What stays private, and how.

Who can see what

Every family on The Kitchen Table is made of pairs: one parent and one teen. Each pair has its own private thread. A teen's thread with one parent is never visible to their siblings, and a second parent has their own separate thread with each teen.

• Only ever yours: your journal, your check-ins, your cycle log, your coach conversations and what the coach remembers about you, and (for parents) your private notes about your teen.
• Seen by the other person in a pair: messages you send, your answer to the daily question once you've both answered, the Meet Halfway summary, journal entries you share one at a time, and any check-in or cycle-phase details you switch on for that person.
• Never shown to the other person, even in Meet Halfway: your raw answers. Only the summary is shared.

Sharing is always the writer's choice, one person and one thing at a time. You can stop sharing a journal entry or turn off check-in sharing whenever you like.

How it's protected

Everything a person writes is encrypted (AES-256) before it is stored, and each piece is cryptographically bound to the person or pair it belongs to, so it can't be moved onto someone else's account. Passwords are never stored — only a secure hash. Every request is checked on the server against who you are and which pair you belong to.

An honest limit: the encryption key lives on our server rather than in the database, because the coach, translator and Meet Halfway need to read your words to help you. That means your content is protected against database leaks, backups and anyone browsing the data — but it is not end-to-end encryption. We think it's important you know the difference.

Who runs The Kitchen Table

The Kitchen Table is made and run in New Zealand by Mark Steven, trading as Paragon Design. We follow the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. You can ask to see or correct the personal information we hold about you at any time through our contact page.

The services we use

• Convex stores the app's data (encrypted, as above) in the United States.
• Vercel serves the website.
• Google Gemini powers the AI features (more below).
• Resend sends the few emails we send: password reset codes, a one-off reminder before a free trial ends, and replies to messages you send us.
• Stripe handles payments for Plus. Your card details go straight to Stripe; we never see or store them.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't show ads.

Analytics — only on the public website

On our public pages (this one, the home page, pricing and the guides) we use Google Analytics, and may use Microsoft Clarity, to understand which pages help people. Inside the app — messages, journals, check-ins, the coach, anything anyone writes — there is no analytics and no session recording at all. The scripts don't load there, and they're switched off if you move from a public page into the app.

The AI features

The coach, the translator, “How will this land?” and Meet Halfway use Google's Gemini models. Only the text needed for that one request is sent, and each feature is limited to what the person using it is allowed to see: the translator uses the conversation and whatever the sender has chosen to share with you — never their private journal or coach chats.

AI readings are best guesses, not facts. They can be wrong. They are never shown to the other person.

The Weekly Pulse (part of Plus) is a parent's private look back at their week with one teen. It reads only what that parent can already see — their shared messages, the daily question, Meet Halfway summaries, and whatever the teen has chosen to share with them. It never reads a teen's private journal, unshared check-ins or coach chats.

Safety

If something written in The Kitchen Table sounds like someone might not be safe, the app quietly shows them free helplines. It never alerts anyone else, and it never blocks what they write. The Kitchen Table is not a crisis or counselling service. In Aotearoa New Zealand you can call or text 1737 any time, and in an emergency call 111.

Deleting your data

You can delete your account from Settings. It permanently removes your account and everything you wrote. Conversations you shared with someone are removed for both of you, and the app tells you this before you confirm.

Ages

The Kitchen Table is designed for teenagers roughly 11 to 18, joining by invitation from their parent or caregiver. Teens own their account and set their own password.

Payments

If a parent subscribes to Plus, we keep a record of the subscription (plan, status and renewal date) linked to the family. Teens are never shown prices or asked to pay.

Questions

Write to us from the contact page — a real person reads every message.