Privacy Policy

Effective November 3, 2026 · Ahlchemy Author Company

The short version. Ahl Control is local-first. You bring your own Home Assistant, and your Home Assistant address and token stay in your browser on your device — we never receive them. The only data that can reach our servers is tied to optional features you turn on (Google sign-in, shared shopping-list sync, buying Pro, sending feedback). We don't sell your data, we don't run ad trackers, and we never use your content to train AI.

1. Who we are

Ahl Control is operated by Ahlchemy Author Company ("we," "us"), State of Missouri, USA. Questions, privacy requests and notices: admin@ahlchemy.org.

2. What stays on your device (we never receive it)

Your Home Assistant address and long-lived token — stored only in your browser's local storage. The app talks to your Home Assistant directly from your device; your credentials are never sent to our servers.
Your layout — rooms, tiles, floor-plan pins, scene presets, device list and house name.
Images you add (floor plans, tile photos) and your controls PIN.

Clearing your browser data, or your browser evicting storage (see §9), removes this on-device data — including your Home Assistant token, which only you hold. Keep a backup (⋯ menu → Backup configuration).

3. What reaches our servers — only if you use the feature

Feature	What we store	Where / how long
Google sign-in (optional)	Your Google email, name, and Google access + refresh tokens, to show your Google Calendar and mirror Google Tasks	Cloudflare Workers KV, auto-expires ~30 days after last use; deleted on sign-out or account deletion
Shared shopping list (optional sync)	Your list items, keyed to a private, unguessable list id your devices generate	Cloudflare Workers KV, auto-expires ~180 days after last change; deletable in-app
Buying Pro (optional)	Payment is handled by Stripe — we never see or store your card details. We store only a Pro "unlocked" marker (a cookie) on your device	Stripe (see §5); entitlement cookie on your device
Feedback (optional)	The message you type, the app version, and a timestamp	Transient server logs; no account is linked
Abuse prevention	A short-lived per-IP request counter (rate limiting)	Cloudflare Workers KV, minutes

Standard edge logs (IP, timestamp, request path) are processed transiently by Cloudflare for security and reliability and are retained roughly 7–30 days.

Weather, calendar links and cameras

Weather tiles: if you add a ZIP-code weather tile, your browser sends that ZIP to public weather services (Zippopotam.us and Open-Meteo) to fetch a forecast. We don't store it.
iCal subscribe: if you add an iCal link, our Worker fetches that calendar URL on your behalf (to avoid browser cross-origin limits) and returns the events. The link and events are not stored.
Camera tiles: camera snapshots come from your own Home Assistant; we don't store camera images.

Cookies we set

ahl_sid — your Google sign-in session (if signed in).
ahl_pro — your Pro "unlocked" marker.
ahl_oauth_state — a short-lived security token during Google sign-in.
ahl_access — only if a deployment uses a proxy access passphrase.

These are strictly functional. We set no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, and we use no third-party analytics.

4. Sub-processors

Cloudflare — hosting, edge security, and Workers KV storage.
Google — only if you sign in; used to read your Google Calendar and Google Tasks. Our use of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. We use Google data only to provide the calendar and tasks features you asked for, never to serve ads, and never to train models; we don't sell it or share it with others.
Stripe — only if you buy Pro; processes your payment. Your card details go directly to Stripe and are never stored on our servers.

All traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3).

5. Our standing promises

We do not sell your personal information.
We use no cross-context behavioral advertising trackers.
We do not use your content, calendar, lists or any user data to train AI or machine-learning models.
We share data only with the sub-processors in §4, only to provide the feature you enabled.

6. Retention & deletion

Data on our servers auto-expires as shown in §3. You can delete everything yourself at any time:

In the app: ⋯ menu → 🗑️ Delete my account & data — removes your Google session and synced shopping list from our servers and clears Ahl Control's data on your device.
On the web: ahlcontrol.com/delete-account.
Or email admin@ahlchemy.org.

7. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live (including California/CPRA, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah and other U.S. state laws, and the EU/UK GDPR where applicable), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your personal information, and to opt out of sale or targeted advertising — which we do not do. Because Ahl Control stores so little and lets you self-delete, the fastest way to exercise any right is the deletion path in §6; for anything else, contact admin@ahlchemy.org and we'll respond as the law requires. We won't discriminate against you for exercising a right.

8. Children

Ahl Control is a general-audience home dashboard, not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. The "family / simple mode" and guest/kids PIN are local-only convenience features that collect nothing. If you believe a child provided us personal information, contact admin@ahlchemy.org and we'll delete it.

9. Security & local storage

We protect data in transit with TLS and store server-side data on Cloudflare's infrastructure. Ahl Control is an installable web app (PWA) that uses local storage, a Service Worker and cache to work offline. Browsers — especially on iOS/WebKit — may evict local storage when disk is low or after extended non-use; if that happens you may need to reconnect your Home Assistant and restore from a backup. We can't recover on-device data (including your Home Assistant token) that your browser has cleared.

10. App store privacy labels

Where Ahl Control is distributed through the Apple App Store, Google Play or Microsoft Store, the data practices disclosed in those stores' privacy labels (Apple Privacy "Nutrition" Labels and Google Play Data Safety) are drawn from and consistent with this Policy.

11. Changes & contact

We'll post any material change here with a new effective date and, where appropriate, a notice in the app. Contact: admin@ahlchemy.org.