Privacy Policy

Autonomic is a private, offline journal for logging autonomic-nervous-system recovery. This policy is short because the honest answer to "what does the app do with my data?" is: nothing, we never receive it. There are two exceptions, and both are described in full below: a daily counter that tells us how many people use the app and nothing about who they are (The one thing the app tells us), and this marketing website, which uses basic analytics (The website).

What the app collects

Nothing. The Autonomic app has no user accounts, no sign-in, and no cloud. We do not collect, store, sell, or share any personal information or health data from the app. The app itself contains no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporters, and no third-party tracking of any kind. Everything below about your health data applies to the app; the separate website is covered at the end.

The one thing the app tells us

Once a day, the app asks a counter on our server to add one. It tells that counter a single thing: the date this copy of the app was first opened, a date shared by everyone who installed it the same day. There is no account, no device or install identifier, no request body, and nothing about you, your journal, or your health. It sends the same thing again if you subscribe, so we can tell how many people found the app worth paying for.

We do not keep the request. We keep the count. The date is added to a running total and discarded; we never log the IP address it arrived from, and nothing stored on our side can say whether any particular copy of the app checked in. What it leaves us with is a number, like "412 people who installed the app in March were still using it in September". That is how a small, independent app finds out whether it is actually helping anyone.

Two other connections leave the app, and neither of them reaches us. If you subscribe, the purchase is handled entirely by Apple or Google under their own privacy policies: we never see your name, email, or payment details, and the app only ever learns from them whether this device holds an active subscription. Separately, the app checks for software updates, the same kind of check the App Store and Google Play make, which reaches our update host (Expo) and tells it only which version of the app is running. Neither carries anything you have logged.

Where your data lives

Everything you log, journal entries, HRV readings, sleep, symptoms, medications, profile details such as sex, birthday, height, and weight, is stored locally on your device in the app's private storage. The journal database is encrypted at rest with a key held in your device's Keychain. It never leaves your device unless you deliberately export or share it.

• Local backups. The app keeps a small rotation of automatic JSON snapshots of your journal inside its own Documents folder on your device, so your data can survive reinstalls via a device restore. Unlike the journal database, these snapshots are plain readable JSON, so you can always recover your data yourself from the Files app. They are part of your device storage and, if you have iCloud Backup enabled, are included in your device's iCloud backup under Apple's terms and encryption (end-to-end encrypted only if you enable Advanced Data Protection), not on any server of ours.
• Apple Health. If you connect Apple Health, readings are exchanged with the Health app on your device using permissions you grant and can revoke at any time. Health data is processed entirely on-device.
• Bluetooth heart-rate straps. If you pair a chest strap, beat-to-beat data streams directly from the strap to your phone and is processed on-device.

Exports, sharing, and AI prompts

Autonomic can package your logged data into a JSON export or an analysis prompt that you can copy or share. This only happens when you explicitly trigger it. If you paste a prompt into a third-party AI service (such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini), that data is then handled under that provider's privacy policy and terms, choose a provider you trust. We have no relationship with, and receive nothing from, any AI provider.

Permissions the app requests

• Bluetooth, to connect a heart-rate strap for live HRV readings.
• Apple Health, to read and write the health metrics you approve.

Both are optional; the app works without them.

The website

The guarantees above are absolute for the app. This public marketing and blog website at autonomic.care is a separate, ordinary website, and it uses Google Analytics to understand aggregate traffic, such as which articles are read and roughly where visitors come from, so we can improve the site. Google Analytics sets cookies and processes information like your IP address, device, and browser under Google's own privacy policy.

You can opt out at any time. On your first visit the site shows a cookie banner; choose Block cookies and Google Analytics is disabled immediately and never loads again on future visits, we don't track you at all. Your choice is saved in your browser, and you can change your mind by clearing this site's data. You can also block analytics with a content or cookie blocker or your browser's tracking controls. This applies only to your visits to the website, never to anything you do inside the app.

The website does not collect any personal information from you: there is no sign-up, no account, and no contact or waitlist form. The download buttons simply link out to the Apple App Store and Google Play, where any install is governed by Apple's and Google's own privacy practices.

Children

Autonomic is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly handle their data, which, given that no app data ever reaches us, it structurally cannot.

Changes to this policy

If the app's data practices ever change, we will update this page and the "last updated" date above before those changes take effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be raised through the app's App Store listing or by emailing austin@discoverymark.com.