our own channel: the video titles and chapter titles, publish dates, lengths, view counts, watch-time and retention figures, subscribers gained, traffic sources, daily view totals, the channel's subscriber count and the aggregate audience breakdowns (age group and gender, country, device type, subscribed or not, content type) from the snapshot above (which comes from YouTube API Services, or from the public channel page when API access is unavailable) are sent to Gemini, about once a day and whenever our staff run the insights command, to sort our videos by game and to write the audience playbook. When our staff have also imported a YouTube Studio export of our own channel, each video's impressions and click-through rate are sent with them. The playbook, including its plain-language summary of who watches, is then added to the prompts ClipForge sends when it plans each new video. For the revamp feature, the current title, the first lines of the description, the publish date and the view count of the video being revamped, and the median view count of our videos of that kind, are sent together with its low-resolution copy.

Google handles these requests under its own Gemini API terms. ClipForge also asks Gemini, with Google Search, which sound effects are currently trending (that request carries only a one-line description of our audience from ClipForge's own settings, no YouTube data), and searches Openverse with generic terms such as “airhorn” and downloads the openly licensed sound effects it lists from the sites that host them; no footage or channel data is sent to Openverse or those sites. The Gemini key itself is read from the computer's settings or, if it is not set there, borrowed for that run from Milk & Ink Studio's own hosting configuration; no footage or YouTube data is ever sent in the other direction.

Retention, deletion and revoking access

ClipForge sets no automatic expiry: everything it stores, as listed above, stays on the company computer until our staff delete the files, which they can do at any time. Deleting the token removes ClipForge's ability to call YouTube API Services until it is authorised again. Access granted to ClipForge can also be revoked at any time from https://myaccount.google.com/permissions; that ends ClipForge's access to our channel but does not delete the files already on the computer, which are deleted by hand.

Google and YouTube policies

ClipForge's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Its use of YouTube API Services is subject to the YouTube Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy.

3. Terms

ClipForge is provided for the internal use of Milk & Ink Studio LLC and is not offered to the public as a product or service.
By using ClipForge with YouTube API Services, we agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service and acknowledge the Google Privacy Policy.
Only content we own is processed and uploaded, and every upload must comply with YouTube's Community Guidelines and copyright rules.
ClipForge is provided as is, without warranty of any kind, including for failed or delayed uploads.

4. Changes and contact

Changes to this page are published here with a new effective date. Questions: privacy@milkink.studio.

ClipForge is an independent tool of Milk & Ink Studio LLC and is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.