Privacy Policy

Account information. When you sign in, we collect your email address and, if you use Google sign-in, your name and profile photo. We use this only to identify your account and send transactional emails (such as magic-link sign-in links).

Household and meal data. Everything you add to Gathered — recipes, meal plans, shopping lists, pantry items, and brand preferences — is stored in our database so it persists across devices and is shared with your household members.

Dietary preferences. If you set dietary restrictions or preferences (such as vegetarian, no shellfish, or similar), these are stored as part of your household profile and used to tailor meal plan suggestions. We treat this information as health-adjacent data and do not include it in analytics or share it with third parties, except as described in the AI processing section below.

Usage analytics. We collect anonymous behavioural events (for example, "meal plan generated", "recipe imported") to understand how the app is used and improve it. These events contain only aggregate counts and flags — never recipe content, ingredient names, dietary restrictions, or any personally identifiable information. Your user ID is one-way hashed before being sent to our analytics provider so it cannot be reversed to identify you.

Payment information. Subscription billing is handled entirely by Stripe. Gathered never sees, stores, or transmits your card number or banking details. Stripe's privacy policy governs how they handle payment data.

Push notification tokens. If you grant notification permission, we store a device push token so we can send you meal prep reminders (such as thaw-from-freezer alerts). You can revoke this at any time in your device settings or the app's notification settings.

Gathered uses Anthropic's Claude AI to power features including meal plan generation, recipe import from URLs or photos, and related suggestions. To provide these features, we send the following information to Anthropic's API:

• Your household's standing preferences and weekly schedule notes
• Your recipe library (names, effort levels, protein types)
• Dietary restrictions and preferences you have set
• Text or photo content when importing a recipe

Anthropic processes this information to generate responses and does not use it to train their models by default. We do not send your email address, name, or any account identifiers to Anthropic. Please review Anthropic's privacy policy for full details on how they handle API data.

Bring Your Own Key (BYOK). You may optionally provide your own Anthropic API key. If you do, your key is stored with AES-256-GCM encryption in our database and is used exclusively to make AI API calls on your behalf — for the same features described above. Your key is never returned to the browser in full, never shared with other users, and is never used for any purpose other than fulfilling your own requests. You can remove your key at any time from Settings.

We use the data described above only to:

• Provide and maintain the Gathered meal planning service
• Sync your data across household members and devices
• Generate AI-powered meal plans and recipe suggestions
• Send transactional notifications you have opted into (thaw reminders, re-engagement)
• Process subscription billing through Stripe
• Understand aggregate usage patterns to improve the app

We do not sell your data. We do not use your data for advertising. We do not share your data with third parties except the service providers listed in this policy.

Gathered uses the following third-party services to operate:

• Anthropic — AI processing for meal planning and recipe features (see section 2)
• Stripe — subscription billing and payment processing
• PostHog — anonymous usage analytics with hashed user identifiers and no PII
• Vercel — application hosting and edge delivery
• Neon — managed PostgreSQL database hosting
• Resend — transactional email delivery (magic-link sign-in, re-engagement emails)

Your data is retained for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, all associated data is permanently and immediately removed from our database, including your recipes, meal plans, shopping lists, dietary preferences, brand preferences, and push notification tokens. This action cannot be undone.

If you are a household owner with other members, you must transfer ownership or remove all other members before deleting your account. Household data shared with other members will remain accessible to those members.

To delete your account, go to Settings → Members → Delete account. You may also contact us at andrew@gatheredplate.app and we will delete your account within 30 days.

Gathered uses a session cookie to keep you signed in. We do not use third-party tracking cookies. Your app preferences (such as a customised button label) may be stored in your browser's local storage and never leave your device.

Gathered is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Continued use of Gathered after a policy change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

For any questions, requests, or concerns about your data, please contact us at andrew@gatheredplate.app.