Who we are
Herding Cats is the team app of the FITT16™ platform. It is operated by PLAYNICELY PTY LTD ("PlayNicely", "we", "us"), a company registered in South Africa, which is responsible for your personal information.
This policy covers the Herding Cats website at herdingcats.team and the Herding Cats app at app.herdingcats.team. Herding Cats and the personal FITT16 app share one account system: if you use both, you sign in with the same email address on each, and your CliftonStrengths® results are not collected twice.
Our home framework is South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), under which PlayNicely is the Responsible Party. Because Herding Cats is used worldwide, we apply the standards of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to everyone, wherever they are.
Companies, admins and members
A company buys Herding Cats seats. The person who buys is a company representative authorised to do so, and becomes an admin. A company can have more than one admin. Admins send seats to colleagues, who become members. Members join by invitation and never pay.
Admins never see a member's results. An admin can see the company account, the seats bought, who has been invited and whether each invitation is pending or accepted. An admin cannot see anyone's CliftonStrengths® results, archetype read, chats, notes, journal, saved reads or Emerging Patterns. The company does not receive members' personal content, and we do not provide it to the company.
Every admin also holds a seat, so admins are members too, and everything in this policy about members applies to them.
What we collect
For the company account
- Company name, and the name and work email address of each admin
- Your password, stored only as a secure hash, never in plain text
- The seats bought, the invitations sent (the name and work email address of each person invited) and their status
- Billing country and address, which Dodo Payments collects at checkout and which we use only for billing and to apply regional pricing
- Records of payments, renewals and seat changes (we never see or store card details)
For members
- Your name, work email address and password (stored only as a secure hash)
- Your CliftonStrengths® 34 PDF, which is processed and then deleted from our servers
- The talent theme data taken from that PDF, and the FITT16™ archetype it produces
- My Colleagues: for each colleague you add and who accepts, the relationship you choose and details you add, such as job title, nickname or pronouns, plus any notes, and the AI read of how that colleague works
- Things you ask your Companion to remember
- Let's Chat conversations, which are held only for a short time (see section 7), and the summaries and insights kept from them
- Emerging Patterns: short patterns drawn from your chats about your workstyle, teaming and well-being, and anything you pin
- Journal entries you write
- Pair Insights and Meeting Dynamics reads, and the meeting groups you set up in Let's Meet
- Agreement, Feedback and Conflict Navigator reads, only if you choose to save one (see section 7)
- Your consent choices, including marketing email preferences and the date you gave them
For everyone
- IP address and device information, used for security and abuse protection, including by Cloudflare Turnstile
- Basic usage information within the app (for example, which pages are opened), used to run and improve the service
- On the website, your web host keeps standard server logs (IP address, browser and the page requested) for security and running the site
How colleague connections work
Both people must agree. A colleague connection exists only when one member invites another and the other accepts. Nothing is exchanged before the invitation is accepted, and either person can remove the connection at any time.
Work colleagues only. Invitations can only be sent to, and accepted by, someone with the same work email domain as the person inviting them (the part after the @). Personal email providers, such as Gmail or Outlook, are not accepted.
What the other person sees. Once connected, each of you can see the other's name and archetype. Your talent themes are used only in the background to write the reads about how you work together. They are never shown to the other person.
Your own copy. Each person keeps their own private record of the connection, with the relationship they chose, any notes and the reads. Only the account that holds a record can see it.
How we use your information
- To create and run your account, and the company account
- To produce your archetype and your Archetype Insights
- To run Let's Chat, Emerging Patterns, Pair Insights, Meeting Dynamics, and the Agreement, Feedback and Conflict Navigators
- To manage seats, invitations, renewals and payments
- To show the right price for your country on the website and at checkout
- To send service emails, such as account confirmation, invitations, security alerts and renewal notices
- To send product news and offers, only if you have opted in
- To keep the service secure, prevent abuse and fix problems
- To improve Herding Cats
We do not use your information for advertising. We do not sell or rent it to anyone. We do not use it to train any AI model.
Legal basis
Under POPIA we rely on the justifications it recognises: consent, performing our contract, our legitimate interests and complying with the law. For people covered by GDPR, the matching lawful bases are:
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Running accounts, seats and the app's features | Performing our contract |
| Colleague connections | Consent from both people to connect, then performing our contract |
| Billing, tax and financial records | Legal obligation |
| Security, abuse and fraud prevention | Legitimate interests |
| Improving the service | Legitimate interests |
| Marketing emails | Consent (opt-in only) |
You may choose to write sensitive things in a chat or journal, for example about your health. We do not ask for this, and we suggest you leave out anything you would not want processed. Where it is processed, we rely on the explicit consent you give when you join, and treat it with extra care.
AI and how long chats last
Herding Cats uses Anthropic's Claude to write its reads and to power Let's Chat. What we send is used only to produce your response and is not used to train Anthropic's models.
Let's Chat. We do not keep the full text of your chats. A chat ends 24 hours after your last message in it, and never more than 7 days after it began. When it ends, the conversation is permanently deleted. If a chat had four or more of your messages and you did not save a summary, a short summary is kept for you in Emerging Patterns under Chats, so you can look back on what you talked through. What lasts is short and in your own words: summaries, insights and patterns, all of which you can delete.
Agreement, Feedback and Conflict Navigators. The text you enter is sent for analysis, the read comes back to you, and the text is then discarded. Nothing is kept unless you choose to save the read. In the Feedback and Conflict Navigators, even a saved read never contains the feedback or situation you wrote: there is nowhere to store it, and the read is written so that it does not quote you.
Journal. Journal entries are kept until you delete them, because you write them to keep. An entry is only sent for AI analysis if you choose to draw insights from it.
AI reads are reflections to consider, not facts about you, and they are never a verdict on anyone.
Where your information is stored, and who helps us
Our main database is in the European Union (AWS, Stockholm). We use a small number of service providers, each under a data processing agreement:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in, file storage and server functions | EU (Stockholm) |
| Anthropic | AI reads and Let's Chat (Claude). Not used for model training. | United States |
| Dodo Payments | Merchant of record: sells the seats, charges your card, issues invoices, and collects and pays any sales tax. An independent controller for payment, tax and fraud. | India (AWS Mumbai), with US and UK entities |
| SendGrid (Twilio) | Service and marketing emails | United States |
| Cloudflare | Bot and abuse protection (Turnstile) and content delivery | Global |
| Sign-in with Google, if you choose to use it | United States | |
| Railway | Hosting for the app | United States |
| Hostinger | Hosting for the herdingcats.team website | See Hostinger's data centre for the site |
Where a provider processes data outside South Africa or the EU, the transfer is covered by that provider's Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards.
If your company buys a CliftonStrengths® code with your seat, you take the assessment on Gallup's own website, and Gallup handles that information under its own privacy policy. We only receive the results you choose to upload.
The website, cookies and your browser
The herdingcats.team website sets no cookies and uses no analytics or tracking.
Herding Cats has two price regions: US dollars, and rand for Southern Africa. When Southern Africa is chosen, by you or from your browser's language settings, the website asks our server for those prices, sending only a two-letter country code. Your choice is saved in your own browser (local storage) so it is remembered next time. You can clear it at any time by clearing your browser's site data.
The website loads fonts from Google Fonts and icons from a public content network (unpkg.com). Like any website request, these providers receive your IP address and browser details.
The app uses only the essential cookies and browser storage it needs to keep you signed in, keep you secure and remember settings such as whether the side menu is open. There are no tracking or advertising cookies.
How long we keep it
- Account data: while your account is open. When you delete your account, your personal data is permanently deleted, and in any case within 72 hours.
- CliftonStrengths® PDF: deleted as soon as your theme data has been taken from it.
- Chats: deleted when the chat ends (see section 7).
- Colleague records: deleted when either of you removes the connection or deletes your account.
- Company account: while the company has an active subscription, then as long as the law requires for financial records.
- Payment and tax records: for as long as the law requires.
Deleted data can remain for a short time in our provider's automatic backups before those backups expire.
Your rights
Under POPIA and, where it applies, GDPR, you can:
- See and take a copy of your data, in Account Settings or by emailing us
- Correct anything that is wrong, in Account Settings
- Delete your account and its data, in Account Settings. If you are a member, deleting your account returns your seat to your company.
- Withdraw marketing consent at any time, in Account Settings
- Object to how we process your data, by emailing us
- Complain to a data-protection authority. In South Africa this is the Information Regulator. In the EU or UK you can also contact your local supervisory authority.
We answer every request within 30 days. Email hello@herdingcats.team.
Security
Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest, each person can reach only their own data, and access is checked against your signed-in identity every time. See our Security page for the details.
Age
Herding Cats is a work product and is not for anyone under 16. You must confirm you are 16 or older when you join. If you think someone under 16 has an account, email us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. For significant changes we will email account holders and, where needed, ask you to agree again.
Contact
Responsible Party: PLAYNICELY PTY LTD, South Africa.
Email: hello@herdingcats.team
Merchant of record for Herding Cats seats: Dodo Payments.