Privacy, in plain language
Draft for review. This summary describes how HouseChief works today; it will be reviewed and replaced by a final privacy policy.
The short version
- Your family's information is kept to your household and shown only to the people in it.
- We don't sell your data, show ads, or use advertising or analytics trackers.
- The AI works for you: changes to your calendar and meals, emails, and anything submitted on a website wait for a parent's Approve.
- Kids don't have accounts or email addresses, and their helper can't change anything.
What we store
- Parents' names, email addresses and passwords. Passwords are stored only as a secure hash, never as text.
- Kids' profiles: a name, a color and an emoji you choose. Kids have no login. A parent's PIN, if you set one, is also stored only as a hash.
- What you add: calendar events, meals and recipes, lists and to-dos, projects, chores, stars and rewards, home upkeep, coloring pages and stories.
- Your chats with your agents, the memories you ask them to keep, and skills you teach them.
- Your family's city, used for weather, drive times and the briefing.
- Sign-in cookies, so you stay signed in on your device. No advertising or tracking cookies.
HouseChief runs on Vercel, and your data is kept in a Postgres database hosted by Neon.
AI
When you use the Chief of Staff, quick add, voice, or a kid's Buddy, the request and the family information needed to answer it (for example this week's calendar) are sent through the Vercel AI Gateway to the AI model that handles it, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or xAI. Web searches go through the same gateway.
Agents can only read and propose. Calendar and meal changes, emails, new projects and website submissions need a parent's Approve; quick additions to a list come with Undo. When an agent uses its web browser, it runs in a separate cloud sandbox, never types passwords or card numbers, and stops for your Approve before submitting anything. What you type when you take over is not recorded.
Things you connect
- Google Calendar and iCloud: the calendars you choose are synced both ways. An iCloud app-specific password is stored encrypted, and you can revoke it at Apple at any time.
- OneDrive: recipes, images and documents are saved to a HouseChief folder in your OneDrive, and the agents only look inside that folder.
- Connected apps: apps a parent connects in Settings are read-only, for that parent only, never for kids.
- Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants: if you connect one, it acts as you inside your family: it can read and add to your lists or Inbox. Disconnect it in Settings and its access stops.
Disconnecting any of these in Settings stops HouseChief from using it.
Email and notifications
Emails a parent forwards to your family address are received by our email provider (Postmark) and turned into an Inbox item for you to approve. We only accept them from a parent's own address. We send sign-in, sign-up and invite emails, and push notifications to devices where you turned them on.
Sharing
Share links let grandparents or a sitter see a read-only schedule. They never show lists, notes or settings, and you can turn a link off at any time. We store only a scrambled version of each link.
Your choices
Parents can change or delete anything in the app, disconnect services in Settings, and turn off notifications on each device. To have your family's account and data deleted, send us a note with Send feedback in the app and we'll take care of it.
Last updated October 2026. Back to HouseChief