Privacy Policy — Axolotl Labs

Axolotl Labs LLC (“Axolotl Labs,” “we,” “us,” “our”) builds focused, AI-native software. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and the rights you have over it. It applies to our website, axolotllabs.ai, and to our iOS app, The Bench.

At a glance

We do not sell your data.
We collect the minimum needed to make our products work.
Your voice recording never leaves your phone. We receive the text you approve, not the audio.

The website (axolotllabs.ai)

The website is a static, dependency-free landing page hosted on Netlify. We do not run advertising trackers or third-party analytics here today.

Netlify, as our hosting provider, automatically logs standard request information (IP address, user agent, timestamp, URL requested) for the purposes of operating the service, mitigating abuse, and producing aggregate traffic statistics. See Netlify’s privacy policy for details.

If we add lightweight, privacy-respecting analytics (such as Plausible or Fathom) in the future, this policy will be updated and the change noted at the top.

The Bench (iOS app)

The Bench is a game. You hear a short fictional legal case, deliver a ruling out loud as if you were the judge, and receive feedback on the quality of your reasoning. It is educational and entertainment software. It is not legal advice, and it does not engage with real legal matters.

Your voice recording and your transcript

Delivering a ruling out loud records your voice and turns it into text on your phone. You see the text first and can correct it; when you submit, the text — and only the text — is sent to us. That text is what we score, and it is kept with your account. You can also type your ruling instead of speaking it.

Your recording never leaves your phone, and we never receive it. If your phone cannot turn a take into text, we ask you to record again or type your ruling — we never fall back to sending us the audio.

Sign in with Apple

Signing in is required, and there is no password. We do not ask Apple for your name or your email address, and we do not keep either one. The app reads only the sign-in token and Apple’s opaque identifier for you. The sign-in token itself can carry your email address inside it — our server reads only the opaque identifier from that token, stores only that, and keeps no record of the address.

The only identifier we store for your account is that opaque one. It is specific to this app and cannot be used to look you up anywhere else.

A token that lets us undo the sign-in. When you sign in, Apple also gives us a code we exchange for a token whose only use is to withdraw your Sign in with Apple permission when you delete your account — Apple requires us to do that. We store it encrypted, it is never sent to your device or to anyone else, and it is deleted with the rest of your account. It cannot be used to read anything from your Apple account.

What else we store

Your ruling transcripts and the scorecards generated from them.
Your progress: experience points, rank, streaks, which practice areas and doctrines you have attempted, and your measured strengths per scoring category.
Your answers to the multiple-choice drill questions, and your confidence rating on each.
Your subscription status, if you subscribe, from the receipt Apple signs.
If you choose to appear on the leaderboard, the username you pick.
Product analytics: which screens and actions occurred, and when. These records carry categories and identifiers only — never your transcript text, your recording, the feedback you received, or any case text. Scores appear only as a coarse band, never a raw number.
Crash diagnostics, gathered by Apple’s on-device MetricKit. We use no third-party crash SDK.
The encrypted Apple token described above, used only to withdraw your sign-in permission when you delete your account.

A note on the leaderboard

Choosing a username is optional. If you choose one it is shown publicly to other players alongside your weekly and lifetime scores, and it is permanent — there is no way to change it later, including by contacting us. Pick accordingly.

What we do not collect in The Bench

Your real location.
Your contacts or your photos.
Your voice recording. The app uses the microphone — it is how you deliver a ruling — but the recording is turned into text on your phone and is never sent to us or stored by us. We receive the text, not the audio.
Advertising identifiers (IDFA).
Health, financial, or browsing data.
Any password — Sign in with Apple is the only way in.

How we use this data

To operate and secure the website.
To understand aggregate traffic patterns.
To respond to support requests you send us by email.
To score your rulings and return feedback on your reasoning.
To keep your progress so the app can show it back to you.
To operate the leaderboard, if you choose to appear on it.

We do not use your data for advertising and do not sell it to third parties.

Third parties

Provider	Purpose	Data shared
Netlify	Website hosting	Standard request logs for axolotllabs.ai
Microsoft Azure OpenAI	Scoring your rulings and generating feedback	Your ruling transcript (text). Never your voice recording.
Microsoft Azure (Blob Storage, Front Door)	Delivering case narration and artwork; storing the spoken summary of your scorecard	Case assets; the spoken-summary audio generated from your scorecard. Not your ruling recording
Microsoft Azure (Container Apps)	Running our backend	Request routing and runtime data
MongoDB (Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB in production)	Database hosting	Your account record, transcripts, scorecards and progress
Apple	Sign in with Apple, App Store, subscriptions, crash diagnostics	Apple user identifier, subscription receipt, on-device crash reports

Each processor we use has its own privacy and security commitments.

Retention and deletion

Website request logs are retained by our hosting provider under its own retention schedule, for operating the service and mitigating abuse.
Email you send us is kept only as long as needed to answer you.

The Bench. We hold no recording of your voice — it never leaves your phone, so there is nothing for us to retain. Everything else we hold about you is kept for as long as your account exists, and no longer: your transcripts and scorecards are your learning record, and the app shows them back to you.

Deleting your account from within the app removes the information we hold about you: your account record, your rulings and transcripts, your scorecards including the spoken version the app plays back to you, your drill answers, your progress, and your analytics and crash records.

Two limits, stated plainly. Anonymous aggregate statistics are not affected — for example how many people scored in each band on a given day; those carry no identifier and nothing in them can be traced back to you. And if something was still being written at the moment you deleted — a ruling part-way through scoring, say — a fragment of it can be left behind. We do not use it for anything.

We also ask Apple to withdraw the Sign in with Apple permission you gave us. Your account is deleted whether or not Apple confirms that last step, and the app tells you when it could not be done.

Beta testing (TestFlight)

If you take part in a beta of one of our apps through Apple’s TestFlight and send feedback from within TestFlight, Apple passes that feedback to us. We keep whatever you wrote, any screenshot you attached, and basic device information (device model, OS version, app build, battery level, how long the app had been running). If the app crashed, we keep the crash log.

We do not keep your name or your email address. Apple offers them to us and we do not ask for them, so the feedback we hold is not labelled with who sent it. One consequence worth knowing: anything you write or screenshot is kept as you sent it, so if you sign a comment or capture a screen showing your own details, that stays in what we keep.

We copy this out of App Store Connect so that it outlives Apple’s own retention window, and we keep it only on the developer’s machine — it never enters the app’s servers or database. We delete the whole archive when the beta ends or the app goes on sale, whichever comes first.

Beta feedback is used only to fix the app.

Your rights

You can:

Request a copy of the data we hold about you.
Correct inaccurate data.
Delete any data we hold about you.
Limit how we use your data, or withdraw consent for optional processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@axolotllabs.ai. In The Bench, you can delete your account and its data yourself from Account → Delete account.

Children

Our website and products are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product evolves. Significant changes will be noted at the top of this page; older versions are available in the website’s revision history on request.

Contact

Email: info@axolotllabs.ai
Postal mail: Axolotl Labs LLC — mailing address available on request.