How AI Works at KindMind

Does This Apply to You?

The free Journal plan does not include Guide, Paths, or AI memory. Your journal entries are not automatically submitted to those features on that plan. If you answered the questions on our signup flow, those answers were sent through the AI proxy so the flow could respond to them. That happens before any account or plan exists, and our Privacy Policy describes it.

Feedback interviews are a separate, optional AI feature for invited adults, including people on the free Journal plan. If you choose to participate, interview turns go through our AI proxy to Anthropic as you chat. The Journal memory setting does not control interview processing.

On plans or trials that include AI features, Guide chat and Paths process the information needed to provide those features. Everything below, the data flow, the safety check, memory summarization, describes how those features work. Journal memory, which controls journal summaries and direct journal context in chats, stays off until you turn it on. Guide and Path conversations can contribute to memory either way.

You can also try Guide and Path discovery before signup. Those requests use our proxy and Anthropic, including safety checks and provider retention. A message submitted from the homepage can start a try-mode Guide conversation. Try mode keeps a separate browser copy and does not build account AI memories or automatically send its journal entries to AI before import. Chats imported into an account can later contribute to account memories. The Privacy Policy explains its local storage and limits.

The Data Flow

When you send a message in the Guide chat, it takes this path:

• Your browser decrypts the conversation locally using your master key, then sends the message over HTTPS.
• It travels to a small KindMind worker (a Cloudflare edge proxy at ai-proxy.kindmind.com) that verifies a short-lived token bound to your session.
• Before forwarding your message, the worker runs a quick automated safety check: a second, separate call to the same Anthropic API, under the same no-training commercial terms, that looks for signs of crisis or risk. It runs on messages you write in Guide chat, Path chat, feedback interviews, and the signup questions. It does not run on every AI call the app makes.
• The worker forwards the request to Anthropic’s Claude API.
• Claude’s reply streams back through the worker to your browser, which renders it. The reply arrives as ordinary text over an encrypted connection, so there’s nothing to decrypt; your browser encrypts it when it saves the reply to your account. If the safety check flags a serious concern, the worker skips the AI reply and sends a fixed supportive message with crisis resources instead, and when the concern is milder a second check reads the reply before it’s released to you.

The proxy processes plaintext during a request and does not intentionally save message bodies. Our application server also receives selected plans, titles, goals, and related context to assemble AI instructions. The Path finder sends your free-text description to that server and then through the proxy to Anthropic; this recommendation request does not use the chat safety check. Operational logs, token counts, and safety classifications are separate from private message content. What Anthropic holds on their side is covered in the retention section below. If an account chat safety check flags a concern, KindMind keeps a category-level record of that (never the words themselves) so we can point you toward support, described more below.

AI requests are not anonymous merely because they use our API account. Your writing may identify you or other people. Avoid including information you do not want the AI provider to process. The former daily AI activity-email process has been retired.

What “Summarization” Means

While you use the web app, memory passes take eligible records, decrypt them in your browser, and send them through the worker for AI processing. Guide conversations are processed oldest first, with the guide’s replies included so the summary reads the whole conversation: right after you unlock, and on later page loads until older messages are caught up (up to 50 of your messages each time), and as you keep chatting (25 at a time). Path conversations, and your journal entries if Journal memory is on, are processed in a daily pass of up to 25 not-yet-summarized records per feature; it normally runs when due after a 24-hour interval, and retries and app activity affect timing. Neither has a date cutoff, so over time these passes reach older writing, not only the latest records. Claude returns summaries that are encrypted with your master key and saved to your Memories. Conversation recap and memory compaction can also send recent conversation messages and existing memories.

Summaries do not mean the AI never receives original text. Memory extraction processes source text. Chats receive recent messages, and enabling Journal memory permits up to 5,000 characters of today’s latest journal entry, including the whole entry if shorter, to be included on each desktop chat turn and on phone chats with expanded sharing enabled. The iPhone app does not run the web memory pass. Later conversations can continue to use saved memories until you remove them.

What Gets Stored, and Where

Memories live in a table called user_memories, encrypted with your master key. That key is only ever unlocked on your device. The copy we hold is wrapped by a second key that your browser derives from your password and never sends us. To us, a memory looks like a random string of bytes.

Your original records (journal entries, path responses, guide chat messages) stay encrypted in their own tables. Memory building sends eligible source text to the AI provider and saves a separate encrypted summary. Provider copies follow the retention rules below.

You can read more about how master keys, password-derived keys, and the underlying encryption work on the encryption page.

Anthropic’s Posture

Claude is built by Anthropic. We use its commercial API for responses, summaries, and automated safety checks. Models and request types can change; a model name alone is not a privacy guarantee.

Anthropic’s commercial training policy provides for no training on API inputs and outputs by default; separate feedback or opt-in arrangements can differ. KindMind does not use private writing for model training. Its retention policy describes a standard API window of up to 30 days, with longer safety and legal exceptions. Flagged inputs and outputs may be held for up to two years and safety scores for up to seven years. These are provider practices, not a guaranteed deletion deadline for every request.

We use provider prompt caching, which can temporarily retain repeated request content to reduce processing cost. Caching does not replace other provider retention. Authorized provider personnel may review content for safety or legal purposes. We do not offer a guarantee of zero retention or no human access at the provider.

Private Content and Operational Records

Your saved private content fields contain encrypted blobs and IVs (random values used by the encryption). AI requests and the server-side context preparation described above involve readable processing. Plenty of other things about your account are readable to us, though: your email, your subscription, your settings, product usage records, and the program and approach you picked for a path. The Privacy Policylists them. Alongside those, when an account chat safety check flags a concern, we store a category-level safety record (for example, “crisis resources shown”). If the check itself fails to run, we also store a content-free error record so we can keep an eye on it. We also keep operational records of supported input safety checks, noting the category it saw and how long it took. Those carry no account identifier and never include your words. We stop short of calling them anonymous, because one is written at the same moment as the account-linked record above, so in principle the two could be lined up by their timestamps. We do not use these timestamps to identify you. These operational records are scheduled for removal from the live database within 90 days. Backup copies follow the retention and deletion treatment in Section 12 of the Privacy Policy. Try-mode checks do not create account-linked safety records, and their operational classification records are not currently saved. The account storage design encrypts journal entries, chat messages, plans, and memories before saving. It does not treat the following as ordinary readable account records:

• The plaintext of your journal entries, path responses, or guide chat messages
• The plaintext of your memory summaries
• Your unlocked master key, or your password in readable form
• The plaintext of your private Guide and Path conversations with Claude

The worker sends category-level safety records and per-request token counts to the main app. Separately, your device sends readable plan and title context to the main app to prepare prompts. Support messages, feedback, sent feedback interviews and optional interview notes, and testimonials you address to us are readable. Feedback interview invite records and saved usage snapshots are also readable. Migration from an older service is another temporary processing exception. The Privacy Policy explains those flows.

Feedback interviews. Each turn passes in readable form through our KindMind-operated AI proxy to Anthropic before you press ‘Send’, including turns of interviews you never send to KindMind. The proxy does not store message bodies. The interviewer receives usage details, including account age, plan state, active days, counts of entries and messages, and Path names and day numbers. We do not supply your journal entries, Guide conversations, or Path responses to the interviewer.

During the interview, a readable draft of the transcript is kept only in the browser tab’s session storage. Closing the interview dialog keeps the draft in that tab. It is cleared when you send the interview, sign out, or close the tab. Only pressing ‘Send’ stores the transcript as it stands for the KindMind team to read. The usage snapshot the interviewer works from is stored with your session or legacy invite record when you start. Closing the interview without sending it does not clear this snapshot. We keep invite and progress records even if you do not send an interview.

Closing an interview without sending it does not recall AI requests or delete provider-held copies. Anthropic’s retention policy applies, including its safety and legal exceptions. KindMind does not use interview material to train models. Anthropic processes these requests under its commercial training policy, which provides for no training by default. The Privacy Policy describes internal use, removal requests, retention, and the invitation record kept after removal.

Your AI and Memory Choices

Journal memory is optional. Where these controls are available, open Account → AI features → Journal memory. From there you can:

• In the iPhone app, turn AI features off in Settings. This stops new AI requests from the iPhone app for your account; it does not turn AI off on the website.
• Turn Journal memory off to stop new journal excerpts and journal memory requests. Guide and Path conversations can still be processed and summarized.
• Click Clear all AI memories to remove saved memories from your account. Eligible activity can create new memories afterward.

Turning Journal memory off stops journal entries from contributing new summaries going forward; memories created earlier stay until you clear or edit them. Clearing memories deletes the saved memory pool for the current product, but not your original writing or conversation recaps; later AI use can create new memories. A change does not recall an in-flight request or delete provider-held copies. The Journal memory switch is not a global AI-off switch. Background AI processing can continue on plans that include AI even if you stop using Guide or Paths. Contact hello@kindmind.com for help with consent withdrawal or unavailable controls.

Common Questions