Ate-bit

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 14, 2026

What is Ate-bit?

Ate-bit is a household food management app for tracking pantry inventory, planning meals, and organizing recipes. You can sign in with a Google or Microsoft account, or create an account with just an email address and password.

Who Is Responsible for Your Data

Ate-bit is operated by Arcode Studio LLC, an independent studio in Arizona, United States. Arcode Studio LLC is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy, which means it decides what is collected and why. For any privacy question or request, including the rights listed below, email [email protected].

Information We Collect

When you create an account, Ate-bit collects the following information:

  • Email address - used to identify you and match you to your household
  • Display name - shown within the app for context

When you sign in with Google or Microsoft, we do not request access to your files, email, contacts, or any other services from that provider, and we do not receive your provider password. If you separately choose to enable Gmail receipt import, we request read-only permission to your Gmail so you can bring in receipts, and we store the resulting access token in encrypted form. This is optional, is never requested during normal sign-in, and you can decline it or disconnect it later.

Within the app, we store data you enter, such as household food inventory, meal plans, recipes, and product information, in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB on your behalf. The names of products, brands, aisles, and stores, and corrections to facts about them, may join a catalog that every household shares; what your household has, bought, or cooked never leaves your household.

When you join the waitlist

If you join the waitlist on our public pages, we store the email address and optional first name you give us, together with basic campaign information about how you found us (such as UTM parameters and the referring page), in our Azure Cosmos DB database. We use this to send you a one-time confirmation email from [email protected] (sent through Azure Communication Services), to email you about Ate-bit's launch and your spot opening up, and to connect your waitlist signup to your account if you later create one. The form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile to filter out bots. If you want off the list, contact us or use the unsubscribe option in any email we send.

How We Use Your Information

  • To authenticate you and verify household membership
  • To associate your activity with the correct household
  • To display your name within the app
  • To attribute usage events (such as adding a recipe or updating inventory) to you by a non-identifying account identifier for household analytics
  • To review the product, brand, and aisle names members type so the shared catalog stays accurate, and to record which households wrote a name, by an internal household id, so a reviewer can see how common it is

We do not sell your information, and we do not disclose it for advertising or for any purpose unrelated to running Ate-bit. We do share it with the service providers listed below, who process it on our behalf so that the app can work.

Our Legal Basis for Using Your Data

If you are in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, or Switzerland, data protection law requires us to have a legal basis for each purpose we use your data for. Ours are:

  • To perform our agreement with you - creating and securing your account, signing you in, matching you to your household, storing the pantry inventory, meal plans, recipes, and shopping lists you enter, and answering you when you use an AI feature. The app cannot work without these, so they are not optional
  • Your consent - analytics and marketing cookies, joining the waitlist and hearing from us about launch, and Gmail receipt import if you choose to connect it. You can withdraw any of these at any time, and doing so does not affect what we did while the consent was in place
  • Our legitimate interests - keeping the app secure and available, diagnosing errors, telling real visits apart from automated traffic so abuse can be investigated, reviewing assistant conversations so we can look into problems people report and improve how the assistant answers, and reviewing the product, brand, and aisle names members type so the shared catalog stays accurate, which includes recording which households wrote a name so a reviewer can see how common it is. We weigh each of these against your privacy and use the least data that achieves them
  • Complying with a legal obligation - keeping records the law requires us to keep, responding to a lawful request from a public authority, and establishing or defending a legal claim

Data Storage

Your data is stored in Microsoft Azure services (Cosmos DB and Blob Storage) located in the United States. Application performance and usage data is collected via Azure Application Insights. This includes diagnostic telemetry (errors, page load times) as well as custom usage events, such as viewing a recipe or adding a meal plan item. These events are tagged with a non-identifying account identifier, not your name or email address, and some include the name of the recipe involved, so household usage patterns are visible to the household administrator. Application Insights also records the IP address your device connected from, and the approximate location worked out from it, so that real visits can be told apart from automated traffic and abuse can be investigated. IP addresses are held for 90 days and then removed automatically. They are not stored with your household data.

Data Retention

Your account and household data are kept for as long as your account exists. You may request deletion at any time from Settings, or by contacting us at the address listed below. When you delete your account or cancel your household, your data is retained for 90 days so you can restore it, then permanently removed. Items you delete within the app (such as recipes, pantry items, and cook history) stay in the Recycle Bin for 30 days so you can restore them, then are permanently removed.

Some of your household records are kept for a set time rather than for the life of your account. Cook history, meal plans, nutrition entries and notifications are kept for 365 days and then removed automatically, so the app keeps a full year of your cooking without holding it forever. Receipts are kept much longer, for 7 years, because households often need them well after the shop.

Names and figures that joined the shared catalog stay after your account is deleted, because they are about a product rather than about you. A contribution is attributed only by a non-identifying id, and anything that identifies you or your household is detached from it when your account is removed.

AI Features

Some parts of Ate-bit are powered by AI: the chat assistant, which is called Nibble, plus recipe import, receipt reading, and nutrition estimates. When you use one of these, the content involved is sent to our AI provider to generate a response. That can include the message you type, a file you attach, the recipe, pantry, or shopping list information the feature needs to answer you, and the product, brand, and category names you type, so look-alike spellings can be grouped for review.

Some smaller decisions, such as whether two product names mean the same thing, which pantry item a receipt line matches, whether a message to the chat assistant is trying to misuse it, or which categories a recipe belongs under, go to a second AI provider, TypeSafe AI. It receives only the piece of text the decision is about: a product or pantry item name, a planned meal name, a line from a receipt, one message you typed to the chat assistant, one of the assistant's replies, or a recipe you asked the assistant to file, as its title, ingredients and method along with the names of your recipe categories. It never receives your email address, your name, your account or household identifiers, or a whole conversation. It sends back a pick from the options Ate-bit offered, or a probability, and never text of its own.

Ate-bit does not use your content to train AI models, and neither of our AI providers trains on what we send it. Content is sent to a provider only to produce a response for you, and each provider handles it as a service provider acting on our behalf.

Your conversations with the chat assistant are stored so we can look into problems people report and improve how the assistant answers. A stored conversation includes the message you sent, anything you attached or pasted, what the assistant did in response, and the reply you were shown. These records are kept for 30 days and are then deleted automatically. Only Ate-bit administrators can read them: no one else in your household can see your conversations, and you cannot be shown another member's. They are deleted along with the rest of your data when you delete your account or your household.

Third-Party Services

Ate-bit uses the following third-party services:

  • Google OAuth - for sign-in, and optionally for Gmail receipt import if you enable it
  • Microsoft Azure - for sign-in, data storage, and hosting
  • Microsoft Azure AI Foundry - for the AI features described above
  • TypeSafe AI - for the smaller AI decisions described above, such as matching and sorting names. It receives only the text of the decision, never who you are
  • Cloudflare - for network routing and access control
  • Google Analytics - for anonymous product usage analytics, so we can understand which features are used and improve the app. We send a non-identifying account ID for this purpose and never share your email or personal details.

Cookies and your analytics choice

Some cookies are needed for Ate-bit to work at all: they keep you signed in, remember your language, and protect forms from tampering. Those are always on. Two are optional: analytics cookies, which tell us which features get used, and a marketing cookie that records how you first found us. Both stay off until you say yes, wherever you are, and Google Analytics doesn't load at all before then. You can change your answer at any time, here or in Settings, and we honour the Global Privacy Control signal if your browser sends one.

International Data Transfers

Arcode Studio LLC is based in the United States, and your data is stored and processed there, in the Azure regions described above. If you use Ate-bit from the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, or Switzerland, that means your personal information leaves your country and is transferred to the United States.

Two things cover most of that transfer. The service providers listed above, other than TypeSafe AI, process data on our behalf under data protection terms that include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, along with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where it applies. Where we receive the data ourselves, the transfer is necessary to provide the service you asked us for under our agreement with you. TypeSafe AI is the exception: we have no such terms with it. It is hosted in the United States, and it receives only the text of a decision, never your email address, your name, or your account or household identifiers. Ask us at the address below if you want more detail about any of this.

Your Rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data at any time from Settings, or by contacting us at the address below.

Depending on where you live, you have some or all of the following rights over your personal information:

  • Access - ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and to be told how we are using it
  • Correction - have information that is wrong corrected and information that is incomplete completed. Most of it you can edit yourself in Settings
  • Deletion - ask us to delete your account and the data in it. You can start this yourself in Settings, and the retention periods above describe what happens next. Names and facts that joined the shared catalog stay, with anything that identifies you detached from them
  • Portability - receive the data you gave us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, and to ask us to pass it to another service where that is technically possible. Until you can export it yourself, email us and we will produce it for you
  • Restriction - ask us to pause how we use your information while a question about its accuracy, or about our basis for using it, is being sorted out
  • Objection - object to our using your information where we rely on our legitimate interests, including error diagnostics and the review of assistant conversations
  • Withdrawing consent - take back a consent you gave, such as analytics cookies or Gmail receipt import. Switching it off in Settings or in your cookie preferences is enough, and you do not need to write to us
  • Complaining to a regulator - lodge a complaint with your data protection supervisory authority. In the United Kingdom that is the Information Commissioner's Office, and in the European Economic Area it is the authority for the country you live in. We would rather hear from you first so we can put it right

To use any of these, email [email protected]. We will answer within one month and will tell you if we need longer. There is no charge, and asking will not change how you are treated in the app.

Account Access for Support

To provide support and troubleshoot problems, Ate-bit platform administrators may access your account and view the information stored in it. This access is limited to support and maintenance purposes, and every instance is recorded in an audit log.

Contact

For privacy questions or data requests, email Arcode Studio LLC at [email protected], or use our contact form if you would rather not send email.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes materially, users will be notified. The "last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.