i wrote a cookie policy for a product that sets no cookies

Most cookie policies are written by lawyers, but this one is written by the developer themselves. Om Yaduvanshi, an 18-year-old applied AI developer, built Cloudline - a cookieless analytics tool. He's on day 22 of his 90-day challenge of building in public. Despite setting no cookies, Cloudline still has a cookie policy page.

The policy is straightforward: no cookies are set, no IP addresses are stored, and nothing is saved on visitors' devices. A pageview only records four details - page, referrer, screen size, and time. So why does a site that doesn't have cookies need a cookie policy page?

Yaduvanshi explains that the policy page exists because not having one would look like the developer forgot, which is worse than overexplaining. The policy declares that there are no cookies to declare, and instead, it outlines what is stored - four fields. The page records the page, referrer, screen size, and time, excluding user agents and fingerprinting.

There's also a 'what we'll never do' list on the features page, which lives on the site and carries more weight than a brief mention in a blog post. For a small tool like Cloudline, the privacy page acts as a sales page. It's about honesty - stating exactly what is collected in simple terms, with nothing surprising in the list. This approach builds trust, as potential users can see the exact information being collected without any hidden surprises.

The page doesn't cost anything to maintain and is a quick answer to the question, "But what do you actually store?"

This is not legal advice tailored to any specific jurisdiction. It's about Yaduvanshi's own product: Cloudline itself sets no cookies and requires no consent banner for its analytics. He's not providing a guide on what the law requires; he's merely sharing his code. His advice is simple: if your tool collects almost nothing, write that down. Keep it short, exact, and plain.