Privacy Policy

Commonplace turns cooking videos you choose into written recipes and keeps them in a cookbook that is yours. This page says what is stored to do that, who else handles it, and how to take it back.

Who is responsible

Commonplace is run by Karl Stix, karlstixiam@gmail.com. Write to that address about anything on this page.

What is stored about you

Your email address, to log you in and to send the two emails this service sends: the one that confirms your address and, if you ask for it, the one that resets your password. Nothing else is emailed.
Your password, only as a one-way hash (Argon2). Nobody, including the operator, can read it back.
Three dates: when the account was created, when its email was confirmed, and when you accepted the terms.
Your cookbook: which videos you saved, the chapters you made and what you filed under them.
Your import history: the links you submitted, when, and whether each one worked. It is what the daily import limit is counted from.
Your import balance: a line for each import that used one of your imports, and for any that were added to your account.

This is kept in order to provide the service you signed up for; the log-in records described below are kept to protect accounts, which is a legitimate interest of the operator and of the people whose accounts they are.

Not collected: your name, age, location, contacts, or anything about how you use the app. There is no advertising and no analytics or tracking code.

What happens to a video you add

The video is downloaded to the server, its speech is transcribed there, and a few still frames are taken from it. The caption, the transcript and those frames are sent to Anthropic's Claude, which reads the on-screen text and writes the recipe. The video, its audio and the frames are then deleted from the server; one thumbnail image is kept. The recipe page plays the video from TikTok's or Instagram's own player, which is that company's service and follows its privacy policy.

A recipe made from a public video is not private to you: if someone else saves the same video, they get the same recipe. What is private is that you saved it.

Cookies

Two, both needed for the app to work: one keeps you logged in (30 days), one remembers how your cookbook was last sorted (one year). Neither tracks you.

Server logs

A failed log-in attempt is logged with the IP address it came from, to spot password guessing. These logs are not kept long-term and are not shared.

Who else handles your data

Anthropic — processes video captions, transcripts and frames to produce recipes. It is not sent your email address or who you are.
Hetzner — hosts the server and the database.
[Email provider — to be chosen] — delivers the confirmation and password-reset emails, and so sees your email address.

Your data is not sold or given to anyone else. Anthropic is a company in the United States, so what is sent to it is processed outside the European Union.

How long it is kept

For as long as you have an account. Deleting the account removes it at once, as described below.

Your rights

Under Account you can download everything kept for your account as a file, and delete the account. Deleting it removes your email and password, your cookbook, your chapters and your import history at once. Recipes and thumbnails made from public videos stay in the shared store, with nothing left that links them to you. For anything else — a correction, a question, a complaint — write to the contact address above. If you are in the EU you may also complain to your data protection authority.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is posted on this page with the date it takes effect.