Privacy

Last updated August 21, 2026

On the Books is built to know as little about you as possible. There are no accounts, no sign-ups, and no advertising trackers.

What we handle

Your questions. When you ask a question, its text is sent to our server and processed with Anthropic's Claude API to produce an answer from your town's code. Questions aren't tied to a name or profile — we don't have one for you.

Basic request data. Like nearly every website, our hosting provider (Netlify) processes IP addresses to serve pages and we use them transiently for rate limiting — to keep automated abuse from degrading the service.

Payments. Checkout is handled entirely by Stripe. Your card number never touches our servers, and we don't see it. Stripe's handling of your payment details is governed by Stripe's privacy policy.

Where your pass lives

A Town Hall Pass is a token stored in your own browser (localStorage) — not an account on our side. That's why it's tied to the browser you bought it in. Clearing your browser data removes the token; your purchase receipt from Stripe is your proof of purchase.

What we don't do

We don't sell or share personal information, run third-party ad trackers, or build profiles. The product is the answer to your question, not your data.