Terms of Service

Plain English first

Most "terms of service" documents are written by lawyers, for lawyers. This one is written by a home cook who built this app for his family, so it's in plain English. If anything here is unclear, just ask.

Your recipes are yours

Every recipe you create, every cook you log, every photo you upload, every note you write — all of it belongs to you. Not us. Not "PrivateCookbook, LLC." You.

You can export everything at any time. You can delete your account at any time and we'll permanently remove your data within 30 days. We don't claim any ownership over the recipes you create or the cooking history you log.

What data we collect

We collect what we need to make the app work, and nothing more:

• The recipes you save (title, ingredients, instructions, photos)
• Your cooking history (which recipes you've cooked, when, and your notes)
• Your taste profile (dietary restrictions, allergies, cuisines you like, household size)
• Your email address (for sign-in and account recovery)
• Basic usage data (which features you use, so we know what to improve)

What we do with it

We use your data to make the app work for you. The AI cooking partner reads your recipes and your taste profile so it can give you suggestions that actually fit your kitchen. The version-tracking system stores your cook history so you can compare and promote past versions.

That's it. We don't share your data with anyone. We don't sell it. We don't train AI models on it. We don't run analytics on your private cookbook.

About the AI

When you chat with the AI cooking partner, your messages and your taste profile are sent to our AI provider (currently OpenAI's GPT-4o for vision and a self-hosted local model for text when available) to generate the response. The AI provider does not retain or train on your data — we use their API specifically because it's contractually committed to not using API content for training.

When you upload a photo for analysis, the photo is sent to the vision model, processed, and the response is returned. The photo itself is not retained by the AI provider after processing.

If you'd prefer to never send any data to a third-party AI, you can simply not use the AI chat features. The cookbook still works perfectly — versioning, cooking history, grocery lists, meal planning, sharing, and cook mode all run entirely on our servers with no external AI calls.

Sharing recipes

When you share a recipe with someone, that person gets read access to that one recipe. They can cook it and track their own versions of it under their own account. Sharing a single recipe does not give anyone access to your full cookbook. You can revoke a share at any time and the other person immediately loses access.

Premium features

The free plan is genuinely free and stays useful. Premium adds unlimited everything (recipes, AI messages, photo analyses, meal planning, grocery lists, sharing) for $4.99/month or $39.99/year. You can cancel at any time and you keep access through the end of the period you paid for. We do not charge cancellation fees and we do not lock your data behind the paywall — if you cancel, your recipes and cooking history remain yours and accessible.

Your responsibilities

The short version: don't be a jerk. Don't try to break the app. Don't upload anything illegal. Don't try to share or scrape other people's private cookbooks. Be reasonable.

No warranties on the cooking part

We make a recipe-tracking app, not food-safety guarantees. The AI cooking partner gives suggestions based on common cooking knowledge — it's not a registered dietitian, food safety expert, or allergen specialist. If you have allergies or dietary restrictions, always double-check ingredients and cooking advice yourself. If the AI says "this is gluten-free" and you have celiac disease, verify it. We're a tool, not a substitute for your own judgment.

Account deletion

You can delete your account at any time from the Settings page (or by emailing us). When you delete your account, we permanently remove all your data within 30 days — recipes, cooks, photos, taste profile, chat history, everything. We do not retain anonymized copies. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Changes to these terms

If we change anything material in these terms, we'll email you and post a notice in the app before the change takes effect. Trivial fixes (typos, clarifications) get applied without notice.

Questions

This is a small operation. If you have a question about these terms, just email Bobby at [email protected]. You'll get a real human response, not a bot.