Privacy Policy

1. Overview

This Privacy Policy explains what information Yaseen Attrah, operating the Ascend app (“Ascend”, “we”, “us”), collects when you use the Ascend app, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We collect only what we need to run the service, and we do not sell your personal information.

2. Information We Collect

Account information: name and email address.

Profile & health-related inputs you provide: age, height, weight, biological sex, activity level, fitness goal, training experience, available equipment, schedule, dietary preference, food allergies, meals per day, and body-fat estimate.

Activity data you create in the App: workout logs (exercises, sets, reps, weights), food logs, weight and body-measurement logs, sleep logs, streaks, and coach chat messages.

Photos: progress photos you upload (stored privately for your account) and meal photos you scan (processed to produce a nutritional estimate).

Connected health services (optional): if you connect Apple Health or WHOOP, we read and/or write the data you authorize, such as workouts, steps, and weight.

Device & diagnostics: device model, OS version, app version, and crash/error reports.

Support communications: emails you send to our support address.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to: (a) generate your personalized workout and meal plans and adapt them over time; (b) analyze meal photos you submit and estimate nutrition; (c) operate core features such as logging, streaks, progress charts, and the AI coach; (d) manage your subscription and free trial; (e) provide customer support; (f) send notifications you enable (reminders, trial-ending alerts); (g) monitor crashes and fix bugs; and (h) understand aggregate usage to improve the App. We do not use your progress or meal photos for advertising, and we do not sell personal data.

4. Third-Party Services We Share Data With

To operate Ascend, data is processed by these providers under their own security and privacy commitments:

• Supabase — our database, authentication, and private photo storage.
• Anthropic (Claude API) — our AI provider. With your permission (see Section 4A), we send Anthropic: your fitness profile (goal, age, sex, height, weight, experience, training days, session length, equipment); your food preferences (diet type, allergies and intolerances, meals per day, disliked foods); your activity in the App (logged workouts and sets, logged meals, weight entries, weekly totals); meal photos you choose to scan; the messages you type to the coach; and your first name. We do not send your email address, Apple ID, progress photos, payment details, or raw Apple Health/WHOOP data. Anthropic processes each request only to produce the response, does not use this data to train its models, and under its commercial API terms may retain request data for a limited period for abuse detection before deleting it. Requests travel through our own server; no other AI company receives your data. Emails you send to our support address are also processed by Claude to classify them and draft replies (a human reviews escalated issues).
• RevenueCat — subscription and trial management (receives purchase status, not your health data).
• Open Food Facts — barcode product lookups (receives scanned barcodes).
• USDA FoodData Central — food nutrition search (receives your search terms).
• Apple HealthKit / WHOOP — only if you connect them, and only the data types you authorize. Health data from these services is never used for advertising or shared with third parties for marketing.
• Sentry — crash and error reporting (device/diagnostic data).
• Unsplash — meal and workout imagery is fetched for display; no personal data is sent beyond standard image requests.

We share data with these processors only as needed to provide the service. We may also disclose information if required by law or to protect our rights, users, or the public.

4A. AI Features & Your Permission

Ascend asks for your permission in the App before the first time it sends any of your data to our AI provider. The permission screen lists exactly what will be sent, names Anthropic as the recipient, and explains how the data is used. Nothing is sent to Anthropic until you tap Allow.

You can withdraw this permission at any time in Profile → AI & Your Data. When it is off, Ascend still works: you keep the starter workout and meal plans built from your onboarding answers, and logging, calorie tracking, recovery and progress all run without AI. The AI coach, meal-photo scanning, AI-generated plans and AI swap suggestions stay unavailable until you turn it back on.

Your onboarding plan is built from templates on your device and does not involve AI. AI-generated plans are produced only after you subscribe and have given this permission.

5. Data Storage & Security

Your data is stored with Supabase using industry-standard encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest. Access to your records is protected by row-level security so that your account can only read its own data. Progress photos are stored in a private storage bucket accessible only to your authenticated account. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we take commercially reasonable measures to protect your information and will notify you of any breach as required by law.

6. Progress Photo Privacy

Progress photos are private to you. They are visible only within your logged-in account, are never shared with other users, never used in marketing, and never shared with third parties except the storage infrastructure that hosts them (Supabase). You can delete your progress photos at any time in the App, and they are removed from storage when your account is deleted.

7. Friends & Community Sharing

Friends (not available in this version): the Friends feature is turned off in this release, so no username search, friend list, or score sharing happens at all. When it returns, this is how it will work — if you use the Friends feature, other users can find you by the username you choose. Friends you have accepted can see your name, username, and your daily health scores — overall, workout, nutrition, sleep, recovery, and consistency scores (each a 0–100 number). Sleep and recovery scores may be derived from health services you have connected (such as Apple Health or WHOOP). Friends never see your raw health records, logs, photos, or chat history — only the scores. Removing a friend immediately stops all sharing with them.

Community foods (optional): if you submit a custom food to the shared food database, its name and nutrition details become visible to other users after approval. Your name and email are never shown to other users alongside the submission.

8. Your Rights: Access, Export & Deletion

Depending on where you live (including under GDPR and CCPA/CPRA), you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, receive a copy in a portable format, correct inaccurate data, and request deletion. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@ascendfitness.ai from the email associated with your account, or use the account-deletion option in the Profile tab. Account deletion removes your profile, logs, photos, and generated plans from our systems; residual copies in encrypted backups are purged on the backup rotation schedule. We respond to verified requests within 30 days. We will never discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

9. Children’s Privacy

Ascend is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (COPPA). The App requires users to be at least 16 years old. If we learn that a child under 13 has provided personal information, we will delete it promptly. Parents or guardians who believe a child has used the App can contact support@ascendfitness.ai.

10. Analytics & Tracking

We use crash reporting (Sentry) and basic in-app event logging (for example, onboarding step completion) to understand and improve the App. We do not use third-party advertising SDKs and we do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. If this changes, this policy will be updated and, where required by Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework, we will ask for your permission first.

11. Data Retention

We keep your data while your account is active. If you delete your account, personal data is deleted as described in Section 8. Support emails may be retained for record-keeping. Aggregated, de-identified data that cannot be linked back to you may be retained for product analytics.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the App evolves. For material changes we will notify you in the App before the changes take effect, and the “Last updated” date above will reflect the revision. Your continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

13. Contact

For privacy questions or requests: support@ascendfitness.ai