Technical details

Privacy & security

• Owner information is encrypted at rest with a unique key per record; the master key is never stored in the database.
• Microchip numbers are stored only as one-way blind-index hashes, so a database leak is never a usable list of chips or people.
• A microchip lookup never reveals owner details to the searcher — it only notifies the owner. Match and no-match look identical.
• Every sensitive action is written to a tamper-evident audit log.
• Location metadata (EXIF/GPS) is stripped from uploaded pet photos.

One trusted registry

The whole point of a registry is that a lost pet and the person who finds them look in the same place. For that reason we run a single, central registry rather than many fragmented copies. The code is open, but please don't stand up a separate public registry unless you truly need to — a scattered set of databases makes lost pets harder to find, not easier.

How it's built

• Next.js + TypeScript, with a strict layered architecture.
• Turso / libSQL database (SQLite-compatible), portable by design.
• Every external service (email, storage, notifications) sits behind a replaceable interface — no single vendor is required.
• Designed to keep running for decades and to outlive any single maintainer.

Open source

The software is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, so the code — and the promise that it stays open — can always be audited.