Privacy Policy — KnotTheory.ai

1. Overview

KnotTheory.ai Inc. ("we", "us", "our") builds privacy-first applications, including Tesseract-Tax, Tesseract-Prime, Tess-Hoshi, Swapétit, and the Tesseract Tax Cloud platform. This policy explains what data our products collect, use, and share. It applies to all of our apps and services unless a product ships with its own more specific terms.

2. Our Principles

Local-first. Wherever possible, your data is processed on your own device. Many features — including on-device AI models — work entirely offline.
No selling of data. We never sell, rent, or trade personal data.
No advertising and no tracking. Our apps contain no ads and no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs.
Minimal collection. When a feature needs the network, we transmit only what is required to fulfill your request, and we don't keep it afterward.

3. Cloud AI Processing (Optional Features)

Some apps offer optional cloud-powered AI features (for example, Swapétit's cloud answers, photo questions, recipe invention, and spoken answers). These features are off until you explicitly enable them. When enabled:

Only the content needed to answer — your question text and, if you attach one, your photo — is transmitted to our servers.
Requests are processed through AI infrastructure configured for zero data retention: your content is not stored, not logged, and not used to train models.
Generated speech audio is produced on transient compute and is not retained after delivery.
Some apps also let you supply your own API key for a third-party AI provider (such as Anthropic or OpenAI); in that case your content is sent directly to that provider under its own privacy terms.

4. Product Specifics

Swapétit

No account or sign-in. The kitchen converter and offline substitution library never touch the network.
On-device AI answers run entirely on your device. Cloud answers follow Section 3 and require your one-time consent.
Microphone audio for dictation is processed by Apple's on-device/system speech recognition; we do not receive or store your recordings.

Tesseract-Tax

Tax documents, credentials, and financial information remain on your device.
An anonymous first-launch ping (random UUID + platform only) is used for download counting. No name, email, IP address, device identifier, or financial data is included.
The Secure Vault stores credentials locally via the operating system's Keychain; they are never transmitted to us or any third party.

Tesseract-Prime

All processing is performed locally on your device using on-device AI models. No data is sent to external servers.

Tess-Hoshi

Recordings and transcripts stay on your iPhone. If you configure an upload destination, audio is sent only to the server you specify, under your control.

Tesseract Tax Cloud (platform.knottheory.ai)

Our professional platform requires an account and processes the documents you or your accountant upload solely to provide the service. Documents are encrypted, are never used to train models, and AI processing follows the zero-data-retention approach of Section 3. Platform customers may be covered by additional contractual terms.

5. Purchases & Subscriptions

In-app purchases and subscriptions (such as Swapétit Pro and Tess-Hoshi Pro) are processed by Apple. We do not receive or store your payment details. Website purchases are processed by Stripe, which handles your payment information under its own privacy policy.

6. Data Sharing

We do not sell, share, or transfer personal data to third parties, except for the processors described above (Apple, Stripe, and our cloud infrastructure providers) acting on our instructions to deliver the service you requested.

7. Data Retention

Cloud AI request content is not retained (Section 3). Anonymous download-count records (random UUID, platform, timestamp) are kept for internal metrics and cannot be linked to any individual. Platform account data is retained while your account is active or as required by law.

8. Your Rights

Depending on where you live (for example, under GDPR or the CCPA), you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal data we hold. Because our apps hold your data on your own device, deletion is usually as simple as deleting the app; for anything else, contact us and we will help.

9. Children's Privacy

Our apps are not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from children. (Swapétit's "for kids" recipe option only tailors recipe suggestions — it collects nothing about any child.)

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated revision date.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy:
support@knottheory.ai or tess@knottheory.ai