Your data and the AI, explained

Where your journal lives

Entries are saved to a database with per-account access rules, so your journal is readable only by your own signed-in account. Nothing you write is posted publicly, and there is no social feed in Anchor by design.

What is sent to the AI, and when

Reflections are generated by a large language model reached through an AI gateway. That happens when you finish an entry or tap the reflect button on an answer — not silently in the background. Each request includes:

• the answer you just wrote,
• the prompt you were answering,
• your selected focus areas, mood and emotional weather,
• any obstacles or coping strategies you ticked, and coping strategies already in your toolbox.

It does not include your email address, your name, or an identifier that links the text back to you at the provider.

What the AI is instructed never to do

• Never diagnose, or suggest you have a condition.
• Never act as a therapist, doctor, coach or expert.
• Never give life advice or tell you what to do about a situation, relationship or decision.
• Never shame you for a hard day, a missed goal or a gap between entries.
• Never mine your entries for marketing.

What it does instead: listen, reflect back what it heard, ask at most one open question, and — only when it fits — offer optional self-care ideas, starting with the strategies that have already helped you before.

The one exception

If an entry suggests immediate danger — thoughts of harming yourself or someone else, abuse, or an emergency — Anchor drops the reflective style and points you directly to crisis resources. That's the only situation where it is directive.

Journaling without AI

The reflection step is always optional. You can write your answers, save the entry and skip the reflection entirely; the prompts, mood tracking, goal tracking and progress views all work without it.

Model training

We do not use your journal entries to train our own models, and we do not sell or license them to anyone for training.

Your controls

Download everything or delete it permanently from My data. Our full privacy policy covers retention, providers and your rights.