Policies

The rules we hold ourselves to.

Six short documents. Each is dated, and each changes only with a note saying what moved.

About · dated 2026-10-07

Who publishes this

QuarterMaster is written and published by Dark Vector Cognition LLC, an independent studio in Austin, Texas, and edited by its founder. It began as a field manual from a father to a son and is published so the standard can be tested by anyone.

The site takes no advertising and no sponsored placements. Its editorial imagery is deliberately unbranded; real products appear only in named reviews, with real photography.

It may earn a commission on some links to where an object can be found (see Paid links below).

Changed 2026-10-07: clarified the image description. Changed 2026-09-26: added how the site earns.

Contact: hello@darkvectorcognition.ai.

Editorial policy · dated 2026-09-12

Answer first. Reason always. Date everything.

Every published position is complete on the day it publishes: the answer, the physical reason, and the compromise it accepts. Positions carry a date. When one changes, the old ruling stays visible and the new one names what moved.

Grades (S through D) score the object and the conduct around it against five tests, not the price. A modest object can set the standard in its lane; an expensive one can still fail the room.

Personal letters publish only when a real incident has been sourced. No invented scars, no borrowed nostalgia.

The Ask surface answers only from published QuarterMaster pages. When the site has no position, it says so rather than inventing one.

Privacy · dated 2026-10-07

Your Quarter stays on your device.

Your Quarter, the inventory of objects you already own, is stored in your browser only. It is echoed to a first-party recovery cookie on this domain for one year. No account, no server copy. Export and import are files you hold; the QR handoff moves data between your devices without touching ours.

Ask answers in your browser, from passages of this site. Your browser also offers the question to an answer service at /api/ask, which is not switched on today: our host returns nothing, and no model sees the question. That service is built for Cloudflare Workers AI (the Meta Llama 3.1 8B Instruct model), which would receive the question and up to four matching passages. This page will say so before it is switched on. We keep no copy of your questions; our analytics record only that a question was asked and whether the site found an answer.

QuarterMaster in ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants. The connector at quartermaster.style/api/mcp/ needs no account and reads only public QuarterMaster data. Your assistant sends it what a request needs, from this list: an occasion, a budget, how you want to come across, day or evening, the cloth and cut of a jacket or suit, the pieces you already own, a maker, a category, a price, where the piece is sold, the compare-at price, the fiber and the build. We count tool calls in Vercel Web Analytics and runtime logs using only the tool name, outcome, response-time range, a known assistant family when identifiable, and a marker for our own tests. We do not record tool arguments, conversation text, budgets, wardrobe contents, account details or raw user agents in these measurements, and do not forward IP addresses or cookies to the connector analytics collector. These counts do not identify people. We skip connector measurement when a request carries Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. Shop links the connector returns pass through quartermaster.style/go/. Each carries the retailer search (the maker and the piece searched for) and one marker, from=mcp, so a click on it is counted as a connector click. It carries nothing that identifies you and no text from your conversation. Vercel's request log keeps the link, search included, for the log period below. Removing the connector stops future calls; your assistant's provider handles your conversation under its own policy.

Measurement. The site uses Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights: page views, referrers, device class, and a small set of named interactions (a room opened, a kit saved, a reservation clicked). This is aggregate and cookieless; it is not tied to a person or to what is in your Quarter. Each page view also records the state and city it came from, and each click to a retailer records the state, as our host reads them from the connection. Each click through quartermaster.style/go/ is counted by retailer and by the part of QuarterMaster that sent it. We do not store IP addresses and set no cookie for it.

Paid links and retailer cookies. When you follow a link marked Paid link, you leave this site for the retailer through its affiliate network (Impact or Rakuten Advertising). The retailer and that network may set cookies or similar tracking on their own sites so the referral is credited, under their own privacy policies. We receive a report of the referral and any resulting sale, not your name, card or address, and we pass nothing about you to them. Links not marked as paid set no such tracking. To opt out, block third-party cookies in your browser or clear the retailer's cookies after visiting; the retailer's own privacy page lists its other choices.

Reservations and email. Reserving the Field Manual opens an email to us. We keep that email to fulfil the reservation and for nothing else. We do not run a mailing list today; when we do, joining will be an explicit opt-in on this page.

How long we keep it.

Connector and /go/ click log lines: at most 30 days. They sit in Vercel's runtime logs, which keep 30 days while our Vercel Observability Plus add-on is on, and 1 day without it. Vercel's own record of each request sits beside them for the same period and can include the client software and network address.
Connector call counts, page views, named interactions and retailer clicks, with the state and city attached: 12 months. They sit in Vercel Web Analytics, whose reporting window on our plan is 12 months. Vercel may hold the underlying records longer under its own privacy policy.
Speed Insights page-speed readings: Vercel shows us at most the last 30 days. How long Vercel stores the readings is set by Vercel's own privacy policy.
Ask questions: not kept. The question travels in the body of a request that no log records.
Reservation emails: until the reservation is fulfilled or you withdraw it, then deleted within 90 days.
Your Quarter: on your device, with the recovery cookie for one year.

Who receives it. Vercel Inc. hosts the site and the connector and holds the runtime logs, Web Analytics and Speed Insights records above. Cloudflare would receive Ask questions through Workers AI only once that service is switched on; it is not today. The affiliate networks Impact and Rakuten Advertising see a click only when you follow a link marked Paid link. Reservation emails, support requests and privacy requests arrive at hello@darkvectorcognition.ai, hosted by Apple (iCloud Mail). We sell nothing about you and share nothing else.

Changed 2026-10-07: added how long each record is kept and who receives it, listed every input the connector accepts, disclosed the connector marker on shop links, and corrected Ask: no model receives questions today. Changed 2026-10-02: added how paid links and retailer cookies work. Changed 2026-09-28: replaced connector request-detail logs with aggregate call outcomes and privacy opt-outs. Changed 2026-09-27: added the connector policy. Changed 2026-09-26: added state and city measurement.

Requests to see or delete anything we hold: hello@darkvectorcognition.ai.

Paid links · dated 2026-09-26

The recommendation is chosen first; the link comes after.

QuarterMaster may earn a commission if you buy through paid links on a page. Where that is the case, a plain disclosure appears above the first paid recommendation on that page. If the best object in a lane offers no commission, QuarterMaster still recommends it.

Object pages list where each object can be found. Today none of those links is paid. When a retailer's program approves QuarterMaster, its links are marked Paid link and this disclosure appears above the first one.

Every recommendation records the merchant, the commission status, and the date it was last checked. Commission never changes a grade, a ruling, or the order in which options are listed.

Changed 2026-09-26: object pages now carry links; none is paid yet.

Use it freely. It is judgment, not a guarantee.

QuarterMaster, its website and its connector for AI assistants are published by Dark Vector Cognition LLC. You may read, share and use them for your own shopping at no cost, and you need no account.

Grades, prices, plans and verdicts are our editorial judgment on the date shown. Prices and stock change, and a verdict is not a promise about any particular item: check the tag, the fit and the seller before you pay. QuarterMaster sells nothing and is not a party to anything you buy from a retailer.

The site and the connector are provided as they are, without warranties, and to the extent the law allows, Dark Vector Cognition LLC is not liable for purchases or losses that follow from using them. Do not use the connector to overload the service or to copy the ledger in bulk.

These terms are governed by the laws of Texas. Questions: hello@darkvectorcognition.ai.

Support · dated 2026-10-07

One address for help, wherever you use it.

QuarterMaster is published by Dark Vector Cognition LLC. For help with the site, or with QuarterMaster in ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant, write to hello@darkvectorcognition.ai.

Say where you used it, what you asked and what came back. A copy of the answer or a screenshot helps.

In an assistant, QuarterMaster is the connector at quartermaster.style/api/mcp/. If it stops answering, remove it and add it again from the connection page. Your assistant's own help covers the assistant itself.