Privacy Policy for Howlbound
Last updated: 2026
Howlbound is a private notebook for a 28-night evening ritual. What you write at night is yours, and this document explains exactly where it lives and the one occasion on which any of it leaves your phone.
1. Nothing is collected
There is no sign-up, no login, no profile on our side. We run no analytics, no advertising SDK, no crash reporter and no attribution tracking. We never learn your name, your email, your device identifier or how often you open the app. There is no server holding an account for you, because there is no account.
2. Where the writing lives
Your night records, reflections, personal ritual set, badges, statistics, the name you gave your wolf and every setting are written to the app's own private container on the device, using ordinary files and the standard system preference store. They are not uploaded, not backed up to us, and not shared with any other app. If your device is backed up by iCloud or a computer, that backup is handled entirely by Apple under Apple's terms, not by us.
3. The key behind the AI features
Requests are authorized with a key that ships with the app, so nothing has to be set up and no account of yours is involved. If you would rather the requests ran on an account of your own, Settings lets you paste a key of your own: it is then held in the iOS Keychain on your device, used in preference to the included one, transmitted nowhere except as an authorization header to the model provider's own endpoint, and erased the moment you remove it. Neither key carries anything that identifies you.
4. The one moment text leaves the phone
Three features hand text to a language model run by OpenAI (gpt-4o-mini) so a response can be written: the weekly Alpha's Answer, a Night Counsel conversation, and the final Pack Chronicle. What travels is only what that feature needs — the reflections you wrote for the relevant nights, the counts of nights closed and skipped, the minutes you logged, the moon phases you closed under, and the name and temperament you chose for your wolf. A Night Counsel question additionally carries that conversation so far and the sleep entries you typed in: the two times, how the night felt, the number of wake-ups and any line written beside them. Nothing else is attached — no device identifiers, no contact data, no location. Each of these features asks for your agreement on a notice screen before it ever runs, and the switch labelled AI Features turns the whole thing off permanently, after which the app writes its own offline text instead and stays fully usable. What OpenAI does with what reaches it is set out at https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
5. The sleep watch
The optional sleep log is entirely hand-entered: you type the time you went down, the time you woke, how many times you surfaced and a word for how the night felt. Nothing is measured, nothing runs in the background, no sensor is read and no health data of any kind is accessed — the app requests no health permissions. Those entries live in the same private container as the rest of your writing and leave the device only inside a Night Counsel question you choose to send.
6. Reminders
If you switch on the evening reminder, the notification is scheduled and delivered by iOS on your device. No reminder data is sent anywhere. Switch it off and the pending notifications are cancelled.
7. Deleting everything
Settings contains a reset that erases the trail, every reflection, the saga and the stored key. Deleting the app removes the whole private container along with it. Because we hold nothing, there is nothing for us to delete on request — the erase is entirely in your hands.
8. Children
Howlbound is written for adults keeping an evening routine. It is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly gather anything from them.
9. Not a health product
Howlbound is a journal and an evening ritual companion. The Night Counsel discusses routine only — the hour you go down, light, screens, the order in which an evening happens — and nothing beyond it. It gives no medical, psychological or sleep advice, makes no diagnosis, prescribes nothing and is not a substitute for a professional; anything persistent belongs with a doctor. Its walking prompts mean familiar, well-lit places only.
10. Changes
If this policy changes, the revised text ships with the app update and the date at the top moves.
Contact us: trinaberry1988@gmail.com