Your recipes stay yours.

What Oregano stores

Oregano stores the recipes you choose to save, including recipe titles, ingredients, instructions, source links, source names, notes, tags, and image metadata. When Blob storage is configured, it also stores byte-for-byte copies of supported web images and photos you upload for scanned recipes. It does not resize or recompress those images. Oregano also stores a hash of each browser key used by the browser clipper.

What the browser extension reads

Only after you open the Oregano clipper on a recipe page, the extension reads that page’s URL, structured recipe data, visible page text, and recipe image URLs. It sends that information to your Oregano server solely to clean, structure, and save the recipe automatically. The extension also downloads the source URLs of recipes already in your private cookbook and compares the current tab URL with that list locally to show a saved indicator. It does not send ordinary browsing URLs to Oregano for these proactive checks.

Background status and notifications

After you explicitly clip a page, Oregano stores a temporary job containing the extracted recipe data so processing can finish after the popup closes. The temporary payload is deleted when processing succeeds, fails, or times out. The extension checks that job’s status in the background and shows a browser notification only if clipping fails.

Optional AI cleanup

If the Oregano server is configured with an AI provider, recipe-page content is sent to that provider to turn it into structured recipe data. Candidate web images may also be sent for conservative near-duplicate review. When you use printed-recipe scanning, the source-page photos you selected are sent to the AI provider for transcription; optional cooking photos are not sent for transcription. When you ask Oregano to choose recipes, your request, the complete saved text of every recipe—including private kitchen notes—and the browser’s current local date, time, time zone, and likely next meal are sent to the AI provider so it can reason across the cookbook. Recipe images and source URLs are not included in that recommendation request, and Oregano asks the provider not to store the response. The browser extension never receives your AI provider key. You can leave AI disabled and clip structured web recipe data without it, but photo scanning and cookbook recommendations require AI.

Image archiving

If Vercel Blob is configured, Oregano stores original-quality copies of supported images. This includes images from pages you explicitly clip, scanned book or magazine pages, and personal cooking photos you choose to upload. These copies use unlisted public Blob URLs so browsers can display them directly. The cookbook pages remain password-protected, but anyone who obtains an individual Blob URL can view that image. Failed web archives continue using the original source URL.

How information is used

Oregano uses this information only to provide your private recipe collection, recipe clipping, printed-recipe transcription, and recipe recommendations you explicitly request. It does not sell data, use it for advertising, or run analytics that track your browsing activity.

Recipe sharing

Recipes stay behind the household login unless a signed-in household member deliberately uses the Share button. That button creates a long, unguessable, read-only link for one recipe. Anyone who receives the link can view and forward that recipe without logging in, including its kitchen notes and photos. Oregano tells search engines not to index shared links, but the link itself should still be treated as the access key. Deleting the recipe or rotating AUTH_SECRET makes its shared link stop working.

Retention and security

Saved recipes remain in your Oregano database until you delete them. Unselected scan pages are removed after a successful save. When a recipe is refreshed or deleted, Oregano removes stored images that are no longer referenced by another recipe. Weekly maintenance removes interrupted photo uploads after a seven-day grace period. Browser keys can be revoked from Settings at any time. Keep your household password, browser keys, and server environment variables private.

Contact

For questions about this deployment, contact the person who operates this Oregano instance.