What this does with what you write

What this is, and what it is not

Culprit helps you run an elimination-and-reintroduction protocol that you and your practitioner decided on. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, and it is not a substitute for your practitioner.

It is being tested privately. It is free, there are a handful of people using it, and the person who built it is one of them.

What is collected

Your email address. It is the only thing held that identifies you, and it is kept apart from everything you write. It is here so you can get back in if you lose your session, so you can be told if you sign in from somewhere new, and — the reason that matters most — so you can be told if your data is ever exposed. An app that made itself unable to reach you could not tell you, which is not privacy.

You will not get marketing from it, and it is never given to anyone.

Your plan: which protocol you are on, what your practitioner changed about it, which phase you are in, and the order you are reintroducing foods.

What you write down: food, symptoms, how you are feeling, and anything else you type into the log or the coach.

Nothing else. There is no tracking, no analytics, no advertising identifiers, and no third party is given your data to use for their own purposes.

Where it goes

To generate an answer, the coach sends your plan, your recent log entries and your recent check-ins to Google’s Gemini API. That includes symptoms you have written down. This is the part worth reading twice: your health notes leave this app and reach Google.

The paid tier of that API is used deliberately. On it, Google states that prompts and responses are not used to improve or train its models, that there is no human review, and that content is retained briefly only to detect abuse. The free tier says the opposite, and its terms tell developers not to send personal information. This app refuses to start against the free tier.

Photographs of ingredient labels are sent the same way, read, and not stored.

The app is hosted on Vercel and the database on Neon. Both hold the data in order to run the app; neither is given it for their own use.

Who can see it

You.

Eric, who built this, reads coach answers that the rule engine flagged. That check is how the app is kept honest about food, and it means a person sometimes reads what you wrote. If that is not acceptable to you, this is the point to stop rather than the point to find out later.

That review does not show him who wrote what — what you write is stored apart from your email address, and the screen he reads it on shows neither. He can still look in the database, and does not. The honest version is that this is a practice rather than a wall: what you write about your own life can identify you whatever is stored beside it, and there are few enough people testing this that pretending otherwise would be a promise nobody could keep.

Nobody else. It is not shared with your practitioner, with other testers, or with anyone else, and it is never sold.

How long it is kept

While your account exists. A protocol runs for months and the whole point of the log is to look back across it, so nothing is quietly aged out underneath you.

If you stop using it, the account and everything in it is deleted after twelve months of no sign-in.

If you delete your account, everything goes immediately: plan, phases, challenges, log entries, coach conversations, saved recipes, check-ins. Not marked deleted — removed. Backups taken before then roll off within thirty days.

What you can do

Delete your account and everything in it, from the Plan screen, without asking anyone.

Ask for a copy of what is held about you, by replying to whoever invited you.

Change your mind about any of this. The version of this statement you agreed to is recorded, and if the substance changes you are asked again rather than told afterwards.

Stop at any time. Deleting the account and being done with the app are the same button.

If something goes wrong

If the app tells you something about food that seems wrong, it may be, and your practitioner is the authority rather than this. Say so to whoever invited you — a wrong answer about food is the single thing most worth hearing about.

If you have symptoms that worry you, contact your practitioner or a doctor. This app is not for that and will say so.