Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-06-25Effective date: 2026-06-25

Applies to: the Skalden iOS app (bundle com.gilbinternational.skalden) and the website skalden.app.

Skalden ("Skalden", "we", "us") lets you talk — by voice or text — with figures of the Norse world (Óðinn, Þórr, Freyja, and a skald) grounded in the public-domain Eddas and sagas, listen to narrated mythic stories, and explore Norse heritage (figures, a timeline, a map, an art gallery, runes, and symbols). This policy explains what data the app handles, why, who processes it on our behalf, and the choices you have.

We have written this policy to be honest and specific. Where the app sends your words to a service to answer you, we say so and name the service.

1. Summary (the short version)

• Skalden is free to download. Conversations use credits; you get a starter allowance free, and you can buy more through optional Apple in-app subscriptions.
• To use the app you sign in with Sign in with Apple. We do not store your name or email — only the anonymous identifier Apple provides, kept on your device.
• When you ask a figure a question, your message is sent to our server and on to an AI provider (Anthropic, the Claude model) to generate the reply, and a short embedding of your question is sent to Voyage AI to find the right source passages. When you use voice, your recorded audio is sent to xAI to transcribe it, and the reply text is sent to xAI to generate the spoken voice.
• We do not sell your data, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not track you across other apps or websites. There is no advertising identifier (IDFA) and no App Tracking Transparency prompt because we do no tracking.
• If you choose to share a conversation to the blog, that question-and-answer becomes publicly visible on skalden.app. This is the one feature that publishes your content, and it only happens when you tap to share.

2. Who is responsible

Skalden is published by Gilb International. For any privacy question, request, or complaint, contact us at privacy@skalden.app, or use the contact form at skalden.app/contact.

3. Account and sign-in

To use Skalden you sign in with Sign in with Apple. During sign-in the app asks Apple for your name and email so Apple can complete authentication.

We do not keep your name or email. After Apple confirms you, the app retains only the stable, anonymous Apple user identifier Apple returns — a random string that does not reveal your name or email. That identifier is stored only on your device, in the iOS Keychain, so you stay signed in across app launches. It is never sent to our servers.

Sign-in is required to use the app. There is no anonymous or guest mode in the released version.

4. The anonymous device identifier

So that we can attribute your credits, your subscription, and your conversation context to the right account, the app generates a random anonymous identifier (a UUID) the first time you launch it and stores it on your device (in the Keychain). This identifier is sent with requests to our backend. It is pseudonymous: it lets us recognise your device's account, but it is not your name, email, phone number, or any advertising ID, and it is not shared for tracking. It can persist if you reinstall the app.

5. What we collect, why, and where it goes

5.1 Your conversations (text and the figures' replies)

When you send a message to a figure, the app sends your message and the recent turns of that conversation to our backend server (a Cloudflare Worker), which:

• sends a short numeric embedding of your question to Voyage AI to find the most relevant public-domain source passages (the Eddas and sagas); and
• sends your message, the matched passages, and the selected figure's instructions to Anthropic (Claude), the AI model that writes the reply, which is streamed back to you.

We do not store the text of your conversations on our servers. Our backend is a stateless relay: it forwards your message to the AI provider and streams the answer back; it does not save the questions or answers to a database. The recent conversation context that lets a figure "remember" earlier in your chat is stored in your own private iCloud account (Apple CloudKit) — we cannot read your iCloud; it is governed by Apple's privacy terms.

5.2 Voice (when you speak instead of type)

If you talk to a figure using voice:

• Your spoken audio is captured on your device, briefly saved to a temporary file, and uploaded to our backend, which forwards it to xAI for speech-to-text transcription. The temporary audio file is deleted from your device immediately after it is sent. We do not keep the audio.
• The figure's reply is then sent (as text) to our backend, which forwards it to xAI's text-to-speech service to generate the spoken voice, which is played back to you. The audio is held in memory only during playback and is not saved to disk.

Speech is processed remotely by xAI (not by Apple's on-device dictation). We use the microphone only while you are actively using voice; the app does not listen in the background.

5.3 Credits, subscriptions, and purchases

Skalden is free to download and gives you a free starter credit allowance. Conversations spend credits (more is spent on a voice turn than a text turn). You can buy more credits through optional auto-renewing subscriptions purchased with Apple's in-app purchase system (StoreKit).

We keep, on our backend, a credits ledger tied to your anonymous device identifier: your credit balance, the record of credits spent and granted, and — for subscribers — your subscription status (tier, period, and Apple's transaction identifier so we can honour your purchase). Payments themselves are handled by Apple; we never see your card number. We receive only what Apple shares to verify the purchase (a signed transaction receipt and the resulting subscription status).

5.4 Sharing a conversation to the blog (publishes your content)

If you choose to share a conversation, the app sends the question and the figure's answer (plus the figure's name and your language) to our backend, which publishes them as a public blog post on skalden.app. The post is created by committing the text to a public website repository hosted on GitHub and serving it from skalden.app.

This makes that question-and-answer publicly visible. Do not share anything you want to keep private. We do not attach your name, email, or account identifier to the published post — only the question, the answer, and the figure. You can share at most one conversation per day. If you want a published post removed, contact us (see Section 2).

5.5 Diagnostics, crash reports, and usage analytics

To keep the app working and to fix problems, we use:

• TelemetryDeck — privacy-focused, anonymous usage analytics. It records anonymous events (for example, "a chat turn was sent", "voice mode was enabled") with non-identifying parameters. We deliberately do not include your name, email, account identifier, or the content of your messages in these events.
• Sentry — crash and error reporting. We have configured Sentry to not send personal data: user identity is stripped, and emails or Apple identifiers that might appear in an error are scrubbed before the report is sent.
• Apple MetricKit — Apple's on-device performance and crash diagnostics, summarised by iOS and forwarded into our crash reporting.

5.6 Maps

The Explore map of Viking-age sites loads background map tiles from OpenStreetMap. Loading a tile reveals your device's IP address and the map area you are viewing to OpenStreetMap's tile servers, as with any web map. The app does not request or use your device's GPS location.

5.7 Images

Some figure and heritage images are downloaded from our content delivery storage (Cloudflare R2). These are ordinary asset downloads and reveal only standard request information (such as your IP address) to the delivery server.

6. Third parties who process data for us

When you use Skalden, the following service providers may process data on our behalf or as part of delivering the app. Each receives your device's IP address as a normal part of an internet request.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

7. Data retention

• Name and email: not retained (used only momentarily during Apple sign-in).
• Anonymous identifier, credit balance, transaction history, subscription status: retained on our backend for as long as your account is active and as needed for billing, fraud prevention, and our records; deleted on request (see Section 8).
• Conversation text: not stored on our servers; the figure's short-term memory of your chat lives in your own private iCloud and is removed when you delete your account or your iCloud data.
• Voice audio: deleted from your device immediately after transcription; not retained by us. Audio you send is processed by xAI under its terms.
• Anonymous analytics and crash data: retained by TelemetryDeck and Sentry per their standard retention.
• Anonymised safety logs: if a message triggers our crisis/self-harm safety filter, we log a one-way hashed (not readable) fingerprint of the input for safety auditing; no readable message text is stored.
• Published blog posts: remain public until removed on request.

8. Your rights and choices

• Access / correction / deletion. You can request a copy of the data we hold about your account, or ask us to delete it, by contacting us (Section 2). Because most of what we hold is keyed to an anonymous identifier and we do not hold your name or email, please make such requests from within the app or include enough detail for us to identify your account's data.
• Delete your account in-app. Skalden includes an in-app Delete Account function. It removes your sign-in credential and the conversation memory stored in your iCloud from your device, and signs you out.
• Backend data on deletion. Deleting your account in-app does not by itself erase the credit, subscription, and usage records held on our backend against your anonymous identifier, and it does not remove any blog post you previously chose to publish. To have those backend records and any published post deleted, contact us (Section 2) and we will remove them.
• Voice and microphone. Voice is optional; you can use Skalden entirely by typing. You can revoke microphone and speech-recognition permission at any time in iOS Settings.
• Cancel a subscription. Manage or cancel any subscription in your Apple ID settings (App Store → Subscriptions).
• No tracking to opt out of. We do not track you across apps or websites and do not use an advertising identifier, so there is no ad-tracking choice to make.

9. Children's privacy

Skalden is a heritage, mythology, and education app intended for a general audience aged 9 and older (its App Store age rating reflects mild fantasy-violence and fear themes drawn from Norse myth). It is not directed to children under 13, it is not part of Apple's "Made for Kids" program, and it does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. We do not build profiles of children or use data for child-directed advertising (we do no advertising at all). If you believe a child under 13 has provided us personal information, contact us (Section 2) and we will delete it.

10. International transfers and security

Our providers (Cloudflare, Anthropic, xAI, Voyage AI, TelemetryDeck, Sentry, GitHub, OpenStreetMap, and Apple) may process data in the United States and other countries. We use reputable providers and rely on their security and contractual protections. We transmit data over encrypted connections (HTTPS) and store the on-device identifiers in the iOS Keychain. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your information.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. We will post the updated policy at skalden.app with a new effective date. Significant changes will be reflected in the app or on the website.

12. Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints about your privacy: privacy@skalden.app · skalden.app/contact