Privacy policy
Last updated 21 July 2026 · 2A Woodcote Avenue, SM6 0QS
01Who we are
Chapterhouse ("we") is the app for book clubs, of 2A Woodcote Avenue, SM6 0QS. This policy covers this website, the waiting list, and the Chapterhouse app. Contact for anything in it: hello@chapterhouse.club, or by post to the address above.
02What we collect
The waiting list
Your email address. Nothing else. It earns you exactly one note — when the doors open.
Your account
Name, email, photo if you add one, and which sign-in you used (Apple, Google, or email). We do not receive your Apple or Google password.
Your chapter life
The chapters you belong to, your member tag, invites you send and their status, meetup details your chapter sets, and what you post to your chapter: thread messages and replies (each stamped with your reading progress at the time), discussion questions, quiz questions, hot takes, quiz answers and scores, and your Canon scores and placements.
Your reading
Your logs — book, date, pages — plus what the app derives from them: your ribbon, your chapter's ribbon, your heatmap, pace and page counts. Margin notes you attach to a log are private to you unless you promote one to your chapter.
Your taste
Loved books, genres, your won't-read list, your wishlists, and your taste profile — a short piece of text you can read and edit at any time. If you import your history from a Goodreads or StoryGraph CSV, you upload the file yourself; everything imported lands titles-private, and we never scrape or sync with any other service.
Your vote
Your ranked ballot. It is stored so that votes stay anonymous in queries, the running tally is hidden from everyone including the Chapter Master, and after close only the winner, the per-book vote shares, and the participation count are ever revealed.
Your device
A push token, only if you opt in to notifications. We measure how the app is used in aggregate to improve it; there are no advertising trackers, no data brokers, and no third-party analytics or cookies on this website.
03What we use it for
To run the product, and nothing cleverer: keeping your chapter in sync, holding the spoiler gates, counting ribbons, running ballots, building your chapter's Canon, and sending the notifications you opted into — from a fixed catalogue, at most two a day, silent between 22:00 and 08:00 except a ribbon about to die. Book nominations are computed from your chapter's own taste, and every nomination shows its reasons. No advertising, ever.
04What your chapter sees — and never sees
This is product law, not just policy, and it is enforced in the software, not the small print.
Your chapter sees
- Your name, photo and member tag
- Your ribbon — its state and number
- That you logged, and how many days this week
- Your progress and stats on the sealed book
- What you post, and notes you choose to promote
- Your quiz answers and scores on quiz night
- Books you have made visible by choice
Your chapter never sees
- The titles of anything else you read
- Your private shelf and imported history
- Your margin notes, unless you promote one
- Your taste profile text
- Your won't-read list and private wishlist
- Your vote, or anyone's
- Blame — when a shared ribbon falls, the app states the fact and names no one
05The clever plumbing
Two features use a language-model service (Anthropic's Claude API), running on our servers only: drafting your taste profile text — which you can read, correct, or rewrite entirely — and generating the "why this book" reasons on ballot candidates, which are always shown to you and reference only real profile data. The provider processes that data on our instructions to produce the text and is not permitted to use it to train models. There is no other profiling, no black box, and no generated commentary on anyone's taste.
06Who else touches the data
Providers who run our infrastructure, processing data on our instructions and no further:
- Supabase — database, authentication, and file storage (profile photos, chapter crests).
- Expo — app delivery and push notification transport.
- Anthropic — the two text features in §05.
- Apple and Google — sign-in, app distribution, and notification delivery on their platforms.
- Book metadata sources (Google Books, Open Library) — we send them book searches, not your identity.
We do not sell personal data, we do not run third-party advertising, and we disclose data beyond the above only where the law requires it.
07Keeping and deleting
Waiting-list addresses are kept until the doors open or you ask to come off the list, whichever is sooner. App data is kept while your account is live.
Leave a chapter — or be removed from one — and your seat is freed, but the contributions you made to the chapter's shared record stay with it: your Canon scores, your logs against chapter books, your thread messages and quiz questions. Your private shelves, notes and profile leave with you.
Delete your account and your personal data is deleted within 30 days, except the minimum the law requires us to hold; anything that must remain in a chapter's shared record is anonymised so it no longer names you.
08Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, delete it, or restrict it, object to our use of it, and take your data elsewhere. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. One email to hello@chapterhouse.club starts any of these; we answer within a month.
09Children
Chapterhouse is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, tell us and we will remove it.
10Changes
If this policy changes in any way that matters, we will say so plainly — in the app or by email — before the change takes effect. The date at the top always tells you when it last moved.