Privacy Policy

How Aubergenie handles your information

Your recipes stay on your devices and in your own iCloud. Our server is involved only when you ask Aubergenie to write or change a recipe, and this page explains exactly what that means.

Last updated 29 October 2026. The app's next update carries this policy; test builds from before the rename show it under the old name, Chef.

Aubergenie is a recipe app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, published by BRGNDY LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17537333). BRGNDY LTD is the data controller for the information described here. This policy explains what the app does with your information, in plain terms. It is the policy referenced from the App Store listing and from Settings inside the app.

Aubergenie was called Chef until October 2026, and until then it was published by Nathan Thomas, who made it; BRGNDY LTD, his company, became its publisher and the data controller in October 2026. Your account, your recipes and everything described below carried over as they were.

The short version

Your recipes are yours and they stay on your devices. They sync between your own devices through your private iCloud account, which we cannot read, and so do your shopping list and your meal plan. Your cooking preferences and any unfinished recipe stay on the device you set them on.

You can use Aubergenie without an account: adding recipes yourself, importing recipes that websites publish, planning, shopping and cooking all happen on your device. Our server is involved when you sign in and when you use one of the AI features — and you can turn those off entirely with the Aubergenie AI switch in Settings. Our server holds an account and usage record so it knows whose allowance is being used, and temporarily holds a completed recipe response when recovery is available, as explained below. While you are signed in, the app also checks your session with our server when it opens or comes back to the foreground; that request carries only your session key and the app's version, nothing about your recipes.

When you ask Aubergenie to create, read, rewrite or change a recipe, what you sent goes to Anthropic to be turned into a recipe and comes back to your device. We do not keep a copy of the request itself. To recover a successful result if the connection drops, we temporarily keep the completed recipe response in private, account-bound storage. It is recoverable for up to two hours, and its scheduled physical deletion is normally completed within about two hours and ten minutes.

There is no advertising, no tracking, and nothing is sold or shared with data brokers.

What stays on your device

Saved recipes, photos you attach to them, and each recipe's cooking history, rating and notes are stored on your device. If you have iCloud switched on, these also sync through CloudKit to your own private iCloud database, so they appear on your other Apple devices. That database belongs to your Apple Account. We have no access to it and no way to read what is in it.

Your shopping list — the recipes you chose, the rows, what you ticked and what you removed — is kept on this device and, when iCloud is on for Aubergenie, also in your own iCloud account's key-value store, so the same list appears on your other Apple devices signed into that account. Like your recipes, it goes only to your own account: we have no access to it, and it never goes to our server. With iCloud off for Aubergenie, the list stays on this device only.

Your meal plan — the meals on each day, the food you have on hand and its leftovers, your usual meals and saved weeks, and the planning settings you choose (how many people you cook for, meals a day, training days, and any daily calorie or protein target) — is kept the same way: on this device and, when iCloud is on for Aubergenie, in your own iCloud account's key-value store, so your other Apple devices show the same plan. The app works out its suggestions on the device. The plan never goes to our server, and we have no access to it. With iCloud off for Aubergenie, the plan stays on this device only.

Some things stay on this device only and never sync anywhere: your cooking preferences (allergies, diet, dislikes, appliances, servings) and other app settings — except the signature you may choose to sign your recipes with, which follows you to your other devices (see "Your name on recipes" below) — and any unfinished recipe — one draft you were typing, or one recipe Aubergenie made that you have not yet saved or discarded. The unfinished recipe is kept in a protected file on the device, excluded from device backups, so an interruption does not lose it; it is deleted when you save or discard it. A recipe photo you took to be read is kept with it only so you can compare the result, and is not attached to the saved recipe.

A recipe you delete is kept on the device you deleted it on for 30 days, in protected files — with its photo, your notes and history, and its earlier versions — so you can restore it from Settings › Your Recipes › Recently Deleted. It is not synced, so a recipe deleted on another device is restored there. It is then removed for good, or sooner if you delete it there. When you export your recipes, Aubergenie writes the files on your device and hands them to the share sheet; where they go is up to you, and they carry recipes and photos only — never your notes, ratings or cooking history.

Website import without AI. When you import a recipe that a website publishes in a standard format and choose Keep as written, your device fetches the page directly, as a browser would, and copies the recipe on the device. Nothing goes to our server and no account is needed. The website sees an ordinary request from your device. If the recipe has no nutrition information, your device may estimate it with Apple's on-device model; that also stays on the device.

Our server receives a whole recipe only when you explicitly ask Aubergenie to change one — whether it is a recipe already in your library or one Aubergenie has just written for you and you are still deciding whether to keep — or to tidy up one you are importing from a website, in which case it is the recipe the website published, with the page's address and author. That request is handled as described under "When you use an AI feature" below. We do not retain a copy of that request, but we temporarily keep the completed changed recipe response so your device can recover it if the first response is lost.

Sending a recipe. When you choose Send Recipe, Aubergenie makes a .recipe file on your device and hands it to the share sheet; it goes only where you send it (AirDrop, Messages, Mail, Files…), never through our server. The file contains the recipe, where it came from (for example the website's name and page address, with tracking parameters removed), and the recipe's photograph if it has one — including a photo you took yourself. Aubergenie copies only the picture into the file: the location, camera, lens, capture time and other details your device stores inside a photo are removed first. Your notes, rating, favourites, cooking history, preferences, shopping list, meal plan and account are never included. Share as Image and Copy as Text likewise contain only the recipe, its picture and its credit.

Your name on recipes. If you choose to, you can set up your name in Settings › Sharing › Your Name on Recipes: a name and up to three links — your Instagram or your website, for example ("Recipe by …"). Aubergenie explains what it means before it is first kept, and nothing carries your name until you add it to a recipe yourself; new recipes don't get it unless you switch that on. It goes only on recipes you make up yourself, never on one from a website, a photo, Aubergenie or someone else. Your name, the names you have used before and your Include My Name choice are kept on this device and in your own iCloud account's key-value store, so your other devices offer the same. On each recipe you add it to, it becomes part of that recipe and syncs with it to your other devices through your private iCloud. It goes to other people only when you switch on Include My Name under Share: then it goes in the file, the image and the text, and on if that person sends it on, so anyone it reaches can see it. Include My Name starts off and stays as you last left it. Your own backups (Export All Recipes) keep your name. Under Share, Aubergenie says what goes with each way of sharing. It adds nothing else about you, and never your account, Apple ID or email address. Removing your name lets you take it off every recipe it is on in one step, or just stop adding it to new ones; copies already sent keep it. Our server never receives it. Settings › Sharing › What's Shared lists what goes with a recipe — the recipe, where it came from, how it has changed and a code that matches its copies, your name if Include My Name is on, and its photo — and everything that never does.

A recipe someone sends you is shown to you before anything is saved, and opening it uses no network.

Your account

Aubergenie uses Sign in with Apple, which is the only way to sign in. Apple gives the app two things.

The first is a user identifier, unique to you and to this app. Our server stores it so that when you sign in again, on this device or a new one, you get the same account back.

The second is your email address, and only on the very first time you authorise the app. If you chose Hide My Email, what we receive is Apple's relay address, not your real one. Either way it sits on your account record and is not used to contact you. The app sends no email; the one launch email described under "If you email us" goes only to people who asked for it.

The server also generates its own account number for you. That number, rather than anything Apple issued, is what the rest of the system refers to.

Signing in creates a session that lasts 90 days. The server stores only a one-way hash of the session key, so a copy of the database contains nothing anyone could sign in with.

When you use an AI feature

These features send something off your device: Create a Recipe, Add from Photo, website import when you choose Tidy it up or agree to let Aubergenie read a page that cannot be copied, and Change This Recipe. Earlier versions of the app (up to build 61) also had What's for Dinner?. It has been removed from the app, and our server no longer offers it.

What gets sent depends on which one you used:

  • Create a Recipe sends the description you typed, any filters you set, such as time, servings or macros, and your saved cooking preferences.
  • Website import with AI sends the address you gave and the text of that page (or of the recipe the page published, for a rewrite). You are told before this happens and asked to agree when it was not your choice.
  • Add from Photo sends the photograph, re-drawn from its pixels first so that the location, camera and capture details inside the original are not sent, together with your saved cooking preferences. If Aubergenie asks which dish the photo shows, your answer goes instead of the photo.
  • Change This Recipe sends the current recipe, the change you requested, and any cooking preferences you have saved, such as allergies, dietary notes, disliked ingredients and available appliances.

Each request goes to our server, which checks your session and your remaining allowance, then passes the content to Anthropic's Claude to be turned into a structured recipe. The result comes back to your device.

We do not retain a separate copy of the request body after it has been processed. The description you typed, page text, scanned photograph, original recipe and change instruction are therefore not saved as a request in the recovery store. A one-way fingerprint of the request is kept so the server can recognise the same request again, but it cannot be used to reconstruct what you sent.

For a successfully completed recipe creation, cloud-assisted import or scan, or recipe change, we temporarily keep the structured response. That response contains the full recipe Aubergenie returned; for a change, it also contains the change summary. The same goes for a question Aubergenie asked you instead of a recipe — which dish you meant, or whether a photo shows food — which is not charged. A response can naturally repeat material from what you sent — a changed recipe includes the parts that were left unchanged — even though the request body is not stored separately. The response is attached to your Aubergenie account and can be recovered only for that account and that same request. This lets the app recover an answer that finished after the connection was lost without asking Anthropic again or using your allowance twice.

The response expires two hours after it is completed. A scheduled cleanup runs every ten minutes, so physical deletion is expected within about two hours and ten minutes of completion. The small non-content job record remains afterwards so the same request cannot be charged twice, but the recipe response itself is removed and cannot be recovered from that record.

When you use Add from Photo, Aubergenie processes the image to understand the recipe or food shown. We may temporarily retain a structured analysis of the photo for up to two hours so you can confirm the dish, retry a request, or complete recipe creation without processing the image again.

Separate from the temporary response body, we keep usage and request metadata: which feature and server function ran, opaque request identifiers, the app version that sent it, its status and timing, how many characters and model tokens it used, the model and estimated provider cost, and whether it counted against your allowance. Records from earlier versions of the app may also carry an opaque Dinner session identifier and note that you selected a Dinner idea, linked only by opaque identifiers; the dish name and recipe are not copied into this record. This first-party record exists to enforce the allowance, prevent duplicate charges, work out why something failed, measure speed and reliability, and avoid spending money generating results people do not use. It does not contain the request or response and cannot recreate either one.

The API key that reaches Anthropic is held on the server. It is not in the app, and cannot be extracted from it.

Anthropic acts as a processor for these requests. Under their commercial API terms, content sent through the API is not used to train their models. How long Anthropic keeps API inputs and outputs is set by those terms, not by us; Anthropic's own policy is at anthropic.com/legal/privacy. Anthropic receives only the content of the request: never your name, your email address or your account identifier.

Our temporary recovery copy does not change that arrangement. It is used only to return a completed response and prevent duplicate allowance charges; we do not use it to train a model.

Photos. A photo you add is sent to be read and is not stored on our server. If Claude decides the photo shows a finished dish rather than a written recipe, the app attaches that photo to the recipe it creates, and that copy is stored on your device and in your private iCloud, in the same way as any other recipe photo.

Nothing else in your library is sent. Asking Aubergenie to write or change one recipe does not send your other recipes, your shopping list, your meal plan or your cooking history.

What is never recorded

For clarity, because these are the things that matter most:

  • Sign in with Apple tokens and authorisation codes
  • Your Aubergenie session key, in usable form
  • A recoverable copy of the request text, page text, original recipe or change instruction after the request has been processed
  • The photographs you send to be read
  • Your recipe library as a collection, including recipes unrelated to the one request you explicitly made
  • Your shopping list and your meal plan

Who else is involved

Apple provides Sign in with Apple and CloudKit. Apple's handling of your Apple Account and your private iCloud data is governed by Apple's own privacy policy, not this one.

Supabase hosts our database and the server code that talks to Anthropic. The account and usage records, first-party AI performance records and temporary recovery responses described above live there. The database is hosted in London, United Kingdom (eu-west-2).

Anthropic processes AI requests, as described above.

Apple also runs TestFlight, through which beta testers install the app and may choose to send feedback, screenshots and crash reports to us, and iCloud Mail, which hosts the mailboxes you can write to (see "If you email us" below).

GitHub serves this website, aubergenieapp.com. The site is static: it sets no cookies, has no forms, analytics or advertising, and loads nothing from other companies. GitHub records visitors' IP addresses in its server logs under GitHub's own privacy policy.

Our AI performance record is held in our own Supabase database; no third-party analytics service receives it. There is no advertising network, crash reporter or data broker. The app keeps a short list of milestones on your device (for example "Cook Mode started") that never leaves it unless you choose Share Activity Log, which appears in test builds.

Supabase and Anthropic process your information under their data processing terms and may not use it for their own purposes. Apple is responsible for your Apple Account, iCloud and TestFlight under its own privacy policy.

If you email us

Messages to support@, hello@ or privacy@aubergenieapp.com are kept in our mailbox, hosted by Apple's iCloud Mail, so that we can answer them, and are deleted once the matter is closed. If you ask to try the beta, we read what you tell us about your cooking to choose testers, and we reply either way; please don't include health details. If we offer you a place, we give your email address to Apple in App Store Connect so that TestFlight can send your invitation, and from then on Apple handles it under its own privacy policy. A request we decline is deleted once we have replied, unless you ask to hear when Aubergenie launches. If you ask to hear when it launches, we use your address once, for that one email, and then delete it; you can ask us to forget it sooner. Nothing else you email is added to your account or shared with anyone.

Data leaving the UK

Your account record and usage counts are held in the database in London. The server code that handles a request runs on Supabase's network and may run outside the UK while it works.

The content of an AI request goes to Anthropic, which processes it in the United States. That transfer relies on the safeguards in Anthropic's terms for customers in the UK. What Anthropic keeps, and for how long, is governed by those terms, as described above.

Why the law says we can do this

If you are in the UK or the EU, the lawful basis for holding your account record and processing your AI requests is performance of a contract: you asked for an account and asked the app to write or change a recipe, and neither works without it. The usage and AI performance records rely on legitimate interests: preventing one account from consuming an unlimited amount of a paid API, understanding whether the beta is reliable and responsive, and reducing paid generation that is rejected or never used.

Emails you send us, including requests to try the beta, are handled on the basis of our legitimate interest in answering you and choosing testers; a launch email is sent only because you asked for it.

We do not rely on consent for the processing described above, because we do nothing optional with your data. Your cooking preferences, including any allergies, are sent only with a request you make yourself, and you can clear them in Settings at any time.

Aubergenie makes no decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects. Automated checks decide only whether a recipe request is completed and counted against your allowance.

How long things are kept

Your account record, usage counts and content-free AI performance records are kept while your account exists. Sessions expire after 90 days, or immediately when you sign out.

Completed generated, imported, scanned and changed recipe responses are recoverable for up to two hours. Cleanup runs every ten minutes, so the response body is expected to be physically deleted within about two hours and ten minutes of completion. The non-content job record and usage metadata remain while your account exists so a retry cannot spend the same allowance twice.

Deleting your account deletes the account record, and the usage and log rows attached to it, at the same time. One thing is kept after deletion: a one-way fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash) of your Apple user identifier, with the dates of any beta allowance that identifier was granted and how much of the current month it had used. It holds no name, email, content or account number. It exists only so that deleting an account and signing in again cannot be used to start a second free beta allowance (fraud prevention, a legitimate interest), and it is read only when an account is created. It is kept indefinitely for that one purpose.

Signing out does not delete your account. It ends the session on that device and leaves everything else in place, so signing back in returns you to the same account.

Deleting your account

In the app: open Settings and scroll to the end. Delete Account is there while you are signed in.

This removes your account record from our server along with everything linked to it, including any recipe response still inside its temporary recovery window. The one-way fingerprint described above is the only thing that remains. It does not touch the recipes, shopping list or meal plan on your devices or in your iCloud. To remove those, delete the app and remove its iCloud data from your Apple Account settings.

Your rights

If you are in the UK or the EU you can ask for a copy of what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, deleted or restricted, object to how it is processed, or ask for it in a portable form. For Aubergenie that is a short list, and the in-app delete does most of it immediately.

Write to privacy@aubergenieapp.com and we will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

Aubergenie is not aimed at children and does not knowingly hold information about anyone under 13. Sign in with Apple requires an Apple Account, which has its own age requirements.

A note on recipes written by AI

Recipes created or interpreted by Claude may contain mistakes, including about ingredients, cooking times and food safety. Every recipe in your library records how it arrived, so you can always tell which ones a model wrote, and wherever you share a recipe, the AI's part is said: "Created with Aubergenie", or "Adapted with Aubergenie" and "refined with Aubergenie" when it rewrote or changed someone's recipe. Check anything that matters, particularly allergens and cooking temperatures for meat, fish and eggs.

Aubergenie's allergen feature matches keywords against an ingredient list. It never says a dish is safe, and it cannot detect an allergen that is not named.

Changes to this policy

If what Aubergenie does with your information changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. Material changes will also be described in the app's release notes.

Contact

privacy@aubergenieapp.com

Data controller: BRGNDY LTD, company number 17537333, registered in England and Wales. Registered office: 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom.