Privacy

What we collect

• Sign-in identity. When you continue with Google we receive your name, email address, and profile photo. Nothing else. We never see your inbox or contacts, and we see your calendar only if you choose to connect it (below). Your session is a signed cookie on your device.
• Your brain. Everything you put in Helm (tasks, captures, notes, photos you extract from, links you save) becomes part of your Markdown file. It’s the product; of course we store it.
• Feedback and waitlist notes. If you send feedback, we keep what you wrote (and your email if you include it).
• Your phone number, if you link one. Only if you turn on SMS capture. And not the number itself. We store a one-way hash of it, enough to recognize your handset on the next text and useless for calling, texting, or selling. See below.
• Basic analytics. On the public site we count visits and funnel steps (Google Analytics and Vercel Analytics) to see what’s working. No ad trackers, no cross-site anything.

Where your brain lives

Your file is stored as a private GitHub repository. Every change is a git commit, so you get full history for free. Nothing is ever silently lost.

Honest part: because we host that repo for you, Helm holds admin access to it. We use that access only to run the service: reading and writing your file when you use the app. We don’t browse, analyze, or share your brain, and we’d rather build features than look at your grocery list.

AI processing

When you capture something, an AI model (Anthropic’s Claude, via Vercel’s AI Gateway) reads it to decide where it files. That’s how “milk” lands in To Get and a recipe link lands in Recipes. Photo captures are read by a vision model to extract the items. Links you save are fetched by our server to grab the title and thumbnail.

Your captures pass through the model only to decide where they file. Nothing more. Anthropic doesn’t train on API traffic, and we don’t use your captures for anything but running Helm. They move through the model to do their one job; they never teach it anything.

You can also connect an AI you already use, like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, from the Connected screen. Once you sign in and approve that connection, that AI can ask Helm to read your file, add a line, or edit a section, on your instruction. Helm does the reading and writing on its behalf and sends your file nowhere else.

Google Calendar (only if you connect it)

Connecting Google Calendar is optional and off until you tap Connect Google Calendar and approve it on Google’s own screen. With your permission, Helm can:

• See the list of your calendars (their names, colors, and whether you can add to them), so you can choose where an event goes and which calendars Helm shows you.
• Read the events on your calendars to show what’s coming up in your Today and Coming up views and your daily brief.
• Add, change, and remove events you ask Helm to add, like the event flyer you just photographed, in the calendar you choose. Helm only changes events it added for you.

Your Google connection is stored encrypted on our servers, separate from your brain file, and is never sent to your browser. Helm reads your events when it needs to show them to you; it doesn’t keep its own copy of your calendar. Event details may pass through the AI model only to build features you see, like your daily brief, never to train it.

We don’t sell calendar data, use it for ads, or share it with anyone except as needed to run these features. You can disconnect anytime from Connected in the app, which revokes Helm’s access at Google and deletes the stored connection; you can also remove Helm from your Google Account’s Third-party connections.

Helm’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Information from Google APIs is not used to develop, improve, or train generalized AI or machine-learning models.

Text messages (SMS)

SMS capture is optional and off until you turn it on. You link a phone by texting a one-time code you get from Preferences → Channels → SMS capture. Consent starts from your handset, and Helm never messages a number that hasn’t done that. The whole flow is written out at helm.day/sms.

• We do not share mobile information with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. No mobile opt-in data is sold, rented, or shared, ever. Phone data is passed only to Twilio, our messaging provider, purely to carry the message you sent.
• Message frequency: Helm only ever replies to a text you sent, one reply per message. It never initiates, broadcasts, or schedules a message. If you don’t text it, it stays silent.
• Message and data rates may apply. Helm doesn’t charge for texts; your carrier may.
• Stopping: text STOP to end messages and unlink the phone from your brain, START to begin again, HELP for help. You can also disconnect from Preferences. Notes you already captured stay in your file.
• What’s stored: a one-way hash of your number (never the number), and the text you sent, which becomes a line in your own Markdown file like any other capture.

Who touches your data

We run on a small set of providers, each doing one job: GitHub (stores your repo), Google (sign-in, and your calendar only if you connect it), Vercel (hosting, analytics, AI Gateway, and encrypted storage for connected accounts), Anthropic (the AI model), Resend (relays feedback emails to us), and Sentry (error reports, so we can fix crashes; we send the error and the page it happened on, never your file or your email). That’s the whole list. No data brokers, no advertisers, ever.

If you turn on Pro Sports, Around Town, tides, or Industry News, Helm asks a public data source for what you’re following: your teams from ESPN, your area from Ticketmaster, your coastline from NOAA, your topics from Google News. Those requests carry a team, a city, or a topic, never your file.

If you turn on push notifications, the alert reaches your device through your browser’s own push service (Apple’s, Google’s, or Mozilla’s). That is the same path every site’s notifications take, not a new company holding your data.

Your file, your rights

• Export: download your complete brain from the app anytime. It’s plain Markdown: readable by you, your editor, and any AI you point at it. No lock-in is the point.
• Delete: email us and we delete your repo: content, history, account, everything. Gone means gone.
• Leave: the free path never required an account. If you built a brain and downloaded it, we hold nothing of yours at all.

The boring-but-important bits

Helm isn’t for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. If we ever materially change this policy, we’ll say so here with a new date up top. And if a change affects your brain’s privacy, we’ll tell you before it takes effect, not after.

Questions, exports, deletions: hello@madronaproduct.com. Helm is built by Madrona Product Studio.