Data flow and privacy

drawtonomy is a browser-only editor with no application backend. Everything you draw — lanes, vehicles, paths, OpenDRIVE imports, OpenSCENARIO scenarios — lives in your browser tab and in files you explicitly save to your local disk. There is no account system, no server-side database, and no automatic upload of your work.

This page documents what does and does not leave your machine, in a way you can verify yourself with the browser developer tools.

The short version

• Edit data never leaves your browser. No feature uploads your shapes, lanes, vehicles, paths, OpenDRIVE (.xodr), or OpenSCENARIO (.xosc) data to drawtonomy or to a third party.
• The esmini scenario player runs in your browser. It is shipped as a WebAssembly module and loaded from the drawtonomy domain only. Your scenario files are processed in-memory and do not travel over the network.
• No third-party crash reporters or analytics SDKs are embedded. The hosted version at drawtonomy.com counts anonymous page views via Google Analytics; no edit data is included.
• No cookies. No service worker. No background sync. Local preferences (UI toggles, map layer choice) are kept in the browser’s localStorage only. Your shape data and imported / exported files are not saved to browser storage automatically.

Network traffic, in detail

Below is every external host the editor may contact, the user action that triggers the contact, what is sent, and whether your edit data is involved.

Destination	Triggered by	What is sent	Edit data sent?
OpenStreetMap tile servers	Setting the map background to “Road”	Tile coordinates {z,x,y} of the area you are viewing	No
Esri World Imagery tile server	Setting the map background to “Satellite”	Tile coordinates {z,x,y} of the area you are viewing	No
Overpass API (overpass-api.de / kumi.systems)	Running the “Generate Lanes from OSM” tool	The bounding box of the area you are viewing	No
Nominatim (OSM place-name search)	Typing in the map search box	The text you typed	The search string only
Google Fonts	Exporting to SVG / PDF with a system font that is not bundled with the editor	The font name	No (file contents not sent)
Google Analytics	Page view, only on drawtonomy.com	An anonymous page view event	No
The LLM provider you choose (Anthropic / OpenAI / Google)	Enabling the AI Scene Generator extension and clicking Generate	The prompt text you typed (natural language, OpenSCENARIO XML, or DSL)	No — your existing canvas is not included

All of the map-related hosts and the AI Scene Generator are silent until you explicitly opt in to the corresponding feature. See Offline usage for a step-by-step zero-egress workflow.

The esmini scenario player is fully local

drawtonomy embeds esmini as a WebAssembly module so you can play OpenSCENARIO files inside the editor. Three properties make this safe for confidential scenario work:

1. Same-origin only. The WebAssembly module is loaded from drawtonomy.com itself. The editor does not fall back to any third-party CDN.
2. Single-file build. The WebAssembly binary is embedded inside the JavaScript module; there is no separate .wasm request that could be redirected elsewhere.
3. Scenario files stay in browser memory. Your .xosc, .xodr, and catalog files are read by esmini from an in-memory virtual filesystem inside the same browser tab. They are never written to disk by the editor and never uploaded.

If you need to play a scenario whose contents must not leave your company network, loading the file into the editor and pressing Play is safe out of the box. No additional configuration is required.

Import and export

• Import — Files you drag-and-drop (.xosc, .xodr, .osm, JSON snapshots, images) are read by the browser and parsed in your tab. They are not uploaded.
• Export — .xodr, .xosc, SVG, PNG, PDF, and the esmini-ready .zip bundle are all generated in your browser and delivered through a normal download link. There is no server round-trip.

What is stored in your browser

Only UI preferences. Examples:

• The map background mode you picked (and, if you entered one, a custom tile URL)
• Default lane color, smooth-boundary toggle, snap settings
• Whether the points overlay is visible

Your shape data, OpenDRIVE files, and OpenSCENARIO files are not written to browser storage automatically. They live only in the page’s runtime memory until you explicitly save them as a file on your computer.

Verifying this yourself

You do not need to take our word for any of the above. Open the browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and filter to “Fetch / XHR”. Then:

1. Reload the page. The initial bundle download is the only traffic at this point.
2. Draw some lanes by hand. No further requests should appear.
3. Import a .xosc or .xodr file. No requests appear — the file is parsed in your browser.
4. Press Play to run the scenario through esmini. No requests appear — esmini runs locally.
5. Export to OpenDRIVE / OpenSCENARIO / esmini zip. A file download starts; no upload request appears.

The only network requests you will see come from features that explicitly fetch something, and they are listed in the table above. If you avoid those features, you can run drawtonomy with no outbound traffic at all for the rest of the session.

Related

• Offline usage — how to use drawtonomy today with zero outbound network traffic.
• Security FAQ — short answers to common questions from OEM legal and security teams.