Tend

Tend Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 5, 2026

This policy says what Tend collects, where it goes, and what you can do about it. It is a list of true statements about the app as it is built today, not a description of what we intend. Questions any time at tend@emptybar.app.

Who we are

Tend is made and operated by Empty Bar LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company based in Hastings, Minnesota. "We" and "us" mean Empty Bar. "Tend" means the app, the kitchen screen, and the parts of them that run on our servers.

Tend is a calendar, a set of lists, and a screen for one household. It holds the week for everyone in a house, the chores and the jobs, a shopping list anyone can add to, a board for notes and photographs, and records about the house itself: appliances, projects, documents, the people you hire. It runs on phones and on a screen you hang in the kitchen. It has an assistant that can file things for you.

Tend started as a home maintenance log for one homeowner. It is now a family app. This policy was rewritten because the old one described the first thing.

What we collect

Everything below is either something you typed, something you uploaded, or something the app needs to run. Tend does not collect your device's location, your contacts, your activity in other apps, advertising identifiers, or data from device sensors.

Your account. Your email address, and a password we never see (it is hashed before it is stored). If you sign in with Apple or Google, we get the email address that provider shares with us, and your first name if they share it. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we only ever see the relay address.

The people in your household. For each person, a name, whether they are an adult or a child, and a colour. Children are profiles, not accounts. See Children's profiles below.

Your calendar. Event titles, dates and times, an optional location, optional notes, and which people each event is for.

A household's Google Calendar can also be connected, in which case Tend reads it every fifteen minutes and copies the events into that household's calendar: the title, the date and time, the location, the description, and which people the title names. The copy is one-way and read-only. Nothing you do in Tend is ever written back to Google, and an event that came from Google cannot be edited in Tend, only viewed. If the event is removed in Google it disappears from Tend on the next pass. Connecting a calendar is not something the app offers yet: it is set up by hand, for one household, and if that becomes a feature this policy changes with it.

Lists and chores. List names and list items, up to 200 characters each. Chores, who they are assigned to, what each is worth, and a dated record of who finished what. Rewards, requests to spend, and what was spent.

Interests and fact cards. What a parent types about what a child is interested in, and the short fact cards our assistant writes about it.

The board and messages. Notes posted to the household board, and private one-to-one messages between two adults in the household.

Photographs. Family photographs you add to the board or the screensaver, and their captions. Photographs of appliances. Photographs you attach to a chat.

Your home. Address, ZIP, year built, type, square footage, bedrooms and bathrooms, only what you enter. We turn the address into coordinates once so we can fetch a local forecast.

Your home records. Projects, appliances, vendors and their contact details, reminders, care tasks, milestones, and any documents you upload: insurance, permits, warranties, manuals, inspection reports, invoices, and family paperwork like a school calendar or a lunch menu.

Chat with the assistant. What you ask, what it answered, and any photo you attached. This is stored and is readable only by you.

Your subscription. Whether Tend Pro is active and which store you bought it on. We never see your card or billing address.

Device and diagnostics. App version, platform, and, if you turn notifications on, the push token used to deliver them.

Usage analytics. Which features get used, as named events like "a chat message was sent" or "a reminder was completed". These events carry counts and settings, never the content of anything you wrote, your address, or anyone's name. They are tied to your account, not to a random identifier. You can turn this off in You, then Privacy. It is on until you turn it off. The setting is saved to your account rather than to one device, so it holds on every phone you sign in on, and it covers the events our servers send as well as the ones the app sends.

Households and shared data

Tend is built for a house, so most of it is shared on purpose.

Every adult in your household can see and change almost everything in it. The calendar, the lists, the chores, the photographs, the board, the household name, and the home records: appliances, projects, vendors, reminders, care tasks and documents. There is no per-item privacy setting. If you would not want another adult in your household to read it, do not put it in Tend.

Two things stay yours alone. Your conversations with the assistant, which no one else in the household can read, and any list you create with yourself as its owner.

Joining a household gives you access to everything already in it, and gives everyone in it access to what you bring.

Leaving a household ends your access to everything shared in it, immediately. You keep your home profile and the records attached to it: appliances, projects, vendors, reminders, documents, invoices, inspection reports and your chat history. You do not keep anything household-scoped, even if you created it: photographs you added stay on the household's board, lists and events you made stay in the household's calendar, and notes you posted stay on the board.

Nobody can remove anyone else. A member can leave. An owner has to hand ownership to another member before they can leave. There is no way for one person to eject another.

Ownership transfer moves a role, not data. The new owner can invite people and change the household. The previous owner stays a member with the same access they had.

Children's profiles

This is also the section a parent should read to understand what Tend does with information about a child, and it is what we would say to a regulator asking about the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

A child never has an account. There is no child login, no child password, no child email address and no child device. A child in Tend is a profile that an adult creates and controls: a name, whether they are a child, and a colour. Nothing in Tend creates a login for a child, and the database will not let anyone in your household move an existing login onto a different profile.

We do not ask anyone for a date of birth. No screen in Tend collects one. There is a birthday field in our database that nothing currently writes to, and no profile has one. If we ever switch it on, a person's age would become part of what we send our AI provider, and we will update this policy before that happens.

What a child's information consists of is their name and colour, the chores assigned to them, a dated record of the chores they completed and what those were worth, what they have saved and spent, what a parent typed about their interests, the fact cards written from those interests, and which calendar events they are attached to. There is no photograph of a child, no address, no school and no health information in a child's record.

What a child can do is tap their own face on the kitchen screen, see their jobs and what they have saved, tick a job off, and ask to spend. Asking and approving are separate: a child can ask, and only an adult, on a phone, can say yes. A child cannot un-tick a job, cannot delete anything and cannot change anyone's profile: the database refuses all three, not just the screen. And a child cannot reach the assistant, because there is no chat on the kitchen screen.

Who can change a child's profile: any adult in the household can change a name or a colour. There is currently no way to delete a person's profile from inside the app. Email us and we will do it.

Information about a child leaves our servers in one direction. When an adult uses the assistant, the household context sent to our AI provider includes every household member's first name and role, including children, and the chores and calendar events attached to them. When you import a school calendar or a lunch menu, the file and the children's names go to that provider so the dates can be matched to the right child. See The assistant below. Nothing about a child is sent to our analytics provider, and nothing about a child is sent to an advertiser, because Tend has no advertisers.

Tend is not directed to children. It is bought, set up and operated by adults. The only thing a child touches is a screen an adult put on the wall and paired to the household. If you believe a child has somehow created an account, email tend@emptybar.app and we will delete it.

The kitchen screen

A screen on your wall is a real thing in your household with an identity of its own, and it is worth understanding.

It is not signed in as you. When you pair a screen, we create a separate login that belongs to that screen, not to any person. No adult's account is ever left open on a screen a child can reach.

What it stores on the tablet: the identity for that screen, and the session that keeps it signed in, both in the browser's storage on that device. The session is deliberately long-lived so a power cut does not un-pair your wall. The browser will also keep copies of the images it has shown in its own cache on that device.

What it can see: your household's people and their names, the calendar, the shared lists, the chores and who they belong to, what each child has saved, what a parent has typed about a child's interests, approved fact cards, the board, and the family photographs. It also shows your local weather. It cannot read your home record and it never receives your address: the weather reaches the screen as a forecast for your household and nothing else.

What it cannot see: private one-to-one messages, any list with a personal owner, your documents, your appliances, your reminders, and your conversations with the assistant.

What it can do: add an item to a shared list, tick an item off, mark a chore done, and post a note to the board. It cannot delete anything, cannot approve spending, cannot change anyone's profile, and cannot see any other household.

A screen shows things to whoever is standing in front of it. Names, the week, the lists, the board, and a full-screen slideshow of your family photographs after a few idle minutes. Think about where you hang it.

Removing a screen deletes its identity. From your phone, remove the screen, and the login we made for it is deleted. A tablet you sell cannot come back into your household. What stays on that tablet is whatever its browser cached, so wipe a device before you pass it on.

Photographs

Family photographs go to private storage, in a folder for your household. Every adult in your household can see them, and so can any screen paired to your household. Nobody outside your household can. The links the app uses to show them expire after an hour.

We remove location and camera metadata from family photographs before storing them. A photograph is re-encoded on your phone before it is uploaded, which leaves the original file's metadata behind, including any GPS coordinates your camera recorded. What reaches us is the picture and nothing else.

Family photographs are not sent to our AI provider. Photographs you attach to a chat are, and so is a photograph of an appliance you ask us to identify.

You can remove a family photograph in the app, under Pictures. That deletes the file as well as the entry, and it comes off the kitchen screen straight away.

The assistant

Tend has an assistant that answers questions and files things for you. Being plain about it matters more than making it sound good.

Where your words go. We use Anthropic as our AI provider. When you send a message, your message and a bundle of context about your household are sent to Anthropic's API to produce the answer. That bundle includes your first name, your home's full street address, the weather, your appliances, your vendors and their phone numbers, your recent projects and next reminders, every household member's first name and role, what each child has saved and the chores they have been given, the next thirty days of your calendar with the names of the people attached to each event, your open lists with their items, details about your home, and some counters about how you have used Tend. Photos and documents you send it are uploaded in full.

We do not send your email address or your account identifier to Anthropic. The identifying information in a request is what is written in the context above: names, an address, phone numbers you saved.

Other things go to Anthropic too. Uploading a document, importing an invoice or an inspection report, importing a school calendar or lunch menu, identifying an appliance from a photo, generating a care plan, generating the Worth Knowing insights, and writing fact cards for a child's interests all send the relevant content to the same provider.

What Anthropic does with it. Tend uses Anthropic's commercial API. Anthropic's published policy for that API is that they do not use inputs or outputs to train their models, and that they delete them from their systems within 30 days. Two exceptions are theirs, not ours, and we cannot switch them off: content their systems flag as breaking their usage policy can be kept for up to two years, and the scores behind that flag for up to seven. Tend does not send feedback or bug reports to Anthropic, so the longer retention that applies to those does not arise. We do not have a zero-retention agreement with them beyond these default terms.

What the assistant is allowed to do without asking. When you ask it to add milk to the list or put the dentist on Tuesday, it does that immediately: your message is the yes. Every change it makes is itemised in a receipt in the chat, and every one has an undo. It stops and asks first when the change would tick off or move work assigned to somebody else, when more than five things would change at once, or when it does not know what you meant. When it is only unsure about a detail, it fills the detail in, does the thing, and shows you the guess on the receipt so you can correct it.

Fact cards about children are the exception. Nothing the assistant writes about a child appears on your wall until an adult approves it.

The assistant is not professional advice. It is not a substitute for a licensed contractor, electrician, plumber, engineer, inspector, doctor, lawyer, or any other professional. It can be wrong. You make the decisions. Anything involving safety, gas, electrical, structural work or real money should be checked with somebody qualified.

Your conversations are stored and readable only by you. Not by other adults in your household. You can delete a conversation at any time.

Who else receives data

Tend uses these services to work. None of them sell your data. None of them use it for advertising. Tend shows no ads and has no advertisers.

We do not sell your data. We have never sold your data. There is no advertising in Tend.

How we keep it safe

What you can do

See it. Everything Tend holds about you is visible in the app. You, then AI Context, shows what the assistant is sent with each message: your home, the people in your household, the calendar, the lists, the chores, and the counters described above. A few derived numbers, like your Pulse scores and how long ago an appliance was last used, are sent but are not listed on that screen.

Change or delete any item directly in the app.

Export your record. You, then Export, produces a file containing your home record: your home, appliances, projects, vendors, reminders, care tasks, documents, insights, milestones and history, plus links to your documents and your appliance photos. Those links work for seven days for anyone who has them and need no sign-in, so treat that file the way you would treat the documents themselves. The export does not currently include the household side: the calendar, lists, chores, photographs and messages. Email us if you want those and we will get them to you.

Delete your account. You, then Account options, then Delete account.

What that removes depends on whether anyone else is in your household.

If you are the only person in your household, all of it goes: your login, your home and its records, your conversations with the assistant, your uploaded files, and the household itself with its calendar, lists, chores, board, messages and family photographs, including the photograph files. Any screen paired to it is deleted too and stops working at once.

If other people are still in your household, the household keeps working for them. We delete your login, your home and its records, your conversations, your uploaded files, your profile, and the private one-to-one messages you sent. The shared calendar, lists, chores, board and family photographs stay with the people still using them, because they are theirs as much as yours.

Either way it is immediate and we cannot undo it.

Retention. When you delete something in Tend, it is gone from our database and our file storage straight away. Our host, Supabase, keeps an automated daily backup of the database for the last seven days, so a deleted row can sit in a backup for up to a week before it ages out. Those backups exist to recover from a failure, and we do not use them to bring back one person's deleted data. One record outlives the rest: a per-call log of assistant usage, which holds no part of what you wrote, and your account identifier is stripped from it when you delete your account.

California residents

If you live in California, you can ask what categories of personal information we collect, ask us to delete your personal information, and not be treated differently for asking. You also have the right to opt out of the sale of your information. We do not sell it, so there is nothing to opt out of. Email tend@emptybar.app.

Residents of the EEA, the UK and Switzerland

You have the right to access your data, to correct it, to have it erased, to restrict or object to how it is processed, and to take it with you. You can complain to your local data protection authority. Email tend@emptybar.app.

Our servers and every service listed above are in the United States, so using Tend means your data is transferred to and stored in the United States.

Age

You must be 13 or older to hold a Tend account. Children in a household are profiles managed by an adult and do not hold accounts.

Changes

We will update this policy when the app changes. Material changes will be flagged in the app. The date at the top says when it last changed.

Contact

tend@emptybar.app. A person reads it.