Privacy

The short version: photos you classify aren't kept. Only what you choose to share is stored, and you can delete your account at any time.

Photos you classify

A photo sent to the classifier is read into memory, classified, and thrown away. It isn't written to disk or logged.

What you choose to share

Gallery sightings. When you click “Share to the gallery”, the server keeps a re-encoded copy of the photo, at most 1024 pixels on a side. Re-encoding drops all metadata, including EXIF and GPS location. Other signed-in users see it with your display name. You can delete your sightings.
Lobster Tinder. Your profile (name, bio, habitat, favorite food, claw type), its photo (re-encoded the same way, at most 800 pixels), and your swipes, matches, and messages are stored so the feature works. Other signed-in users see your profile.

Your account

Your username and display name. Passwords are stored only as Argon2id hashes, mixed with a secret “pepper” that is kept outside the database.
If you sign in with GitHub: your GitHub user ID, name, and avatar link. The app asks GitHub for no permissions and throws away GitHub's access token as soon as it has read your public profile.
Sessions: a hash of your session token and its expiry date (14 days after you sign in).
Security records: sign-in attempts (username, IP address, time, and whether it worked) for 30 days, and rate-limit counters (your user ID or IP address, and a time) for up to 2 days.

Recipes

A recipe request sends only the species, the dish style, and whether the photo looked cooked to a language model running on the same home server (through Ollama). No photo and no account details are sent. Generated recipes are cached without any user information.

Outside services

Cloudflare sits in front of the public site for HTTPS and attack protection, and runs Turnstile, the human check on the sign-up form.
GBIF and iNaturalist. The server asks GBIF for gallery photos. The photos themselves load straight from iNaturalist's servers, so your browser contacts them when you open the gallery.
GitHub, only if you choose “Continue with GitHub”. GitHub avatars load from GitHub's servers.

No ads, no analytics, no tracking. The site sets two cookies: one for your session and one for a security token that blocks forged requests (CSRF).