Last updated: July 2026
H.O.W. was built around the same rule as our other app, Serendip: no accounts, no passwords, and no personal information required to use it. There's one honest exception to that, for people who choose to subscribe — explained clearly below, not buried in fine print.
Your mood, journal, and goals are written directly to your browser's local storage and never sent to our servers at all — not encrypted-and-stored, not "private via access rules" — simply never transmitted. We could not read them even if compelled to, because we never receive them in the first place. The trade-off: this data lives only on this device. If you clear your browser data, switch devices, or reinstall, it's gone — there's no backup or recovery, by design.
There is no chat or messaging feature in H.O.W. Instead, if you subscribe to Share ($3/month), you can choose to let a connected partner read one specific journal entry — meant as a jumping-off point for a real conversation, not a replacement for one.
Sharing is entirely opt-in, one entry at a time. The moment you check the "share this entry" box and save, that single entry's text is sent to our server so your partner can read it in-app. Nothing else — not your mood, not other entries, not your goals — is ever affected. You can unshare (delete) a previously shared entry at any time, whether or not you're still subscribed.
Non-subscribers' partners never see journal content under any circumstance — only that a check-in happened.
The free features — daily principle, mood, journal, sobriety counter, goals, and partner check-ins — never require any personal information at all.
If you subscribe to unlock Share, our payment processor, Stripe, collects the information it needs to charge a card and send you a receipt — typically an email address and billing details. That information is held by Stripe, under their own privacy practices, not by us. What we store on our side is a single reference ID linking your anonymous H.O.W. identity to your Stripe subscription — not your email, name, or card details, none of which ever reaches our database.
If you never subscribe, none of this applies to you — you remain exactly as anonymous as anyone using Serendip.
Unlike Serendip's posts, which auto-delete after 14 days, H.O.W. is meant to be a long-term companion — your local data and server-side check-in history stick around indefinitely so your progress has continuity. You can permanently delete everything yourself, at any time, from the "Delete everything" button on the Partners tab — it removes your entire server-side footprint (profile, check-ins, partner connections, shared entries, subscription record) immediately and irreversibly, and clears everything saved on this device.
H.O.W. is built on a small number of third-party infrastructure providers, who process data on our behalf:
| Provider | What they handle |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Hosts the database where your check-ins, partner connections, and any entries you've explicitly shared are stored. Never receives your private mood, journal, or goals. |
| Stripe | Processes payment for the optional Share subscription; holds your email/billing details if you subscribe |
We don't sell or share data with anyone beyond what's needed to run the app, and we don't use tracking or advertising services.
Because there's no account or login, your identity in H.O.W. is tied to this device and browser. If you clear your browser data, switch devices, or reinstall, there's no way to recover your existing local data (mood, journal, goals, sobriety date) or your server-side history (check-ins, partner connections) — a new install starts fresh, with a new identity and a new shareable code.
This policy may be updated as the app changes. Meaningful changes will be reflected here with an updated date.
Questions about this policy can be sent to info@serendip.cloud. To delete your data, use the "Delete everything" button on the Partners tab — since we can't access your device-local data or authenticate as you, we're not able to delete it on your behalf from outside the app.