frequently asked questions

If the night is a reach: did not send. If it is loneliness without a text: someone is awake. If you want to walk one hard moment through: a guided walk.

Then dove or the full harbor at /demo. You do not need to learn everything first.

Sanctuary is emotional infrastructure for heartbreak, grief, and anxious attachment. the daily layer between sessions. not meditation scripts. not a clinic.

It features dove for daily emotional offloading, attachment-aware expeditions, and a private meadow. Category doors: did not send and someone is awake. Sanctuary is sovereignty tech: traveler data stays yours. It is not a therapy replacement.

No. Sanctuary is a daily companion, not a therapist. Therapy does the deep structural work; Sanctuary handles the in-between moments.

Dove operates under a four-tier safety architecture. In a crisis, she directs travelers to real human support immediately. Sanctuary and therapy complement each other.

everything that helps you heal is free, always. the cairn, dove chat and free voice, the meadow and its journal, the synthesizer, every expedition, self, and every crisis surface, all of it, always.

sovereign is devotion to continuity. normally $9 a month or $72 a year, and free with any account right now while sanctuary grows: stone words, reflection, dove's letter, and sync when signed in. go live and neural voices deepen presence continuity. it never unlocks healing. a person in their worst week loses access to nothing. see pricing and how it helps.

dove chat is free, always. dove's letter is the named deeper mode.

when you ask for depth, dove writes a composed reflection from what she has noticed. patterns, movement, the quiet signs of returning. that letter is part of sovereign. chat never locks behind a wall. see pricing.

three different words. one harbor.

sovereign is the optional plan for memory that stays, free with any account right now. pricing. sovereignty is data ownership. your inner life is not harvested. sovereignty. the path of return is the free four-threshold path. not a subscription. method.

The free interactive harbor is live today at joinsanctuary.io/demo, /expeditions, /alone, and /interrupt. Healing stays free forever.

A fuller app experience continues to roll out toward September 4, 2026. but you do not have to wait to begin. The free harbor is open now.

Sovereign tech is a design philosophy where the traveler retains full ownership and control of their personal data. In Sanctuary, this means no third-party data sales, no behavioral advertising, no dark patterns, and no data extraction.

Emotional data stays on-device by default through encrypted local caching. Server-side processing uses ephemeral compute with no persistent storage of conversation content.

Four layers: encrypted on-device storage, session-level privacy isolation, ephemeral server-side compute, and a strict no-sale policy. Conversations and journal entries are never cross-referenced, aggregated, or shared.

Full documentation is available at the safety stack.

No. SanctuaryApp will never sell traveler data to advertisers, data brokers, or any third party. No behavioral advertising, no surveillance-based monetization, no dark patterns.

This is a core architectural value: the technical architecture is designed so that emotional data physically cannot be aggregated or extracted. Read our full privacy policy and terms.

Dove is sanctuary's companion. She validates feelings before reflecting, responds with short warm language (never clinical), and may notice themes across a session.

Raw chat is not stored on our servers. words reach the model only to answer. Dove's letter is sovereign; chat stays free. In a crisis, Dove directs you to real human support. See the safety stack.

Raw conversations are not retained on Sanctuary servers. Expedition words and stones stay on your device by default. Server-side inference uses ephemeral compute.

No conversation data is sold, shared, or used for advertising. Learn more at trust privacy, sovereignty, and the safety stack.

Dove immediately provides direct links to real human support including the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the Crisis Text Line.

Dove does not attempt to handle crisis situations herself. The safety architecture escalates, not contains. Full details at the safety stack.

Interactive emotional walks. not breathing exercises. Seven flagship encounters meet what you are carrying (the urge to text, the unsent letter, a rumination loop, the first night alone, the hollow, the unspoken, and the seam). You name it, dove meets you there, then you choose: continue with dove, see it take root in the living garden, or set it down in the meadow.

what each walk leaves behind drifts back as an original that stays on your device. Browse by need at joinsanctuary.io/expeditions, or open the demo.

Someone is awake is Sanctuary's loneliness infrastructure. Dove meets you on /alone. No signup. Free presence for loneliness without a reach.

It is the cultural twin of did not send. Private presence. Nothing to post.

Protest interrupt is the door for the urge to text. map the pull, ride the wave without sending, leave with a quiet did-not-send receipt at /interrupt.

free, private, under five minutes. nothing to keep up. nothing to post.

A garden you walk through and plant yourself. It is one continuous landscape, from an enclosed clearing out to a stream bank, that you pan across by hand and open as it grows. Every plant is generated uniquely from its own seed, so no two flowers, and no two gardens, are ever alike.

Each plant grows continuously in real time, whether you are here or not. You water with a slow breath, rake a bed of sand that the rain later smooths, give the place a name, and every walk you finish gifts a seed named for it. Nothing is scored, and nothing decays if you stay away. Open the garden in the demo.

After walking the seven flagships, the horizon opens. a slow nervous-system-settling passage that earns dew for the garden. Sometimes an original piece of generative art drifts into your vault.

Vault pieces are kept only on your device. They are not spendable currency and not trophies. proof you actually settled. See the vault in the demo.

sanctuary's design philosophy, not a points or rewards system. it's how we apply established research, attachment theory, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), the dual-process model of grief, and the neuroscience of social rejection, to the design itself, so the space settles the body as a side effect of using it. no tallies, no leaderboards, no scores, nothing to earn.

Sanctuary's own approach has not yet been clinically trialed, and a research council is being formed to review every scientific claim. Learn more at joinsanctuary.io/ember-science.

That is your decision. Some people close the app and never return; Sanctuary considers that a success. Sanctuary is designed with an exit in mind; it is not an engagement trap. The goal is healing, not retention.