Privacy policy

Version 1 · Last updated October 27, 2026

MAKA helps households find and preorder food from farms near them, and helps farms see what people want before harvest day. This policy says what we collect when you use MAKA at themaka.app, why, who it goes to, and what you can do about it. MAKA is in beta, so this policy will change as the product does; we will update the date above and tell you in the app when something important changes.

What we collect

• Your account: name, email, role (household, kitchen, farm or coordinator), region and organization. Your password is stored only as a salted hash; we never see it.
• What you put in: the household notes you give us, questions you ask the assistant, photos and files you attach, receipts you photograph, recipes, weekly menus and plans, preorders and skips in pickup rings, shares in pooled buys, things you wish you could buy, corrections and feedback.
• Attachments and receipts: a PDF is read on your own device and only its text is sent. A receipt photo is read once by an AI model; we keep the lines it reads, not the photo. Small previews of photos you attach in a chat are kept with that chat until you delete it.
• Farms: listing details, offers, prices and how buyers pay you, and, if you link one, your mobile number and the texts you send to MAKA's line.
• Technical details: two cookies that keep you signed in and remember that you entered the access code. We use no advertising or tracking cookies and no analytics service. Your IP address is used to limit repeated attempts and abuse; failed sign-ins record the email that was typed. Our host keeps standard server logs.
• The request-access form on our public page: what you choose to send us.

How we use it

To run MAKA: show you checked records of who sells what, plan your week, run pickup rings, answer your questions, keep the service secure, and fix and improve it. We do not sell your information, show you ads, or share it for anyone else's marketing.

Who it goes to

• The farms and coordinator in your pickup ring see your name and what you reserved, so they can pack and hand it over.
• AI model providers. When you use the assistant or read a receipt, we send what is needed to answer: your question, the text of your attachments, your photos, your household notes and the records involved. Requests go through the Charis gateway to model providers it routes to (currently through OpenRouter, to models from providers such as Z.ai, DeepSeek, Google, Anthropic and Alibaba). They process it to return an answer, under their own terms.
• Services that run MAKA: Vercel (hosting), Neon (database) and OpenFreeMap (map tiles, which your browser loads directly). If we turn on email or the farm text line, Resend (email) and Twilio (text messages) will carry those messages.
• When the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety, and to a buyer of MAKA if the company changes hands, under this policy.

Seller and farm records

Seller listings come from public records and the sellers' own websites, each with the date we checked it. A farm or seller can correct its record or ask us to take it down from the record itself, or by writing to us.

How long we keep it

We keep your information while your account is open. Close your account from your account page and we delete it along with your notes, chats, recipes, plans, receipts and preorders. Feedback, corrections and wants you sent stay, with your name removed. Texts sent to the farm line are kept with the phone number they came from. Copies of sample seats are removed once they are a day old, and limit counters once they are two days old. Server logs follow our host's standard retention.

Your choices

• See and download what MAKA holds about you from the Open records page in the app.
• Change your notes and settings on your account page, and fix a record with “Something wrong?”
• Close your account and delete your information at any time.
• Texas residents have rights under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act to access, correct, delete and get a copy of their personal data, and to opt out of its sale or use for targeted advertising (we do neither). Write to us and we will respond within 45 days.

Children

MAKA is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13; if you think a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.

Security

Passwords are hashed, sessions are signed and expire, data travels encrypted, and access to records is limited to the accounts they belong to. No system is perfect; if something goes wrong that affects you, we will tell you.

Contact

Questions or requests: hello@themaka.app.