Caller's Compendium
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Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 21, 2026 · Last updated: October 2, 2026

Caller's Compendium ("the app") is a free, open-source, local-first application for dance callers, developed by Isaac Banner ("we," "us"). The short version: the app has no accounts or tracking and keeps your collection on your device. Optional Device Sync can also store selected shareable content on a configured sync service for app functionality; it is not linked to your identity.

1. Data we collect

Device Sync is optional. When you enable it, the app transfers selected shareable content — including choreography, programs, tags, and shareable settings — to a configured sync service for app functionality. This is Other User Content and is not linked to your identity.

Names of other people in your collection. Your collection records the people credited in the dances and programs you call: choreographers, the authors of published sources, and the callers and bands billed on a program. Those names are personal data about people who do not use the app. We carry them because attribution is the reason the field exists — a dance without its choreographer is not usable, and the credit is already published wherever the dance or event is published.

This follows established practice for published authorship. Library catalogues treat an author's name as personal data about that author and justify publishing it, rather than treating publication as making the data non-personal. See, for example, the National Library of Scotland's privacy notice for catalogue records, which records name-authority data as personal data processed in the public interest, with a right of objection and a disclosed international transfer to the Library of Congress.

We do not collect account or identity information, sell information, or use content for advertising or tracking. The app has:

  • No user accounts and no sign-in.
  • No analytics, tracking, or telemetry.
  • No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
  • No third-party tracking SDKs.

2. Where your data lives

Everything you create in the app — your dance collection, programs, custom fields, dialects, themes, and settings — is stored locally on your device and is under your control. If you enable Device Sync, selected shareable content is also stored by the sync service you configure so it can be synchronized.

The sync service also stores a random identifier for each connected device, which the device makes up itself and replaces with a new one each time it connects to a store, together with when that device last shared changes. They are kept until that device is removed from the store or the store is deleted or expires. The identifier names a connection, not a person: it contains nothing about you or your device.

The service operator can read the plaintext synchronized store if they choose to. A break-glass access path exists for abuse investigations, and every use is logged. The derived sync storage path in that log becomes eligible for nulling after 30 days of access and is nulled by the next hourly sweep; after that it becomes a timestamp-only aggregate row. Ordinary diagnostic events that contain store-derived metadata become eligible for removal after 30 days and are removed by the next hourly sweep. They never include request bodies, record content, or bearer credentials.

Device Sync does not transfer structured venue street address, city, region, country, postal or ZIP code, or contact name, phone, or email fields. Freeform venue notes are shareable, however, and can contain names or phone numbers; avoid putting private contact information there.

Some fields are never sent to a sync service or included in shared content. A choreographer's email address, location, and deceased flag, and a venue's street address, city, state or region, postal code and country are always excluded. Venue contact names, phone numbers and email addresses are also excluded from shared content unless you explicitly choose to include them. All of these fields are still included in a complete backup file, which stays under your control. Notes fields are shared, so a contact detail typed into a note travels with the note.

You can export a complete backup to a single, human-readable JSON file with a built-in integrity checksum and restore it on another device. Those backup files are created and kept by you; we never receive them.

3. Network connections the app makes

The app works fully offline when Device Sync is disabled. When it contacts the internet, it does so only in the cases and for the purposes described below:

  • Published collections you choose to browse or import. The app fetches the catalog and archives of developer-published dance collections so you can review and import them locally. It does not upload your collection to obtain them.
  • Imports you initiate. When you choose to import dances or programs from an online source — such as The Caller's Box, ContraDB, or a link/ID you provide — the app requests that content directly from that third-party service so it can be added to your local collection. Your use of those services is subject to their own terms and privacy practices. The app requests only the resource you ask for; it does not send them your collection or personal data.
  • Optional update check. The app can check whether a newer version is available by requesting a small, public update-information file. This check is off by default and only runs if you turn it on in Settings. It downloads version information only; it does not send us any information about you or your data.
  • Optional Device Sync. When you enable it, the app contacts the configured sync service to synchronize selected shareable content for app functionality.

As with any internet request, a service the app contacts can see your device's IP address and standard request information, as is technically necessary to deliver a response. We do not use that information to identify or track you.

4. Permissions

The app requests only network (internet) access, used for the purposes in Section 3. It does not request access to your camera, microphone, location, contacts, photos, or similar sensitive device data.

5. Sharing between your own devices

If you share a program or dances with another person or device (for example via AirDrop, "Open with," or a share sheet), that transfer happens directly through the sharing mechanism you chose on your device or platform. It does not pass through us, and there is no public feed, messaging, or social component in the app.

6. Children's privacy

The app is a utility for dance callers and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

7. Your control over your data

Your local data remains under your control:

  • Delete individual items in the app, or uninstall the app to remove its local data from your device.
  • Export a backup at any time to keep or move your data yourself.
  • Disable Device Sync when you no longer want the app to synchronize selected content.

When Device Sync is enabled, the configured sync service holds the selected content for as long as the store receives authenticated activity, then reaps it after 30 days of disuse. Unreferenced uploads are protected for 24 hours while they can still be published, but deleting the store requests immediate removal. If physical removal fails, a durable cleanup record retries it on later requests and hourly sweeps. The access log's derived sync storage path becomes eligible for nulling 30 days after access and is nulled by the next hourly sweep; it retains a timestamp-only aggregate row after that. Ordinary diagnostic events become eligible for removal after 30 days and are removed by the next hourly sweep. They contain no content or bearer credentials.

8. Open source

Caller's Compendium is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. You can inspect exactly what the app does — including every network request — in the source code at github.com/ibanner56/CallersCompendium.

9. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update the effective date above and post the new version at this URL. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy or the app's privacy practices: compendium@contra.dance — or open an issue at github.com/ibanner56/CallersCompendium/issues.

Questions or objections about names in a collection should be directed to the person or organization controlling that collection. Questions about handling by a configured sync service should be directed to that service's operator.