Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 5, 2026
A Cool Journal is made by Eternal Swell LLC ("we", "us"). We are independent and not venture-backed, which means we answer to the people who use the app and no one else. We do not sell your data. This policy explains what the app collects, why, who else sees it, and what you can do about it.
The short version
You write in the app. Your writing is stored so you can read it back and so the coach can remember what you told it before. To generate a coach reply, your entry and relevant earlier context are sent to Anthropic's API. We run no third-party analytics and we do not track you across other apps or websites, though we do keep our own record of how you use the app — which prompts and suggestions you were shown, and whether you acted on them — so we can improve it. We do not sell anything about you. We may periodically review entries to improve how the coach responds. You can delete your account and everything in it from inside the app.
What we collect
Only what the app needs to work. There is no hidden collection layer.
- Account details. A name, which is required. An email address, which is optional and only used to let you get back into your account. A timezone, if you set one, so days start and end correctly for you.
- Subscription status. If you subscribe to the coach, which plan you're on and whether it's currently active, so the app knows what you have access to. Payment itself is handled by Apple — we never see your card details.
- What you write. Your journal entries and your conversations with the coach.
- Daily check-ins. The stress, energy, and mood ratings you record.
- Your onboarding answers. The personality questionnaire responses and the goals you select.
- Challenge activity. Which challenge you accepted, how many times you have marked it done, and any note you leave afterwards.
- Photos, if you add them. A photo you take in the app, or choose from your photo library, to attach to an entry or send in a coach chat.
- How you use the app. Which prompts, questions, and challenges we showed you and whether you acted on them, plus a record of coach requests so we can track cost. This is our own record, kept to improve the app and never shared with an analytics vendor.
- Derived context. Summaries the app generates from your entries so the coach can recall earlier threads without re-reading everything. This is built from your writing; it is not separate collection.
What we do not collect
Worth stating plainly, because it is unusual:
- No third-party analytics or tracking SDKs. The app contains no third-party analytics, crash-reporting, or attribution libraries of any kind — nothing about your use of the app is sent to an analytics company. The usage record described above is our own, and stays with us.
- No advertising identifiers, no ad networks, and no cross-app or cross-site tracking.
- No contacts, location, calendar, or microphone access.
- No push tokens. Reminders are scheduled on your device by the app itself. Nothing about them is sent to a server.
How your writing is used
This is the part worth being precise about.
When you write an entry or send a coach message, that text is sent from our server to Anthropic, which runs the model that generates the coach's reply. Along with your message we send relevant context: your personality profile, your selected goals, your recent check-ins, a summary of earlier sessions, and — when you mention someone the app already knows about — a short history relating to them. This is what makes the coach able to refer back to things you wrote weeks ago.
Under Anthropic's commercial API terms, what we send is not used to train Anthropic's models. Anthropic deletes inputs and outputs within 30 days in the ordinary course. There is one exception worth knowing about: where Anthropic's automated safety systems flag content as violating its Usage Policy, it may retain that content for up to two years, and the resulting classification scores for up to seven. You can read the terms that apply to our account at anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms.
We do not use your writing to train any model of our own, and we do not sell it, rent it, or share it for advertising.
Photos are not sent to the model. A photo you attach is stored and displayed back to you only.
Who can read your entries
To improve how the coach responds, we may periodically review journal entries and coach conversations — to assess the quality, accuracy, and tone of its replies. No one outside the company has access.
We review for that reason and no other. We don't share what we read, and we don't use it to train models.
Where your data lives
| Who | What they hold | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | The database — your account, entries, check-ins, and summaries. Photos are held in Supabase's file storage. | Hosting your data |
| Render | Runs the server the app talks to. Your data passes through it but is not stored there. | Application hosting |
| Anthropic | Receives entries and context in order to generate coach replies. | The coach |
| RevenueCat | Your account ID and purchase receipts, so a subscription can be validated and attributed to your account. | Subscription management |
| Resend | Your email address, only when we send a verification code, an email-change confirmation, or a password-reset code. | Account security emails |
That is the complete list of processors we use. None of them are analytics vendors or data brokers.
Security
Your data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or greater, and encrypted at rest using AES-256 by our database provider.
To be clear about what this is not: A Cool Journal is not end-to-end encrypted. Our server can read your entries, because it has to — the coach cannot remember what you wrote if the content is unreadable to the system that generates its replies. Anyone claiming both is claiming something that cannot be true. We would rather tell you that than imply otherwise.
No service can promise perfect security, and we will not pretend to.
Your choices
- Delete a single entry. Open the day on your home screen, tap the ••• menu on the entry card, and choose Delete entry. This removes the entry, its coach conversation, and any photo attached to it.
- Delete your account. From Settings inside your profile. This deletes your account and everything associated with it — entries, conversations, check-ins, personality results, goals, challenge history, generated summaries, and stored photos. It is immediate and cannot be undone.
- Export your data. Open Settings inside your profile and choose Export journal. You can export as a PDF, Markdown, or plain text file, covering all time or a shorter range. If you cannot access the app — for example, you have deleted it but want a copy of your data — email us at the address below and we will provide one.
The exported file is not encrypted, and the app tells you so before you export. Once it leaves the app it is an ordinary file: anyone you send it to can read it.
Your rights in California, the UK, and the EU
Residents of California, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and certain other jurisdictions may have additional rights under applicable law, including under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These generally include the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict the processing of your personal information, and to receive a copy of it.
To exercise any of these, email us using the address below, or use the export and delete controls in Settings. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
How long we keep things
Your entries stay until you delete them or delete your account — a journal you cannot read back is not much of a journal. When you delete your account, the records are removed from the live database immediately.
After deletion, your data may persist in our database provider's backups for [RETENTION WINDOW — e.g. 30 days] for disaster-recovery purposes, after which it is permanently removed.
Children
A Cool Journal is not directed to anyone under the age of 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe someone under 16 has given us their information, email us and we will delete it.
If you are outside the United States
Your data is processed and stored in the United States. If you use A Cool Journal from outside the US, you are transferring your information to the US, where privacy laws may differ from those where you live.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how your writing is handled, we will tell you in the app rather than quietly editing this page.
Contact
Questions, or a request about your data? Email hello@acooljournal.com.
A Cool Journal is made by Eternal Swell LLC, Seattle, Washington, United States.