The short version: nothing in this section requires an account, most of what you type never leaves your browser, and the two features that do involve a server call are both off by default and clearly marked when they're on. The longer version, tool by tool, is below.
The tools that save your progress in this browser
The Leadership Practice Snapshot, Scenario Simulator, Change and AI Readiness Assessment, Leadership Practice Journal, Coaching Question Deck, Org Alignment Workbench, and Stakeholder Interview Builder all save your progress in this browser's local storage - no account, no server upload. Three of these (Snapshot, Readiness, Coaching Question Deck) only ever store structured choices - which item you answered, which questions you bookmarked - never free-text content. The other four (Simulator, Journal, Org Alignment Workbench, Stakeholder Interview Builder) do hold some real free text you type in: a written response inside a deeper Simulator scenario, a daily Journal reflection, your own description of a work situation in Org Alignment, or a stakeholder's name and your own custom questions in the Interview Builder. Every one of these seven tools gives you a way to clear your saved data from this browser - worded as "Delete all my data," "Start over," or "Clear set" depending on the tool - and the Journal additionally offers a Markdown export, since it's meant to be kept and revisited.
The accountability planner and listening session facilitator: session-only by design
Two tools are built around drafting or talking through real, specific, often sensitive text about an actual workplace situation, so their storage defaults are deliberately more conservative than the seven tools above:
- The Compassionate Accountability Planner: by default, your draft only lives for the current browser tab session (technically: session storage, not local storage). Close the tab, and it's gone. This is on purpose - the tool is ephemeral by default specifically so a draft about a real, specific conversation doesn't sit on your device indefinitely just because you happened to leave a tab open. An explicit "remember this plan on this device" checkbox lets you opt into longer-term storage if you're working on something over multiple sessions - turning it on does not store the text you've written, only which mode you're in, which safety checkboxes are set, and your overall progress; the actual facts, standard, draft message, and every other free-text field stay blank in that longer-term copy, and you'd re-enter them if you come back in a new session. Turning "remember" back off immediately clears the longer-term copy, rather than waiting for it to expire on its own.
- The Listening Session Facilitator goes further still: every prep note and reflection you type lives only in this tab's session storage, with no opt-in longer-term tier at all - there's nothing to turn on. Close the tab and it's gone for good; use the tool's own "Copy your reflection" button first if you want to keep what you wrote somewhere of your own choosing.
The gated AI draft-message review
One mode of the accountability planner (draft-message review) can optionally send just the message you're reviewing to an AI model for feedback - not the rest of your plan, not your name, nothing else you've typed. This feature ships off by default, and when it's off, the review button doesn't render on the page at all - there's no hidden or disabled version of it sitting in the page's code, it's genuinely absent. When (and if) it's ever turned on: requests are rate-limited, and server logs never record the message content itself, only whether the request succeeded or failed.
The weekly digest email
A separate, optional weekly email highlighting one Leadership Lab article - requires a real account and an explicit opt-in in your account settings, unlike every tool above. It ships off by default for the whole site (a separate flag from whether you personally would opt in), and every email carries a one-click, no-login unsubscribe link. Nothing about which specific tools you've used or what you've typed into them factors into this email - it's the same rotating pick sent to everyone who's opted in that week, not personalized from your activity, because the tools above deliberately don't send anything to a server for it to be personalized from.
What this section doesn't do
No page in this section sells, shares, or analyzes what you type into a tool - because none of what you type into any tool above ever reaches a server to be shared in the first place. Coarse, non-identifying usage events (which tool was opened, whether a result was reached) may be recorded for the site's own analytics, the same as elsewhere on MBA Lab - never exact answers, scores, or free-text content.