Legal

Privacy Statement

Last updated: August 4, 2026

This statement explains how the Chip Hippo desktop application and the chiphippo.com website handle your information. Both are built and maintained by Jason Figge. The principle behind both is the same: Chip Hippo is a local-first tool, so your work belongs to you and stays with you.

1. The Chip Hippo app

Your designs stay on your device

Your working desk, saved .chiphippo schematics, and settings are stored in local files under your operating system's user-profile folder (and wherever you choose to save documents). None of it is uploaded to us or to any cloud service — there is no Chip Hippo account and no server that holds your work. You can back it up, move it, or delete it yourself at any time.

Fully offline by default

Chip Hippo designs and simulates circuits entirely on your machine. Placing parts, wiring, the simulation engine, the schematic view, and every file you save are local computation on local files. A freshly installed Chip Hippo that you have not configured makes no network connection at all — there is no server behind it, and nothing is uploaded to us at any point.

Optional connections you can turn on

There are exactly three features that reach the network, and none of them is on until you turn it on or press the button that starts it. All three talk to third parties directly — not to us, and not by way of anything we run.

• Update checks (off by default). Settings ▸ About can check GitHub for a newer release, and Help ▸ Check for Updates… does it once on demand. That connection reaches GitHub's servers and is subject to GitHub's privacy statement. Nothing about your designs is sent — it asks what the latest version is and, if you agree, downloads it. You can always download new versions yourself instead, and builds installed from the Mac App Store have no updater at all.
• The AI circuit assistant (off until you add a key). If you supply your own API key, the assistant can build a circuit from a description or review the one on your desk. What is sent, to the provider you choose, is: the text you type, a list of the parts in Chip Hippo's catalogue, and — when you ask for a review — a written description of the circuit currently on the desk, including its parts, their names and descriptions, and how they are connected. That is your design leaving your machine, so treat a review the way you would treat pasting a design into any third-party service. The provider is whichever endpoint you configure — Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, which may be a model running locally on your own machine — and its handling of that text is governed by its own privacy policy, not ours. Your API key is stored on your device, encrypted with your operating system's credential store, is never written to a settings file in plain text, and is sent only to that provider. If your OS offers no credential store, Chip Hippo refuses to save the key rather than storing it unprotected.
• Datasheet downloads (on demand). Settings ▸ Data Sheets ▸ Download… fetches manufacturer PDFs from their publishers' and archives' own web servers, so the pinout windows can link to them. It sends nothing but the file requests themselves, and only when you press the button.

No telemetry

Chip Hippo contains no analytics SDKs, usage tracking, crash-reporting services, advertising, or “phone-home” beacons. The optional donation link simply opens a page in your browser; the app does not track whether you visit it or give.

2. This website

Static, cookie-free, no analytics

chiphippo.com is a static website. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics or advertising scripts, and includes no third-party tracking. Fonts are loaded from your own system, so there are no web-font CDN requests either.

Hosting

The site is hosted on GitHub Pages. As with any web host, GitHub may process standard technical information — such as your IP address and browser user-agent — in server logs in order to deliver and protect the site. We do not receive or store those logs; that processing is governed by GitHub's privacy practices, not ours.

Content loaded from GitHub

The download buttons point to GitHub Releases, and the downloads section reads the list of releases from a small static file generated at build time. When you follow a download link, your browser connects to GitHub, subject to GitHub's privacy statement.

Outbound links

Links to GitHub and other external sites take you to third parties that have their own privacy policies, which we don't control.

3. What we never do

• We don't sell, rent, or share your personal data — we don't collect it to begin with.
• We don't run ads or embed third-party trackers, in the app or on this site.
• We don't require or create user accounts.
• We don't collect, receive, or store your circuit designs — there is nowhere for them to go, because we run no server.

The one thing that can send a design off your machine is the AI assistant's review, described above — and it goes to the provider you configured, on a key you supplied, at the moment you ask for it. It never comes to us.

4. Your data and your rights

Because we don't collect or hold personal data about you, there is nothing on our side to access, correct, export, or delete. The information the app stores lives on your own device and is fully under your control — you can view, edit, back up, or erase it at any time. If you are in a region with data-protection laws such as the GDPR or CCPA, those rights are effectively satisfied because no personal data about you ever leaves your machine for us.

5. Changes to this statement

If this statement changes, we'll update the “Last updated” date above and post the revised version here. Because the site is open source, its full history is also visible in the project's GitHub repository.

6. Contact

Questions about privacy? Open an issue on GitHub.