Version 2026-10-10-payments. Coach Steve is operated by Palisade Technologies Inc. for athletes in supported countries worldwide. Privacy contact: sam@palisade.email.
External enrollment and live proactive messaging remain closed until the documented provider, Garmin, model, legal, privacy, and safety gates pass. This page describes the engineering defaults for the private alpha; reviewed launch copy may narrow them before enrollment.
How Coach Steve collects, uses, processes, stores, and shares Garmin data
Collection. When you choose to connect your Garmin Connect account, Garmin sends Coach Steve only the data and permissions you authorize. Depending on those permissions, this can include activity summaries and details, device model, sleep, heart rate, HRV, stress, Body Battery, respiration, pulse oximetry, body composition, health snapshots, training status, user metrics, permission changes, and deregistration notices. Coach Steve receives these records through Garmin's OAuth-authorized server-to-server notification APIs; it does not scrape your Garmin account.
Use and processing. Coach Steve validates, normalizes, and combines authorized Garmin data to show source-aware summaries, answer your coaching requests, and provide only the separately enabled coaching categories. Garmin data is sent to the configured OpenAI model service only after you separately accept and enable the current Garmin-to-AI purpose. Model output is grounded against same-account records and identifies Garmin as a contributing data source. Withdrawing that purpose blocks future model processing without disconnecting Garmin; disconnecting Garmin stops future collection and deletes Garmin-sourced data from Coach Steve under the deletion process described below.
Storage. Authorized Garmin records and encrypted Garmin credentials are stored in Coach Steve's Supabase-hosted database in the configured United States region. Raw webhook records are retained for up to 7 days after normalized processing. Normalized Garmin records are retained while the account remains connected and active, unless you disconnect Garmin or request deletion sooner. Approved backup expiry follows the published provider schedule.
Third parties. Garmin data is processed by Supabase for application hosting, database, and storage. If you separately enable Garmin-to-AI processing, relevant minimum Garmin records are processed by OpenAI to generate coaching. When messaging is enabled, Sendblue carries the resulting coaching messages, which may contain Garmin-derived facts or insights. These processors act under their applicable contracts and may process data outside your province or country. Coach Steve does not sell Garmin data and does not share it with other third parties except these disclosed processors, a service you separately direct Coach Steve to use, or where legally required. Strava is isolated from model/coaching input and does not receive Garmin health or activity records from Coach Steve.
Any change to this section that relates to Garmin data must be submitted to the Garmin Connect Developer Program team and receive its written approval before the changed policy is implemented.
Depending on the choices you enable, we process your account email and profile; Garmin activity, sleep, heart-rate, recovery, stress, device, permission, and schedule data; messages and delivery events; supported images and sanitized derivatives; the coach's notes about you and its summary of your earlier conversations (below); web pages you send the coach and the answers to its web searches (below); generated coaching runs and visual cards; consent and security receipts; your subscription status if you pay for coaching (below); and, if separately enabled, the minimum Strava authorization and activity identifier needed to append the exact approved footer.
We do not ask you to submit another person's health data, faces, identity documents, clinical records, or unsupported images. Food, body/injury, skin, medication, supplement, and other unapproved image categories are not analyzed in the alpha.
We use this data only to authenticate you, connect the integrations you select, answer your coaching requests, provide separately opted-in coaching categories, render requested coaching cards, operate and secure the service, honor deletion/export requests, and meet consent or incident-record obligations.
Supabase hosts the application database and private object storage in the configured United States region. Garmin supplies data you authorize. Sendblue is the evaluated messaging processor when messaging is enabled. OpenAI is the configured model processor when model use is enabled. Strava is optional and isolated from model/coaching input. These providers may process data outside your province or country under their contracts and applicable law. Provider DPA, subprocessor, location, retention, deletion, and use-case approval remain launch gates.
Alpha content is not used to train or fine-tune a shared model by Coach Steve. Any future product-improvement or training purpose requires a separate decision, disclosure, consent where required, and Garmin/provider review.
What they are. Coach Steve keeps one short document of notes about you (injuries and body, preferences, races and goals you mention, life right now, open threads, how you write, the training block so far, what works with you), one rolling summary of your earlier conversations, and a short dated log of each day's and each week's conversation, which the coach searches with the words of your message when you ask about something from before. Both are written from what you tell it by text and what you ask about your training; neither holds Garmin readings, which stay in their own records. Every note line carries the day it was noted and a reference to the message it came from.
How they are written. After each reply, a model reads your message and proposes a note; the service keeps a note only when it quotes your own words. Once a night, a model tidies the notes (expires lines you bounded in time, merges duplicates, dates a correction, adds a review date to a passing fact) and writes the day's summary lines. A note with a review date is asked about, never dropped silently.
What they are used for. The coach reads the summary and the notes before every reply so it can answer as someone who remembers your last conversation, and for nothing else. They are sent to the configured model service as part of the coaching request, under the same model purpose as your messages, and are not used to train a shared model.
Your controls. Ask the coach what it knows about you and it lists every note. Tell it to forget, correct or remember something and it changes the notes in the same conversation, and a forgotten line is removed from every kept version and from the summary lines that came from the same messages. Conversation deletion deletes the summary and keeps the notes; account deletion deletes both. The export includes both, with their versions.
Retention. The notes are kept, with their earlier versions, until you remove a line or delete the account; the summary is kept rolling (the oldest lines drop off when it is full) and the dated logs are kept until conversation or account deletion, and a line that came from a message you asked the coach to forget leaves both. The service's own record of each note change holds codes only, never your words.
What the coach can do. When this feature is on, the coach can open a web page you send it in a text and read its words, and it can search the web for a public fact your question needs, such as a race's start time, course, cutoff or rules, a piece of gear, or a general training question.
Links. The coach opens only a link that is in the messages you sent since its last reply, never a link a page or a search points it to. Coach Steve's server fetches the page, so the site sees the server's address and a Coach Steve identifier, not your name, number or any of your data. Only public web addresses are opened. What the page says is treated as someone else's text: the coach does not follow instructions on it, and it never changes your plan, goals, settings or notes in the same reply that read a page; a change waits for your next message.
Searches. A search sends a short question about the public subject to OpenAI's web search, which looks it up on the web. The service refuses to send a question holding your name, an email address, a phone number, a link, or a number from the Garmin readings the coach read in that turn (years and counts of twelve or less are not checked), and the coach is told never to put your health, training or location in it. Garmin data is never sent to a website you link. The page's text and the search's answer go to the configured model service with your message, under the same model purpose as the rest of the conversation. When the coach states a fact from the web, it names the site it came from; it never sends you a link from the web.
Retention. The page's text and the search's answer are used for that one reply. They are kept only inside that reply's encrypted record, which is deleted after 30 days. The service's own record of what happened holds counts only (how many pages and searches), never an address, a question or a page's words.
Your choices. The coach reads a page only when you send one. You can ask the coach not to look things up, and the feature can be switched off for the service at any time.
What they are. When this feature is on, you can ask the coach to remind you of something, or to check something later on its own ("remind me Thursday to book the physio", "tell me if my resting heart rate climbs three days in a row"). The coach keeps each as a short task: what to check, when to wake for it (a day and a time, every day, every week, after each activity Garmin records, or when a new night arrives from Garmin), when to text you, and the words you asked in. A task is kept only when you ask for it or agree to it in your own message.
What happens when one wakes. The service runs the coach for that task. It reads what the task needs from your plan, your conversation and, only with the Garmin-to-AI choice on, your Garmin data, under the same model purpose as your messages, and decides whether what you asked to hear about has happened. It texts you only then; a plain reminder is always sent. From a task the coach cannot change your plan, goals, settings or notes: when it sees a change worth making, it asks you. A text from a task is coaching the coach starts: it needs the scheduled-coaching choice, waits for your quiet hours to end, and stops while the coach is paused.
Your controls. Ask the coach what it is keeping for you and it lists every task. Tell it to stop one and it stops. You keep at most 12 at a time; a task with no end you stated runs 30 days, and none runs past 180 days.
Retention. A task is kept while it runs and for 90 days after it ends, is stopped or has done its job, then deleted. It is deleted sooner with the conversation it came from, with the message it came from when you ask the coach to forget that message, and with the account. The export includes every task.
Terms, privacy, Garmin-to-AI use, ordinary replies, post-workout coaching, scheduled coaching, image analysis, optional run review, marketing, SMS/RCS fallback, and Strava publishing are distinct purposes. Optional choices default off. Withdrawing a purpose blocks new work for that purpose; it does not silently enable another.
| Data | Default |
|---|---|
| Sign-in handshake with Garmin, Google or Strava (a one-time secret) | Works for 10 minutes; deleted within the hour after. |
| Unused pairing code | Unusable after 10 minutes; hash/attempt metadata deleted within 24 hours. |
| Unpaired inbound content | No model use; deleted within 24 hours unless a documented security hold applies. |
| A number that texts the coach without an invite | Kept only as a keyed hash, never the number; deleted after 90 days. |
| Invite-page consent never followed by a text | Deleted 7 days after its code expires. |
| Encrypted raw webhook | Up to 7 days after normalized processing. |
| Normalized message text | Rolling 30 days, copies of the coach's messages included; you may delete it sooner. |
| Original/quarantine image | Removed after a safe derivative succeeds and no later than 24 hours. |
| Sanitized image | 7 days by default; you may delete it sooner. |
| Sealed copy of each reply and what the coach read to write it | Encrypted with a key only the coach service holds; kept for every reply and deleted after 30 days. |
| The coach's record of each reply (codes, timings, what it owed; the questions it asked about a session and your answers, in your words) | 90 days. |
| Operator views of your conversation or notes (who and when, no content) | 365 days. An operator's rating of a reply goes with that reply's record, at 90 days. |
| Plan changes the coach offered and your answers | With the account; deleted with the conversation or the account. |
| What the coach has already told you (versions of its fitness read, what it has said works for you) | With the account. |
| Your goal, in your own words | With the account, until you change it. |
| A place you told the coach you are | Used while it applies; deleted within the hour after you name another place or its end date passes. |
| Links the coach texted you (Garmin, calendar, account controls) | With the account; Garmin's are deleted when you disconnect Garmin, and calendar's when you disconnect the calendar. |
| Coach's notes about you | With their versions, until you remove a line or delete the account; a removed line is purged from every kept version. |
| Conversation summary | Rolling (oldest lines drop off when full); deleted with the conversation or the account. |
| Structured memory (older coaching) | Until expired, superseded, deleted, unusable after consent withdrawal, or account deletion. |
| Reminders and checks you asked the coach to keep | While they run and for 90 days after they end; deleted sooner with the conversation, a message you asked the coach to forget, or the account. |
| Your subscription (Stripe customer and subscription ids, status, plan and dates) | With the account; deleted with it, after the subscription is cancelled at Stripe. Stripe keeps its own payment records under its own policy. |
| Stripe events already handled (event ids only) | Deleted after 30 days. |
| An email saying texts to you are failing | Deleted 30 days after it was sent, and with the account. |
| Web page text and search answers | Used for one reply; kept only in that reply's encrypted record, deleted after 30 days. |
| Strava events and what the coach published (Strava's activity number, when, any error) | Deleted within 7 days; the Strava connection and your consent stay until you disconnect or delete the account. |
| Rendered card | Up to 30 days or earlier deletion. |
| Redacted operational logs | 30 days; approved incident records may follow a separately documented schedule. |
| Consent/Terms evidence | Account life plus the counsel-approved compliance period, without raw health/image content. |
| Provider copies/backups | The shortest approved contractual schedule; deletion is requested when supported and backup expiry follows the published provider schedule. |
The authenticated controls let you review connection/capability state, pause optional messaging, unpair messaging, disconnect Garmin or Strava, review, correct or forget the coach's notes by text, delete conversation/images, export data, and request full account deletion. Garmin disconnect deletes Garmin-sourced data but does not pretend that messages or the whole Coach Steve account were deleted. Full deletion tombstones the account immediately, stops side effects, revokes integrations, deletes user-scoped database/storage/auth data, and retains only approved de-identified receipts and provider/backup completion state.
You may request access, correction, export, withdrawal, or deletion at sam@palisade.email. A provider or legally required record may complete on its disclosed schedule; the deletion reference remains available until completion.
The external alpha is adults-only and is not open in a jurisdiction until its required review is complete. Coach Steve uses AI, can be wrong, is not medical care, and is not continuously monitored. Do not wait for it in an emergency.
We use private storage, encryption for provider payloads/tokens, short-lived signed media links, scoped consent, tenant isolation, rate/size limits, audit receipts, and fail-closed feature switches. No system is perfectly secure; report a concern promptly to the privacy contact.
If texts to you keep failing (two or more in a row are not delivered, and none has been since), Coach Steve may send one short email to the confirmed address on your account to say the texts are not getting through. The email holds only that notice: no training or health data, no numbers and no links. It is sent at most once for each time texts stop and at most once a day, never after you text STOP, while you have paused the coach, or while your account is being deleted. It is sent through Resend, the email service the operators already use. The record of each email (your address, the notice and whether Resend took it) is deleted after 30 days and with the account, and the export includes it.
If you pay for coaching, Stripe processes your payment. You enter your card on Stripe's own pages, never on ours, and Coach Steve never receives or stores your card number. We keep only what we need to know whether you are coached: your Stripe customer and subscription ids, the plan (monthly or yearly), its status (a trial, active, past due or ended) and its dates, as Stripe sends them to us. You manage the subscription, change your card or cancel it on Stripe's billing page, opened from your account page. If a subscription ends, the coach pauses its messages and texts you once to say so. Deleting your account cancels the subscription at Stripe first, then deletes what we kept. The export includes it.
Garmin data details · The coach's notes · Links and web searches · Reminders and checks · Email when texts fail · Paying for coaching ·Alpha Terms · Account controls