Cairn

Privacy policy

Effective 28 September 2026

Cairn is a desktop app for macOS, made by Oreb Studio. Your data stays on your Mac. Oreb Studio runs no server that receives it, keeps no account for you, and collects no analytics.

What Cairn keeps, and where

Everything you put in Cairn, or that Cairn brings in for you, lives in a database on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/studio.oreb.cairn/: documents and briefs, issues, projects and initiatives, people and organisations, meetings, notes you capture, and the decisions and lessons you file. Backups of that database are kept in the same folder (one a day for two weeks, and one before each update of its structure).

The credentials for the services you connect (your Google sign-in, an Asana token, a GitHub token for updates) are stored in the macOS Keychain, never in a file.

Services you choose to connect

Each connection is optional and read-only. Cairn never writes to these services.

• Google Calendar. The events of your primary calendar over a three-week window: titles, times, descriptions, locations and attendees.
• Gmail. Only the threads that match a search you control (by default, starred threads and those Gmail marks important in your Primary inbox, from the last three days). From each, Cairn reads the sender, the subject and the latest snippet, and keeps them as a note for your next brief. It never reads message bodies, and never sends, labels, moves or deletes mail.
• Asana. Tasks in the projects you choose to follow, and tasks you attach to your work in Cairn: their name, assignee, due date and status.
• Links you paste, such as Google Drive documents, are kept as links. Cairn does not fetch their contents.

Disconnecting a service removes its credentials from your Mac. What was already brought in stays in your local database until you delete it.

The assistant

Cairn's briefs, meeting preparation, weekly review and answers are written by Claude, from Anthropic, through the Claude Code app installed on your Mac and signed in to your own Anthropic account. To do that work, Claude reads the relevant contents of your Cairn database, which can include meeting details, issues, your notes and email snippets. That processing happens under your agreement with Anthropic and its privacy policy. Oreb Studio receives none of it.

Updates

Cairn checks for new versions on GitHub, using a read-only token you provide. GitHub sees these requests (such as your IP address and the time) under its own privacy statement. Nothing about your use of Cairn is sent with them.

What Oreb Studio receives

Nothing. Cairn sends no telemetry, usage statistics or crash reports, shows no advertising, and Oreb Studio neither sees nor sells your data.

Google user data

Cairn's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Your control

• All of it is on your Mac: deleting Cairn's data folder deletes everything Cairn keeps.
• You can revoke Cairn's access at any time: Google at myaccount.google.com/permissions, and Asana and GitHub tokens in those services' settings.

Changes

If this policy changes, this page is updated and its effective date changes with it.

Contact

Questions about privacy: contact@oreb.studio.