01 Summary

Friction is an academic-integrity tool that makes the process of AI-assisted writing visible to your assessor. While you work on an assignment in the Friction editor, the platform records the sequence of actions you take — your prompts and responses with permitted AI tools, edits to your document, paste events, idle periods, and your responses to in-line check-ins. That record is synthesised into a Friction Report, which your assessor reads. You consent before any session begins, and you can stop a session at any time.

02 What Friction records

Friction records the following, and only the following, while you have an active session open:

• Prompts you send to permitted AI tools and the responses returned to you, captured via the AI platform integration listed for your assignment.
• Edits to your document inside the Friction editor — the resulting text, word-count deltas, and the timing between actions.
• Paste events into the editor: the size and word count of each paste, the source URL (when available), an internal classification of the paste against your recent AI responses, and a short excerpt of the pasted text — up to roughly 400 characters — so the Friction Report can reference what entered your draft.
• The questions Friction Bot asks you mid-session and the responses you give, including the input method (typed or voice).
• Session-level metadata: when each session began and ended, total time in session, and basic context about your environment such as whether the optional browser extension was active.
• Timestamps for every recorded event.

03 What Friction does not record

The list above is exhaustive. Specifically, Friction does not capture:

• Browsing or activity on any website that is not the Friction editor or the AI tools permitted for your assignment.
• Keystrokes, mouse activity, or window focus events outside the Friction editor.
• Screen recordings, screenshots, microphone input, or webcam activity.
• Anything that happens before you start a session or after you submit. The session is bounded — when you pause or end, recording pauses or ends with it.
• The clipboard contents of pastes that originate outside the session, beyond the short excerpt described in section 02. We do not store full clipboard history.

04 How your data is used

The recorded events feed two things: the live Friction Bot, which asks you questions during your session based on patterns in the event stream, and the Friction Report, which is generated when you submit. The report is produced by sending the recorded event timeline to an AI model (Anthropic Claude) operated by Anthropic under their commercial terms; the model summarises the timeline and maps it against the assessment criteria your assessor has defined. Your assessor reads the report and may also inspect the underlying event log if the report flags something they want to verify.

Records are retained for the duration of the assignment and for as long as the educational institution requires for academic-integrity audits. Students do not automatically receive a copy of their own Friction Report; if you wish to see it, ask your assessor.

05 Your rights

You may withdraw consent at any time by ending your active session and contacting your assessor. Withdrawal stops further monitoring; it does not retroactively delete events recorded before withdrawal, because those events form part of the academic-integrity record for work you have already submitted. You may request access to or correction of personal data Friction holds about you by writing to the address below; if you dispute an interpretation in your Friction Report, raise it with your assessor in the first instance.

06 Questions

Speak to your assessor first, or write to policy@frictionedu.com.