Mission Built

MealStack terms of use

Terms of use

The rules for using MealStack, in plain words. Apple's Standard EULA is your licence to the app; these terms cover the rest.

Mission Built, which is Mike Nichols · Pittsburgh, PA · Draft, not yet in force

The short version

  • MealStack times your meals around your training. Your plan and log live on your phone and belong to you.
  • Coach is an AI. Its numbers are estimates. It isn’t a dietitian or a doctor.
  • Food decisions are yours: allergies, medical diets, pregnancy and weight goals included. Check with a professional.
  • This short version is a summary. The full terms below are what count.

1. Who we are

MealStack is made by Mission Built (“Mission Built”, “we”, “us”), which is Mike Nichols, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Email: [email protected].

2. Agreeing to these terms

By downloading, opening or using MealStack, you agree to these terms and to the MealStack Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree, don’t use the app.

You got MealStack from Apple’s App Store, so Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement (the “Standard EULA”, https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/) also applies. The Standard EULA is your licence to the app. These terms add the rules for Coach, nutrition, purchases and everything else the Standard EULA doesn’t cover. If the two conflict on the licence itself, the Standard EULA wins. On everything else, these terms win.

3. Who can use MealStack

You must be at least 18, or the age of majority where you live if that’s higher, to use MealStack. It sets targets, plans cuts and reads your weight, and that is for adults. Coach asks you to confirm your age before its first answer.

MealStack isn’t made for or directed at anyone under 18.

4. Your licence to use the app

We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use MealStack on Apple devices you own or control, as the App Store’s Usage Rules allow. We keep all other rights.

MealStack is not open source. Unless the law lets you do it anyway, you may not:

  • copy, modify, translate or make derivative works of the app;
  • reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble it, or try to extract its source code;
  • rent, lend, sell, sublicense or redistribute it;
  • remove or change any copyright, trademark or other notice in it.

You may not do any of the following to the Coach server or anything else we run:

  • access it other than through the app, or try to;
  • scrape, load-test or probe it;
  • get around App Attest, the Coach allowance, rate limits or any other protection;
  • use it to build a competing product or to train an AI model.

5. Your data and your files

Your plan, meals, stacks, ingredients, log and settings are stored on your phone. They’re yours.

You can bring plans in and send them out as .mealstack files, in the documented Mission Built Schema. A plan file from someone else (a coach, a friend, an AI) is only as good as its author. Check it on the preview before you make it your plan.

Your phone holds the only full copy. Keep backups. We can’t recover data that was only on a phone that’s lost, wiped or broken.

The Privacy Policy says what leaves your phone, who handles it, how long it’s kept and how to delete it.

6. Features that talk to Apple or to IronStack

MealStack can read from and write to Apple Health, use Location (to switch Travel on and off by itself), read your Calendar (to offer to move a meal around an event), send Notifications, and show widgets and Live Activities. Each is off until you allow it. If IronStack is on the same phone, the two apps share a few things through an App Group: the Travel switch, today’s session time, and, with a switch you turn on, when your session ends. Apple’s own terms and privacy policy cover Apple’s services.

MealStack writes to Apple Health what you log. If what you log is wrong, what’s in Health is wrong too. Correct or un-log a meal and MealStack updates its entries.

7. Coach

Coach is an AI, not a person. Coach suggests daily targets, meal ideas and substitutes, reads menus from photos or links, and can write down a plan you send it as photos, a PDF or text. It uses Claude, a model made by Anthropic, reached through a server Mission Built runs on Cloudflare. Coach can search the web through Anthropic for some questions, for example a restaurant’s menu. The first time you use Coach, the app shows these terms and asks your permission to send what Coach needs to Anthropic. Coach sends nothing until you accept, and you can turn it off at any time.

What Coach is not:

  • Coach isn’t a registered dietitian, nutritionist, doctor or any other professional. Nothing it says is medical or nutrition advice for your situation.
  • Coach’s numbers are estimates. Targets come from a formula using the details you give. Meal and menu macros are estimates, and restaurant food varies. Coach can misread a photo or a menu.
  • Coach doesn’t know about allergies or intolerances, and you must not rely on it for them. Always check ingredients and allergens yourself, with the restaurant or the label.
  • Coach is for healthy adults. It isn’t for anyone who is pregnant or breastfeeding, managing diabetes, kidney disease or another medical condition, taking medication that interacts with food, or who has, or has had, an eating disorder, unless a qualified professional has approved your plan. Coach declines medical questions, medication, pregnancy and supplement doses.
  • You decide what to eat. Nothing Coach proposes changes your plan until you tap it. Check every card before you take it.

Using Coach well:

  • Only send Coach what you have the right to send, such as a plan your coach wrote for you.
  • Don’t use Coach for anything Anthropic’s Usage Policy prohibits (https://www.anthropic.com/aup).
  • When you give Coach a link, our server fetches that page on your behalf. Only send links to pages you’re allowed to read.
  • Coach runs on an allowance per device per month. We set the allowance and may change it. When it’s used up, Coach stops until the next month or until you buy more, if we offer that.
  • We may change, limit, pause or end Coach at any time. If you’ve paid for Coach and we end it, §11 applies.

8. Food, training and your health

MealStack is a meal-timing tool for people who train. It isn’t a medical device and doesn’t diagnose, treat or prevent anything.

  • Talk to a doctor or registered dietitian before a significant change to what or how much you eat. This matters most if you have a medical condition, are pregnant or breastfeeding, are under 18, or have a history of disordered eating.
  • Timing, targets, streaks, badges and “on target” are aids, not instructions. Missing a meal time or a target isn’t a failure. Eat when you need to.
  • Travel and time zones. MealStack does its best to move your day when you travel, but check the times it shows.
  • If using MealStack makes your relationship with food worse, stop, and talk to someone you trust or a professional.

9. Usage data

If you say yes when the app asks, MealStack sends usage counts and timings to Mission Built. The Privacy Policy lists exactly what, and who handles it. It’s off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings. Saying no changes nothing about what the app does for you.

10. Beta, feedback and ideas

TestFlight builds are unfinished. They may crash, lose data, change or stop working. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without owing you anything. We’ll never publish your name with them without asking.

11. Price, purchases and subscriptions

Nothing in MealStack is for sale yet. This section says how purchases will work when something is.

  • MealStack is free during the TestFlight beta. Coach runs on a monthly allowance per phone. The launch price isn’t set.
  • Any paid feature (for example, a subscription or one-time purchase for Coach) is bought through Apple’s in-app purchase. Apple processes the payment. Apple’s terms cover billing, refunds and family sharing.
  • Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period unless you turn off auto-renew at least 24 hours before it ends. You can manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings (Settings › your name › Subscriptions). Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep access until the end of the period you’ve paid for.
  • Before you subscribe, the app shows the price, the period and what you get. If we offer a free trial, it says how long the trial lasts and what happens when it ends.
  • Refunds are handled by Apple (reportaproblem.apple.com).
  • Price changes follow Apple’s rules. You’ll be told in advance and, where required, asked to agree.
  • Restore Purchases is in the app.
  • If we end a paid feature before the period you paid for is over, we’ll ask Apple to refund the unused part or give you an equivalent feature.

12. Third-party services

MealStack relies on Apple (the App Store, Health, notifications, widgets, Location, Calendar), Anthropic (the Claude model behind Coach, and its web search), Cloudflare (hosting the Coach server and fetching menu links), and, only if you say yes to usage data, the services the Privacy Policy lists for it. Restaurant websites you link to are theirs, not ours. We don’t control any of these. If one changes or stops, a feature may change or stop too. You agree to follow any third-party terms that apply to how you use the app.

13. Ownership and trademarks

The app, its design, text, built-in meals and ingredients, badges and code belong to Mission Built or its licensors. Open-source and third-party parts are under their own licences, listed on the acknowledgements page.

MealStack, IronStack, Mission Built, MISSION ▪ BUILT, the barbell mark, the oxblood-square mark and the app icons are trademarks of Mission Built (Mike Nichols). You may not use them without written permission, except to refer to the apps by name.

The .mealstack plan format is documented publicly in the MealStack Schema, and the Mission Built Schema is documented for anything that reads or writes it.

14. Changes to the app

We improve MealStack often and may add, change or remove features. We don’t promise that any feature, including Coach, will always be available.

15. Ending these terms

You can stop at any time by deleting the app. Use Settings › Start over › Delete all MealStack data first if you want the server copies and the Health entries MealStack wrote gone too.

We may suspend or end your access to Coach or the app if you break these terms, if the law requires it, or if continuing would put people, us or the service at risk. Where it’s reasonable, we’ll tell you why.

When these terms end, your licence ends. Sections 5, 8, 13 and 16–21 survive.

16. No warranty

MealStack and Coach are provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, Mission Built disclaims all warranties, express or implied. That includes merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy of any nutrition figure, non-infringement, and that the app will be uninterrupted, error-free or keep your data safe. Some places don’t allow these exclusions. If you live in one, the exclusions apply only as far as the law allows.

17. Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

  • Mission Built isn’t liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost data, profits or goodwill, arising from MealStack, Coach or these terms.
  • Mission Built’s total liability for all claims is limited to the greater of (a) what you paid us for MealStack in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) US $50.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn’t allow us to limit.

18. Your responsibility to us

If you break these terms or the law and a claim is brought against Mission Built because of it, you agree to cover Mission Built’s reasonable losses and costs from that claim, as far as the law allows. This doesn’t apply to consumers where local law forbids it.

19. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes go to the state or federal courts in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. If you’re a consumer whose local law lets you sue at home or rely on mandatory consumer protections, nothing here takes that away. Please email [email protected] first.

20. Apple

These terms are between you and Mission Built, not Apple. As far as these terms act as an end user licence agreement:

  1. Apple isn’t a party. Mission Built, not Apple, is solely responsible for MealStack and its content.
  2. Scope. The licence is limited to a non-transferable licence to use MealStack on Apple-branded products you own or control, as the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions allow. Other accounts associated with the purchaser may access it through Family Sharing or volume purchasing.
  3. Support. Mission Built alone provides maintenance and support. Apple has no obligation to provide any.
  4. Warranty. Mission Built is responsible for any product warranty that can’t be disclaimed by law. If MealStack fails to meet an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any. To the maximum extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for MealStack. Any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses from a failure to meet a warranty are Mission Built’s responsibility.
  5. Product claims. Mission Built, not Apple, is responsible for any claims by you or a third party relating to MealStack or your use of it. This includes (a) product liability claims, (b) any claim that MealStack fails to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, and (c) claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar laws, including in connection with HealthKit.
  6. Intellectual property. If a third party claims that MealStack or your use of it infringes their intellectual property rights, Mission Built, not Apple, is solely responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging that claim.
  7. Legal compliance. You confirm that (a) you’re not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated by the US Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and (b) you’re not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
  8. Contact. Questions, complaints or claims about MealStack go to Mission Built, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, [email protected].
  9. Third-party terms. You must follow any applicable third-party terms when you use MealStack.
  10. Third-party beneficiary. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms. When you accept them, Apple has the right, and is deemed to have accepted the right, to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

21. The rest

  • Whole agreement. These terms, the Privacy Policy and Apple’s Standard EULA are the whole agreement between you and us about MealStack.
  • Severability. If a court finds any part unenforceable, the rest still applies.
  • No waiver. If we don’t enforce something straight away, we can still enforce it later.
  • Assignment. You can’t transfer these terms. We can transfer them to a successor, such as a company Mission Built forms, or a buyer of MealStack. We’ll tell you if that happens.
  • Export. You’ll follow US export and sanctions laws when you use MealStack.

22. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms, we’ll post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change matters, we’ll tell you in the app (About points here) before it applies. If you keep using MealStack after that, you accept the new terms. If you don’t agree, stop using the app and delete your data.

23. Contact

Mission Built, which is Mike Nichols · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA [email protected] Support: missionbuilt.io/rack/support