Privacy Policy

1 · In short

2 · Who is responsible

BurnCast is written and published by Brett Olmstead, an independent developer (“we” in this document). For the purposes of the GDPR and comparable laws, that is the data controller, although, as set out below, we hold no personal data about you on any system we operate.

Questions about this policy, or about anything in it you think is wrong: olmsteadbrett@gmail.com.

3 · What this policy covers

• The BurnCast application for macOS.
• The optional status-line helper, which both builds ship and neither installs unless you ask; see section 7.
• The website at burncast.app.

BurnCast is distributed two ways. The direct download from this site is unsandboxed. The Mac App Store build is sandboxed: it reaches one folder you grant it and nothing else, and its status-line helper runs sandboxed too. Where the two differ, this policy says so.

It does not cover Claude Code or any Anthropic service. BurnCast reads files Claude Code has already written on your computer; how Anthropic handles your data is governed by Anthropic's own policies, and we are not affiliated with them.

4 · Data we collect

None. We run no servers that the app talks to, because the app talks to nothing. This section is about the application; what the website records when you download it is section 10.

• There is no account, sign-in, licence key, device identifier, or advertising identifier.
• There is no analytics, telemetry, usage reporting, or crash-reporting library in the app.
• There are no third-party SDKs of any kind. The app has zero third-party dependencies and links only Apple's own frameworks and the system SQLite library.
• The application does not import Apple's networking frameworks (URLSession, Network) and opens no network connections, for any purpose, including checking for updates.

In App Store terms, our App Privacy disclosure is “Data Not Collected.”

5 · What the app reads on your Mac

BurnCast reads files that already exist on your computer, and does not upload them. It modifies exactly one of them, settings.json, and only if you choose to install the helper, which is described in full below.

How the App Store build gets permission

A sandboxed application starts with access to nothing outside its own container, so the App Store build cannot read your logs until you say it may. On first run it opens the standard macOS folder picker at ~/.claude; the folder you choose is stored as a security-scoped bookmark, an Apple mechanism that records the grant without giving the app free rein, and re-opened on each launch.

The grant covers that one folder and is the only file access the app requests: its entitlements name no network client and no network server. Within the folder the app reads the logs and writes exactly one thing: an entry in settings.json, and only if you choose to install the helper (section 7). You can withdraw the grant at any time from Settings, which forgets the bookmark and returns the app to asking.

Those last two are read only by the direct download, and only if you happen to have the Claude desktop app installed. The App Store build cannot reach them at all: its sandbox permits the one folder you grant it and nothing besides. Neither build writes to that folder, and nothing found there is transmitted, because there is nothing in the app that could transmit it.

Your prompts and your code are never read

This is a property of how the parser is built, not a promise about our intentions. On every ordinary log line the app decodes only the usage and model fields and deliberately skips the message content; the body of your conversation is never brought into memory at all. The one exception is a line that Claude Code marks as synthetic, which is where a “you've reached your limit, resets at …” notice lives. From that the app takes a reset time and a percentage, and keeps nothing else from the text.

Your prompts, Claude's replies, your source code, your file names and your directory structure are therefore never read, never stored, and, there being no networking code, could not be transmitted even if they were.

6 · What the app stores on your Mac

Everything BurnCast creates lives in one folder inside your own user library.

The folder is ~/Library/Application Support/BurnCast. None of it is transmitted, synced by us, or shared. It is covered by your Mac's own backups and disk encryption, and by nothing of ours.

7 · The optional status-line helper

To show your account's real limit percentages instead of an estimate, BurnCast can register a small helper program as Claude Code's status-line command. Setup offers it the first time you open the app, and Settings has it afterwards; it is off until you press the button, and every other feature works without it.

• The helper receives the status information Claude Code passes to any status-line command, keeps only the rate-limit figures, and writes them to gauge.json on your Mac. Nothing is sent anywhere.
• Before its first change the installer backs up ~/.claude/settings.json and writes atomically.
• If you already had a status-line command, ours is chained ahead of yours rather than replacing it: your command receives exactly what Claude Code sent and keeps control of the bar. We do not inspect or transmit what it produces.
• Uninstalling restores your previous setting verbatim.

8 · Notifications

Alerts are local notifications posted by the app through macOS on your own machine, if you grant permission. They are not push notifications: no Apple Push Notification service token is requested, and no notification passes through any server, ours or anyone's.

9 · Apple, and installing from the App Store

We do not collect anything. Apple, as the store operator, does, and it is more honest to describe that than to imply the whole transaction is invisible.

• Downloading the app is a transaction between you and Apple, governed by Apple's privacy policy. The app is free and has no in-app purchases, so we receive no payment details and no identity information.
• If you have chosen to share analytics with developers (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Share with App Developers), Apple may make crash logs and aggregated performance metrics available to us through App Store Connect. Apple provides these in aggregated or de-identified form; they do not tell us who you are. You can withdraw that consent at any time in the same setting, and this app never asks you for it.
• App Store Connect also shows us aggregate figures such as downloads and page impressions. These never identify an individual.
• Ratings and reviews you choose to write are public, and are handled by Apple.

Anything Apple makes available to us is used only to fix defects and decide what to build next. It is not combined with any other data, because there is no other data.

10 · This website

• No cookies. The site sets none, of any kind, and there is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.
• No analytics and no trackers. No third-party scripts, tag managers, or tracking pixels.
• No third-party requests at all. The stylesheet, the fonts and the images are served from this domain. Visiting this page does not tell any other company that you did, which would be a strange way to run the website of an app that makes no network calls.
• Server logs. Like almost every web server, ours records each request: your IP address, the date and time, the page requested, the referring page if your browser sent one, and the browser's user-agent string. These are used only to operate the site and to investigate abuse or faults. They are rotated daily and deleted after about 14 days. They are never used to build a profile of you, and never sold or shared.
• Downloads are logged in more detail. When you download the disk image from this site, the server keeps the same log line with a few extra fields: which build you were sent, how many of its bytes actually arrived and how long they took, whether the transfer finished, the language your browser asked for, and the operating system and browser version your browser volunteers in its headers. We read it to know how many people are running BurnCast, which release they are on, whether downloads are completing, and which systems are worth testing on. It is the app's only source of those numbers, because the app itself reports nothing.
  Your approximate location is worked out from your IP address on our own machine, against an offline database. It is not sent to a geolocation service, because handing your address to a third party is the one thing this page promises not to do.
• What the download log is still not. There is no script on this page, no cookie, no identifier stored on your machine, and no fingerprinting: nothing here survives you closing the tab, and nothing follows you to another site. The log is the server's own record of what it sent you, it is deleted on the same 14-day rotation as everything else, and it is never sold or shared. What we keep for longer are plain counts: how many downloads, from which countries, of which version, with no addresses in them.

11 · Sharing and third parties

We share your information with no one. There are no data processors, analytics providers, advertising partners, content-delivery networks, or subcontractors involved in the app or this site: the server log described in section 10 is read by us, on our own machines, and goes nowhere else. Nothing is sold, and nothing is “shared” in the sense that California law uses the word.

12 · Retention and deletion

• On your Mac. The app's data stays until you remove it. To erase all of it: uninstall the status-line helper from Settings first (this restores your Claude Code configuration), then delete ~/Library/Application Support/BurnCast and move the app to the Trash. Nothing is left behind, and your Claude Code logs are untouched, because the app never writes to them.
• Website and download logs. Deleted automatically after roughly 14 days.
• Download counts. Kept indefinitely, because they are what tells us whether the app is worth continuing to write. They are totals only: downloads per day, per country, per version. They carry no address, no user-agent and no referrer, so they are not a record of anyone in particular.
• Everywhere else. There is nothing else. We hold no account or profile on any system we operate.

13 · Your rights

Laws such as the EU and UK GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act give you rights of access, correction, deletion, portability and objection over personal data a company holds about you, and the right not to have it sold or shared.

We hold almost none, and there is no account to access, nothing to correct, and nothing to export. Nothing is sold or shared, and there is nothing that we do sell or share. Nearly all the data involved is on your own computer, entirely under your control, and removable at any time as described above.

The exception is the server log described in section 10, which holds your IP address for about a fortnight if you visited this site or downloaded the app. An IP address counts as personal data under the GDPR, so it is only honest to name it here rather than round it down to nothing. Write to us within that window with the rough time you downloaded and we will find the entries and delete them; after it, they are already gone. We rely on our legitimate interest in running the site and knowing how the app is being used, and you may object to that at the address below.

If you believe we hold personal data about you, write to olmsteadbrett@gmail.com and we will answer within 30 days. If you are in the EEA or the UK you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

14 · Children

BurnCast is a developer tool and is not directed at children. Because it collects no data from anyone, it collects no data from children, and we do not knowingly hold information about anyone of any age.

15 · Security

The app's data sits in your user library and is protected by macOS itself: file permissions, and full-disk encryption if you have FileVault switched on. This website is served over HTTPS only, with plain HTTP redirected. Since we store nothing about you on our side, there is no database of user data to breach.

16 · Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted on this page with a new effective date. Should a future version of the app ever gain a feature that transmits data, it would be opt-in, explained in the app before you turned it on, and described here first. It will not happen quietly.

17 · Contact

Brett Olmstead · olmsteadbrett@gmail.com