Privacy

Who runs Within

Within is operated by Smith & Williams Holdings LLC, an Arizona limited liability company. “Axiom Ops” is a brand name it uses. Privacy contact and legal notices: axiomopslabs@gmail.com.

Washington, Nevada and similar state laws: see our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

The short version

• Your journal is yours. Nobody at Within reads it, and the app has no screen that lets staff open someone’s journal.
• Saving and reading entries never involves AI.
• AI is optional and off by default. If you turn it on, it sends only the entry you choose, and only when you ask.
• No ads, no selling data, and no journal text in analytics. There’s no parent, employer or admin view.
• You can export everything, or delete it, from inside the app.

What we store

• Account: your email and sign-in method (handled by Google Firebase Authentication), and when you confirmed you are 18 or older. We don’t ask for your birthdate.
• Journal: entries, titles, and your own tags and feeling labels; favorites; whether an entry is excluded from connections.
• Generated content: reflections, untangle summaries and connection suggestions you asked for. They’re kept separate from your entries, with which entries they came from and which model and prompt version made them.
• Compass and experiments: what you add there.
• Support circle: the names, relationships and contact details you choose to add. These are never sent to an AI provider.
• Consent history: what you agreed to or turned off, which version, and when.
• Usage counts: how many AI requests you made each day, and their approximate size. This is used for limits and costs, and contains no text.
• Feedback: only what you write and choose to send. It’s linked to your account, so it isn’t anonymous.
• Voice: not available yet. When it is, recordings will be transcribed and then discarded; raw audio won’t be kept unless you choose to keep it.

What happens when you save

With “Show support options when I save” on (the default), your browser checks the words of an entry on your own device, after you save it, for signs you might want support. If it finds them, it shows ways to reach people. The check isn’t AI, its result isn’t stored, nothing is sent anywhere, and nobody is told. You can turn it off in Settings. It can miss things and it can misread things.

AI processing (optional)

• Off until you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time. Turning it off stops all future AI processing. Reflections you already have stay until you delete them.
• When you ask, only the entry or Compass item you picked is sent, and for connections, only the entries you picked. That needs a separate setting.
• Provider: Anthropic, if AI is enabled for the service; in this release it is switched off for everyone. Requests go through our server, and your account details and support contacts are never included.
• We don’t use your journal or feedback to train AI models.
• If an entry suggests danger, it isn’t sent to the AI provider at all.

Who processes data for us

• Google Firebase (Authentication and Firestore database): stores your account and content.
• Vercel: hosts the website and runs the server. Requests, including entry text you save, pass through it; it doesn’t store your journal.
• Anthropic: only when AI is enabled and you ask for a reflection.

We don’t share your data with anyone else, except where the law requires it. Any such request would be reviewed before anything is disclosed.

Security, honestly

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest by our database provider. It is not end-to-end encrypted: our server, and the AI provider if you use AI, can process the text in order to provide the service. Access to the database is restricted, and the app’s database rules block any direct access from browsers. No system is perfectly secure.

On your device

Within doesn’t save drafts in your browser’s storage. An unsaved draft exists only on the open page. By default you’re signed out when the browser closes, unless you chose “Keep me signed in”. Your theme choice (light or dark) is the only setting stored on your device.

How long we keep things

• Your content stays until you delete it or delete your account.
• Deleting an entry also deletes the reflections made from it, removes its quotes from connections, and unlinks it from Compass.
• Feedback is deleted with your account, and otherwise after 365 days.
• A short record that an account was deleted, with dates and status but no content, is kept so the deletion can be confirmed and retried.
• Within keeps no separate backups of your journal. Our database provider may hold deleted data in its own systems for a short time before it is permanently removed.

Your choices and rights

• Export your data as JSON or Markdown: Settings → Export.
• Delete any entry, reflection or connection, or your whole account: Settings → Delete account, or the public deletion page.
• Turn AI, cross-entry connections or reminders on and off: Settings → Privacy.
• Depending on where you live, you may have more rights, such as access, correction, deletion, withdrawing consent, or appealing a decision about a request. Email axiomopslabs@gmail.com; we’ll respond within 45 days. We don’t sell personal data or use it for targeted advertising.

Adults only

Within is for people 18 and older. We don’t knowingly collect data from anyone younger. If you believe someone under 18 has an account, email axiomopslabs@gmail.com and we’ll delete it.

If there is a breach

If we learn that someone got unauthorized access to your data, we’ll tell you by email without unreasonable delay, and notify regulators where the law requires.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects how your data is used, you’ll be asked to review it in the app before the change applies to you.