Privacy Policy

Tell is built so that the people closest to it — including the builder’s own kids — can use it without worrying about where their words go. The principles below are real constraints in how the app is engineered, not aspirations.

What stays on your device

• Microphone audio. Tell transcribes speech locally on your iPhone using Apple’s on-device speech recognition. The raw audio is discarded after transcription. Audio is never uploaded or stored.
• Your name and age, if you provide them during onboarding. Stored only in the app’s sandbox.
• Your voice fingerprint, if you choose to train Tell on your voice. A small set of acoustic statistics (pitch, voicing, jitter, shimmer averages) stored only in the app’s sandbox. The audio used to create it is discarded.
• Past conversations and coaching notes. Saved as JSON files in your iPhone’s sandbox. You can delete any session at any time.

What leaves your device

• Text transcripts are sent to Anthropic (Claude) to generate the simulated peer’s replies during a quest, and to generate your Tell Notes after a conversation. The text only — not the audio. We do not include your name, age, voice fingerprint, or any identifier with these requests.
• Text-to-speech requests are sent to ElevenLabs (if enabled) to produce the simulated peer’s voice in quests. Only the peer’s lines are sent; nothing else. If ElevenLabs is not enabled, Tell uses Apple’s built-in voices on-device and nothing is transmitted.

What we do not collect

• No accounts, no sign-in, no email collected within the app.
• No analytics, telemetry, or crash reporting.
• No advertising identifiers or trackers.
• No location, contacts, or photos.

Children

Tell is designed for use by people of all ages, including children under 13. We do not collect personal information from anyone via the website or the app. If a child uses Tell on an iPhone, the data described above stays on that device. We recommend parents review this policy with their kids and supervise initial use.

Real-conversation recording

Tell has a feature where users can record a real conversation and get coaching on it. Audio is transcribed on-device and discarded; only the text transcript is sent to Anthropic for coaching. We require that users only record conversations with the consent of everyone involved. Tell is not a covert recording tool.

Deleting data

Each session can be deleted from within the app. Deleting Tell from your iPhone removes the sandbox and everything in it. We do not retain any copy on a server because we do not have a server.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the “Last updated” date above will change. Substantive changes will be called out on the home page.

Contact

Questions or concerns: privacy@tell.coach.