Meanwhile

Last updated 7 September 2026

Meanwhile makes no background network calls. It contacts Lemon Squeezy only when you ask it to activate a licence. There is no app analytics, tracking, telemetry, update check or crash reporting. Your code and your agent transcripts never leave your machine.

Who I am

Meanwhile is made and sold by Ngoc Hien Dinh, an individual software developer based in Vietnam. For any question about this policy or about your data, write to hiendinhngoc@gmail.com.

What the app reads on your Mac

To show you what your agent is doing, Meanwhile reads two things locally:

a small state file that Claude Code's hooks write to ~/.meanwhile/state.json, recording whether a run started or stopped;
the tail of your Claude Code transcript, to name the tool the agent is currently running, for example "reading SPEC.md".

Both are read on your machine and stay there. Meanwhile never uploads, copies or transmits your transcripts, your prompts, your source code or your file names anywhere.

Licence activation requests

When you paste a licence key and activate it, Meanwhile makes an HTTPS request to Lemon Squeezy's licence API at api.lemonsqueezy.com/v1/licenses/activate. That request contains exactly two values:

the licence key you pasted;
the fixed text Meanwhile on this Mac, used as the activation's name.

It sends no device identifier, no serial number, no hardware fingerprint, no email address, no username and no usage data. As with any HTTPS request, Lemon Squeezy's servers will see the originating IP address; that is a property of the internet, not something Meanwhile adds. Lemon Squeezy's handling of that request is governed by their own privacy policy.

If activation fails because the key is invalid or the service cannot be reached, you may ask Meanwhile to try again. It never retries in the background. After activation succeeds, the app stores the result locally and does not revalidate it automatically.

What is stored on your Mac

Meanwhile keeps a small set of files in ~/.meanwhile/:

state.json: the current run state written by the Claude Code hook;
trial.plist: the date your 14-day trial started;
license.json: after activation, the activation identifier Lemon Squeezy returned, so the app knows it is licensed;
settings.json and a local backup: notification, pause and history-retention preferences;
run-journal.json and a local backup: derived run times, tool counts and block counts used for the protected-time report. They contain no transcript text.

These never leave your machine. Deleting the ~/.meanwhile folder deletes all of them. There is no account, no server-side profile and nothing for me to delete on your behalf, because I never receive any of it.

This website

This site is static and hosted on GitHub Pages. It sets no cookies and loads no fonts or images from third parties. It does load one third-party script, Umami, which counts page visits and clicks on the Buy and Download buttons so I can tell whether anyone is finding the page. Umami is cookieless: it stores nothing on your device, assigns you no identifier that persists beyond the day, and records no personal data. I see daily totals, referrers and countries, never individuals. There is nothing here to consent to, and nothing collected here is linked to your purchase or to the app. Umami's own privacy policy governs what it processes on my behalf. GitHub, as the host, may log ordinary web-server information such as IP addresses; that is covered by GitHub's privacy statement.

Payment

Purchases are handled by Lemon Squeezy, which acts as the merchant of record. When you buy Meanwhile you give your payment and billing details to Lemon Squeezy, not to me, and their privacy policy governs that data. I receive only the limited order information they show a seller, such as your name, email address and country, which I use to deliver your licence key and to answer support or refund requests. I do not use it for marketing, and I do not sell or share it.

Your rights

Because the app collects nothing, the only personal data connected to you sits in your Lemon Squeezy order. You may ask me at any time what order information I hold, ask for a copy, or ask me to delete it, by writing to hiendinhngoc@gmail.com. I will respond within 30 days. Some order records must be retained by the merchant of record for tax and accounting purposes even after a deletion request.

Children

Meanwhile is a developer tool and is not directed at children under 13, and I do not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new date at the top. The commitment that the app makes no background network calls is a product promise, not a preference. If that ever changed, it would be stated here plainly and in the app itself.