DRAFT — this document has not been finalized and is not yet in effect.

Privacy Policy (DRAFT)

Last drafted: 2026-07-05.

The short version

Heartwood stores your data on your machine and in your own cloud storage. We do not receive, host, or have access to your genealogical data.

What Heartwood does not collect

Heartwood is a local-first desktop application. It does not upload, transmit, or otherwise send your genealogical records, trees, sources, or research notes to Twigly Labs or to any third party we operate. There are no accounts, no sign-in, and no servers of ours in the path of your data.

Telemetry

Heartwood ships with no telemetry, period. No usage analytics, crash reports, or diagnostics are collected or sent anywhere by default, and no such feature exists in the product today. If an opt-in, anonymous crash-telemetry feature is ever introduced in a future release, it will be off by default, will never contain genealogical content (names, dates, places, or file contents), and this policy will be updated first to disclose exactly what it sends before it ships.

Your own cloud storage and AI

If a future release lets you sync or back up through a cloud storage provider you already use (for example Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox), Heartwood will read and write only inside a folder you control in your own account — we never see or proxy that data. If you connect Heartwood to an AI assistant (such as Claude Desktop) or to a local model, your evidence is sent only to the model you personally chose, over a connection that runs on your own machine — never through a Twigly Labs server, because no such server exists in this data path.

Sharing with other researchers

If and when research-sharing features ship, sharing will happen directly between you and the researcher you choose, over storage you both control — never through a Twigly Labs server or a public share page.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes — for example, when cloud-storage sync is added, or if an opt-in telemetry feature is ever introduced — we will update this page and describe the change plainly before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy: contact Twigly Labs at the address listed on the homepage.