Privacy Policy

Who we are

Disciple.app is run by NewCulture Consulting, LLC, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean NewCulture Consulting, LLC. "Disciple.app" means the web app at walk.disciple.app, the Disciple.app apps for iPhone and Android, and this website, www.disciple.app.

Questions about privacy go to privacy@disciple.app. Anything else goes to support@disciple.app.

What we collect, and who sees it

Here is everything Disciple.app stores about you, why, and who can see it. A walk is you and the people you invite into it.

Email address
To sign you in and send your sign-in codes.
Who sees it: Only you. If you email someone an invite, it is the reply-to address on that email.
Name
So the people you walk with know who you are.
Who sees it: You and the people in your walks.
Profile photo (optional)
So your partner sees your face next to your marks.
Who sees it: Anyone with the photo's web address. See Profile photos.
Time zone
So "today" and your reminders match your day.
Who sees it: You and the people in your walks.
Tradition (optional)
You can pick one, such as Baptist or Catholic, or choose not to say. It orders suggested practices and words a few questions the way your tradition does.
Who sees it: You and the people in your walks.
Walks and memberships
Which walks you are in, your role, and when you joined, paused or left.
Who sees it: The people in that walk.
Practices and "how I do it" notes
The things you keep doing, and how you do them.
Who sees it: Only you, until you add a practice to a walk. Then that walk sees it.
Marks
The days you kept a practice, with an optional note.
Who sees it: You and the walks that follow that practice.
Timed sessions
When you start and end a timed silence or prayer, and how long you planned.
Who sees it: You and the walks that follow that practice.
Focus
The one thing you are working on this season.
Who sees it: You and everyone you walk with.
Prayer requests
Your prayer list: what you pray for, which days, when you last prayed, and when it was answered.
Who sees it: "Just me" requests, and the days you pray for each request: only you. A request you send to a walk: that walk, whose members can mark it prayed for or answered.
Weekly reflection answers
Your private look back on the week.
Who sees it: Only you, until you share an answer into a walk. You share one answer at a time.
AI read-backs
A short reflection written from your own answers, only when you ask for one.
Who sees it: Only you.
Meeting notes
Short notes about when your walk met.
Who sees it: The people in that walk.
Invites
The code and link behind each invite, and the email addresses you send invites to.
Who sees it: The people in that walk.
Notification settings and push tokens
Which reminders you want and when. A push token is the address Apple or Google gives your phone so a notification can reach it, stored with the platform and app version.
Who sees it: Only you.
How you found us
If you arrive from a link with campaign tags (such as utm_source) or an ad click ID, we keep those tags, the page you landed on and the site that sent you, and attach them to your account when you sign up. It tells us which links bring people in.
Who sees it: Only us. We don't share it with anyone.
Records that keep things working
A log of which reminders went out, so you never get one twice. A count of AI requests, for daily limits. Invite code attempts, to slow down guessing.
Who sees it: Only us.
Church waitlist
If a church joins the waitlist on our pricing page: an email address, the church's name and its size.
Who sees it: Only us.

Some of this can say something about your faith: your tradition, your prayers, your reflections. We treat it as sensitive. It is used only to run Disciple.app for you, it is never used for advertising, and it is shown only to the people described here.

When you use Disciple.app, our hosting provider also records standard server logs, such as your IP address, the pages requested and your browser type, for security and reliability.

What your walk sees, and what stays yours

The people in a walk with you see:

your name, photo, time zone and tradition
the practices you add to the walk, how you do them, and your marks and timed sessions on them
your focus for the season
prayer requests you send to the walk
reflection answers you choose to share into the walk
meeting notes, and invites sent from the walk, including the email addresses they went to

They never see your email address, your "Just me" prayer requests, the days you pray for each request (even one they asked you to pray for), reflection answers you haven't shared, your AI read-backs, practices you haven't added to the walk, or how you found us.

If you leave a walk, you drop out of it for the people still there. Prayer requests you sent to it and answers you shared into it stay with the walk, so remove or unshare them before you leave if you want them gone. Deleting your account removes them.

You can sign in with a six-digit code we email you, with a password, or with a passkey on a device that supports one. Where we offer it, you can also continue with Apple or Google.

With a passkey, the private key stays on your device. We store only the public part needed to check it. Passwords are stored as a salted hash, never as the password itself.

If you continue with Apple or Google, they tell us your email address and, if you allow it, your name. If you hide your email with Sign in with Apple, we only see Apple's relay address.

To keep bots out, the sign-in, sign-up and church waitlist forms use Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks your browser for signs of automation. Once you are signed in, a cookie keeps you signed in.

Email and push notifications

We email you sign-in codes and messages about your account. When you invite someone by email, we send the invitation for you from hello@notify.disciple.app. It includes your name, uses your email address as the reply-to, and we save the address so your walk can see who was invited. We don't send marketing email.

On iPhone and Android, the app asks before it sends notifications. If you allow them, Apple (iPhone) or Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android) delivers them. Reminders follow the settings you choose in Account, and you can turn any of them off there or in your phone's settings.

Notifications never include your reflection answers or prayer requests. One kind, sent when a partner starts a practice, shows their first name and the practice's name, so it can appear on a lock screen. The same is true for your partner when you start one. Each person can turn it off.

AI features

Two features use AI. Both run only when you ask, and both use Claude, a model made by Anthropic.

Read back. When you tap "Read my week back to me", we send Anthropic your answers for that week and up to four earlier weeks, with the questions they answer. Before sending, we replace the names of the people you walk with by "your partner" or "a friend". If you picked a tradition, we also send its broad family, such as Protestant, so the reply can echo your own words. The read-back is saved with your reflection, and only you can see it.

Importing a rule of life. When you paste a rule of life to split it into practices, we send that text to Anthropic. You check and change the result before anything is saved.

Anthropic processes this only to return a reply to us, and does not use it to train its models. We count your AI requests so we can limit them each day. Nobody else's answers are ever sent with yours.

Profile photos

Your profile photo is optional. It is stored in a public storage folder so it loads quickly, which means anyone who has the photo's web address can open it, even without an account. The address is long and hard to guess and we don't publish it, but please don't upload a photo you wouldn't want someone outside your walk to see.

Changing or removing your photo deletes the old file. Deleting your account deletes your photo.

Camera and other permissions

Disciple.app asks for your camera only when you scan an invite QR code. The code is read on your device, and no image is uploaded. When you choose a profile photo, it uses your device's photo picker, and only the photo you pick is uploaded. On iPhone and Android it asks for permission to send notifications. It doesn't use your location, contacts, microphone or health data.

Cookies and local storage

In the app (walk.disciple.app and the phone apps), we use:

sign-in cookies from Supabase, which keep you signed in
disciple_signed_in, a flag with no identity in it, so this website can say "Open the app" instead of "Sign up free"
disciple_theme, the color palette you picked, and theme in local storage, for light or dark mode
disciple_native, which tells the app it is running inside the iPhone or Android app
disciple_attr and disciple_attr_last, the campaign tags and click IDs from the link that brought you, kept for up to 90 days
in local storage, whether you dismissed the passkey suggestion, and in the phone apps, whether notifications are on and your device's push token
in session storage, when we last emailed you a code, so the resend timer survives a reload

On this website (www.disciple.app), disciple-consent remembers your answer to "Can we count visits?" for 180 days. Google Analytics loads, and sets its _ga cookies, only after you tap Allow, wherever you are. It records pages viewed, buttons tapped, how you arrived, and your browser and device type, with IP addresses anonymized and ad features turned off. Change your answer at any time with Analytics choice in the footer.

When you arrive at this website from a link with campaign tags or an ad click ID, we keep them in local storage for up to 90 days and pass them to the app if you go on to sign up. This happens without asking, and it is never shared outside Disciple.app.

We don't use advertising cookies.

Who processes your data for us

We use a few companies to run Disciple.app. Each handles your data only to provide its service to us.

Supabase: the database, sign-in and photo storage. Your data is stored in the United States.
Vercel: hosts the app and this website, runs scheduled reminders, and keeps server logs.
Resend: delivers our email, including sign-in codes and invites.
Anthropic: AI read-backs and rule import, only when you use them.
Google Firebase Cloud Messaging: delivers push notifications on Android.
Apple Push Notification service: delivers push notifications on iPhone.
Cloudflare Turnstile: bot checks on sign-in, sign-up and the church waitlist.
Google Analytics: visit counts on this website, only if you allow it.
Apple and Google sign-in: only if you choose to continue with them.

What we never do

We don't sell your data or share it for advertising.
We don't show ads.
We don't track you across other apps or websites, and the phone apps don't use an advertising identifier.
We don't read what you write in your walks, except when you ask us to help with a problem, to look into abuse reported to us, or when the law requires it.

Keeping it safe

Data travels encrypted and is encrypted at rest by our providers. Rules inside the database decide who can read each row, so walk membership is the only way to another person's data. No system is perfect, so if something goes wrong that affects your data, we will tell you.

How long we keep it

We keep your data for as long as you have an account, and delete it when you delete your account, as described below. A few things expire sooner: an invite link expires after 14 days, campaign tags last 90 days, and your analytics answer on this website lasts 180 days. Backups kept by our database provider can hold deleted data for a short time until they are replaced.

Export and delete your data

Export. In the app, go to Account, then Export everything. You get a JSON file with your profile and settings, your walks and memberships, your practices, marks, sessions and focus, your reflection answers and read-backs (and where you shared each one), your prayer requests and prayer days, and meeting notes from walks you are still in. Other people appear by first name only.

Delete. Go to Account, then Delete account, and type DELETE to confirm. We delete your sign-in, profile and photo, your practices, marks, sessions and focus, your reflection answers, read-backs and shares, all your prayer requests (including ones you sent to a walk) and prayer days, meeting notes you wrote, your notification settings and push tokens, and the invite emails you sent. A walk nobody else ever joined is deleted with you. A walk someone else is in stays for them, without you or anything of yours in it.

You can also correct most of your data yourself in Account. If you can't sign in, or want help with any of this, email privacy@disciple.app from the address on your account. If a church joined the waitlist and wants off it, email us too.

Children

Disciple.app is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, email privacy@disciple.app and we will delete it.

If you live outside the United States

We are based in the United States, and your data is stored and processed here. By using Disciple.app from elsewhere, you understand that your data comes to the United States.

We use your data to provide the service you signed up for, and use analytics on this website only with your consent. Wherever you live, you can ask to see, correct, export or delete your data, or object to how we use it, by emailing privacy@disciple.app. We will answer within 30 days. If you are in the EU, the UK or another place with a data protection authority, you can also complain to it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the effective date at the top. If a change affects what we collect or who sees it, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

NewCulture Consulting, LLC, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. Privacy questions: privacy@disciple.app. Everything else: support@disciple.app.