Privacy Policy
Last updated: July 13, 2026
Lodestar is an application-tracking tool for STEM PhD and fellowship applicants. You're trusting us with real application data, including uploaded personal statements — this page explains what we collect, where it lives, and what we do (and don't do) with it.
What we collect
Account information: your email address, and if you sign in with Google, the basic profile information Google shares for authentication.
Application-tracking data you enter: programs, departments, deadlines, and statuses; professor names, research areas, and your notes on fit; recommenders, the programs you've asked them for, and request status; grants and fellowships you're tracking.
Uploaded documents: your master CV and statement of purpose, including per-school branches.
Payment data: if you purchase the $20 unlock, Stripe processes your card details directly — we never see or store your card number. We retain a record that you purchased and when.
We do not collect application-portal passwords, and we never will — that field does not exist in Lodestar.
Where it lives
All account and application data is stored in Supabase (Postgres for structured data, Supabase Storage for uploaded documents), encrypted at rest. The app is hosted on Vercel.
Who else sees it
We use a small set of processors to run the product, and we don't sell your data to anyone:
- Supabase — database, authentication, and file storage.
- Vercel — application hosting.
- Stripe — payment processing for the $20 unlock.
- Anthropic and Voyage AI — power advisor search (semantic matching and summaries over publicly available faculty research). Your program, professor, and document data is not sent to these processors as part of that feature.
- Vercel Analytics — cookieless product analytics (page views and a handful of product events like signing up or starting checkout). No cross-site tracking, no ad identifiers, and nothing tied to your name or email.
We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies, and Vercel Analytics doesn't set any either — that's why this policy doesn't need a cookie banner.
How we use your data
To run the product: storing what you enter, computing your timeline and status views, sending deadline reminder emails if you enable them, and processing your $20 unlock. We don't use your application data — your notes, your statement, your professor research — to train any model.
Deletion
You can delete individual programs, documents, and other records at any time from within the app. To delete your account and all associated data, email hello@lodestargrad.com and we'll remove it.
Changes to this policy
If we materially change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, for significant changes, email active users.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: hello@lodestargrad.com.