Privacy policy

What we keep

• Your account: your email, and your password (stored only as a scrambled hash we can't read back).
• Your projects: the property address, HOA name, your name, phone, email, other owners, mailing address, what you're building, sizes, materials, and the files you upload, like HOA rules, surveys, photos and letters.
• What the AI makes for you: the rules check, documents, drawings and chat.
• People you invite: the name and drawn signature of co-owners and neighbors who sign (and a neighbor's address and comment), what your contractor sends (license, insurance, quote), and the decision your HOA committee records on its link.
• Your HOA request: when you sent it, where, and the answer.
• Records of each AI run (which model, how much it cost), so you can see your costs and we can keep fair limits.
• Your own OpenRouter key, if you add one. It's encrypted before it's stored, and only its last 4 characters are ever shown.

How we use it

Only to do what you ask: check your HOA's rules, write your documents, draw your plans, build your packet, collect signatures, and keep track of deadlines and reminders. We don't show ads, we don't sell or rent your information, and we don't use it to market anything to you.

Who else sees it

• The AI model you pick. When you run a review, read a file or chat, the files and details it needs go to that model through OpenRouter (openrouter.ai), which passes them to the company that runs the model, like Anthropic, Google or OpenAI.
• Free models: some companies that run free models keep what's sent to them or use it to train their models. If that matters for your files, pick a paid model, and check your privacy settings on OpenRouter.
• Public record lookups: your property address goes to the US Census geocoder and FEMA's flood map service to find your city limits, county and flood zone.
• People you share a link with: a signing link shows the document to sign, a committee link shows your packet, and a contractor link shows your name, the address and what you're building. Anyone who has a link can open it until it expires, so share them only with the person they're for.
• Our team: your email, your project names and how much AI you've used, to run the service, keep fair limits and help you. We open your files or documents only if you ask us to or the law requires it.
• The companies that run our service: Convex stores the database and files, and Vercel hosts the website. They keep your data for us, not for their own use.
• When the law requires it, like a valid court order.

Anonymous HOA counts

When you record your HOA's answer, we keep a count for that HOA: the kind of project (like "fence"), whether it was approved, the month, how many days the HOA took, and what a denial or condition was about, in fixed topics like "setbacks" or "colors".

Nothing else goes in it: no name, no address, no files, no documents, and no words from your letter. Other homeowners in the same HOA see these counts as tips once there are at least three answers, so no single answer stands out, and the AI uses them when it writes their documents. Your own answers are never shown back to you as tips. The counts stay after you delete your project, because nothing in them leads back to you.

Deleting your information

• A project: delete it in that project's Project settings. Its files, documents, drawings, packets, signatures, chat, HOA request and private links are deleted.
• Your account: delete it in Settings, with your password. Every project and everything in it is deleted, and you're signed out everywhere.
• Files you uploaded but never added to a project are deleted automatically after a day.
• Anything already sent to an AI model, or opened by someone you gave a link to, is covered by their own practices, not ours.

Keeping it safe

• Everything travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
• Private links use long random codes that can't be guessed, and they expire.
• Other users can't open your projects. Changing your password signs out your other devices.

Cookies and browser storage

We use your browser's storage to keep you signed in and to remember small things, like where you were on a page. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

Who it's for

Approveway is for adults (18 or older) planning projects on homes in the United States. It isn't meant for children.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change affects how your information is used, we'll tell you in the app first.