Arete works without an account. If you never sign up, your data never leaves your device.
The short version. Everything you track is stored locally on your device first. Creating an account syncs it so you can use Arete on more than one device. AI features send the specific text or photo you're asking about to an AI provider. We don't sell your data, and there are no advertising trackers.
Arete is an independent app built and operated by Oskar Steinicke. For any privacy question or request, email oskarsteinicke@gmail.com.
By default Arete keeps all of your information in your browser's local storage on your own device. That includes your habits and streaks, workouts and personal records, meals and macros, bodyweight, sleep, journal entries, progress photos, goals, settings and your character progress.
If you use Arete without an account, this data is never transmitted to us. Clearing your browser data or deleting the app removes it permanently, and we cannot recover it for you.
An account exists so your data can sync across devices and survive a lost phone. When you sign up we process:
This data is stored with Supabase (Postgres hosting) and is protected by row-level security rules so that your records are only readable by your own authenticated account, except where you deliberately share them via a leaderboard group.
Three features send data to an AI model on request. Each one is triggered by you, never in the background.
| Feature | What is sent |
|---|---|
| AI Coach chat | Your message, plus a short summary of your current context — readiness score, calories and protein for the day, how many habits you have completed, and the names and streak lengths of habits at risk. |
| Coach's Focus | The same context summary, without a chat message. |
| Food photo scan | The photo you choose, resized to a smaller image before sending. |
These requests pass through our own proxy on Cloudflare Workers and are processed by Google's Gemini API. The proxy exists so our API key is never exposed in the app; it forwards your request and returns the answer. Arete does not keep a copy of your photos or chat messages on the server — coach conversation history is stored locally on your device only.
Your use of these features is subject to Google's handling of API data. If you would rather not send anything to an AI provider, simply don't use the coach or the photo scanner; every other part of Arete works without them.
You can optionally connect Apple Health, Google Fit, Strava, Fitbit or Whoop. These connections are read-only: Arete imports figures such as bodyweight, steps, workouts and recovery, and never writes anything back. You authorise each one yourself and can disconnect it at any time in the app.
Apple Health data is sent via a shortcut you set up, and is held briefly in Cloudflare KV storage so the app can collect it. Those entries expire automatically after 30 days.
Leaderboards are opt-in. If you create or join a group, the other members of that group can see your display name and your summary stats: level, XP, longest streak, workouts this week and whether you have been active recently. They cannot see your meals, journal, photos, bodyweight or anything else. Leaving a group removes your entry from it.
Premium subscriptions are processed by Stripe. Stripe collects and handles your card details directly under its own privacy policy — Arete never receives or stores your card number. We store only your subscription status so the app knows which features to unlock.
Arete uses Google Analytics to understand which features are used and where people get stuck, and to record technical errors so they can be fixed. Error reports contain the error message, the file and line it came from, the screen you were on and the app version.
Error reports deliberately exclude your content: no habit names, meals, workouts, journal text, photos, email address or account identifiers are attached. Analytics data is not used for advertising, and we do not sell it or share it with data brokers.
Account data is kept for as long as your account exists, because its purpose is to preserve your history. Apple Health entries in temporary storage expire after 30 days. Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics' standard retention settings. Deleting your account deletes your synced data.
You can delete your account from inside the app, under Profile → Delete Account. This immediately and permanently removes your account, everything synced to it and your leaderboard entries, and cancels any active subscription. It cannot be undone.
You can also ask us to give you a copy of your data or correct it. Email oskarsteinicke@gmail.com from the address on your account and we will respond within 30 days. Depending on where you live you may also have the right to object to processing or to complain to your local data protection authority.
You can remove local data at any time yourself by clearing the app's storage or deleting the app.
Arete is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
Our providers — Supabase, Cloudflare, Google and Stripe — operate infrastructure in multiple countries, so your data may be processed outside the country where you live, including in the United States. Each provider offers standard contractual protections for those transfers.
If this policy changes in a way that affects how your data is handled, we will update the date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, notify you in the app.