Privacy, plainly.

The app opens to people from the waitlist, in small groups. This policy describes it as you will use it.

Who we are

Soundthought is operated by Innerworks UG (haftungsbeschränkt), a small company based in Germany, built and run by Soundthought's founder (“we,” “us”). The company is registered at the Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main under HRB 144843; the full legal details are in the Impressum. This policy covers the Soundthought mobile app, this website and our social profiles. For anything in it: hello@soundthought.ai. Our contact for privacy is our managing director, Amir Maalej, at hello@soundthought.ai or Unterlindau 43, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

This website

Visiting

The site is served by Cloudflare. Like any web server, it sees standard technical data (your IP address and browser type) to deliver pages and fend off abuse, and it keeps a sample of these requests, IP address included, for up to 7 days. We don't use any of this to identify or profile you. The fonts are hosted on our own domain, so opening this site doesn't hand your visit to Google or any other font service. Nothing on these pages loads from anywhere else. Your light/dark theme choice, and whether you closed the line suggesting another language, are saved in your own browser, on your device. They never reach us. The site sets no cookies.

Counting visits

Cloudflare, which serves the site, gives us aggregate traffic numbers, like how many visits a day it answers. No script runs in your browser to count you.

The waitlist

If you join the waitlist, we store your email address in our database, in Frankfurt. It is used for exactly three things: one email asking you to confirm it, one welcome note once you do, and your invitation when it's ready for you. We also note when you signed up, which link brought you here, if any, the language you signed up in, when we sent the confirmation email and which version of it, and when you confirmed. That is how invitations go earliest-first, and how we can show what you agreed to. Before we store an address, we check that its domain (the part after the @) can receive email, with a lookup through Cloudflare's public DNS. Only the domain is looked up, never your address. If you don't confirm within 7 days, we delete the address. Once your invitation has gone out, we delete it 90 days later. Nothing else, and it is never sold, shared, or used to profile you. Our email provider keeps a record of the emails we send you for 30 days. Every email we send carries a link that removes you, and using it deletes the entry outright. You can also write to hello@soundthought.ai. You do not have to explain why, and there is no button we have hidden from you.

Writing to us

If you write to us, by email or through the contact form on the Impressum, your email address and your message come to our inbox so we can answer you. A message sent through the form passes through our email provider, which keeps a record of it for 30 days. The address you give there is checked the same way as a waitlist address. We keep your message only as long as we need it to answer you, and use it for nothing else.

On social platforms

We have profiles on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads and TikTok, named soundthoughtai. The links to them on this website are plain links: nothing from these platforms loads on our pages, and they learn nothing from this site unless you click one.

If you comment on, mention or message our profiles, we see your name or handle and what you wrote, and use it only to answer you. It stays on the platform until you or we delete it. For anything personal, email is the better place: hello@soundthought.ai.

Each platform runs its service under its own privacy policy: X Internet Unlimited Company (X), LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company (LinkedIn), Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (Instagram and Threads) and TikTok Technology Limited (TikTok). The platforms also show us statistics about how our profiles and posts are seen, as totals. For those statistics the platform and we are jointly responsible, as LinkedIn's and TikTok's published agreements set out; requests about them go to the platform, and you can also write to us. We don't advertise on these platforms or use their tracking tools.

The app: what we keep, and why

Your account. Your email address and password, the name you'd like to be called, the language you chose, and that you confirmed you are 18 or older.

Your entries. Whatever you say or type becomes an entry, kept as text, in your own words. A few seconds later each entry gets its record: a few of your own sentences, quoted exactly, and the intention you spoke, if you said one. Nothing the AI writes is ever put into an entry or its record. For the app's own use we also keep a short summary of each entry, and an index made from the summaries and the quoted sentences, never from the full text. They let the app find what you said before, and write the few lines Today shows you. The summary is never shown to you or to anyone else.

Your photos. Photos you add to an entry are kept with it, encrypted with your key.

Soundthought AI's notes and your plans. When you ask Soundthought AI something, what it says back is kept as its own private notes, so it doesn't ask you the same thing twice. Its words never enter your entries. A plan you make in Tomorrow keeps your wish, its goal, its steps and any reminder you set, until you let it go. The talk that made the plan is not kept.

Your subscription. See Subscriptions below.

What stays on your phone.

• The recording stays on your phone, encrypted, so you can play it back. It never reaches our servers. You can delete any recording, or switch off keeping them in Settings. Recordings do not move with you to a new phone.
• Speech recognition runs on your phone itself, so no recording goes to us, or to anyone else, to be turned into words.
• A copy of your journal is kept on your phone, encrypted, so it works without a connection. Searching your words happens there too; our servers never search your full text.
• The app lock, and your reminders. Reminders are set on your phone, come at most once a day, and their text is generic, so nothing you wrote ever shows on your lock screen.

Error reports. When something goes wrong on our servers, an error report goes to Sentry. It is built to contain no personal content: no entries, no names, nothing you wrote. It is stored in the EU and deleted after 30 days.

How the AI works with your words

Every model on our side runs on servers we run: the one that picks each entry's record, the one that writes its summary, Soundthought AI, and the voice it speaks with. Your words are never sent to a third-party AI service, and no other company's AI reads them or learns from them.

As you speak or type, your words reach our servers at each pause, on every version of the app. The first reason is your safety: they are checked for signs that you might be in crisis, so the app can show you how to reach someone straight away. On the full version, the same words let Soundthought AI answer when you ask it something. Otherwise it stays silent.

Soundthought AI is an AI, and the app tells you so before your first entry. Its voice is synthetic.

The legal basis for each use

• Joining the waitlist: your consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)), which you give by confirming your address. The link in any email withdraws it.
• Sending the one email that asks you to confirm, and keeping an unconfirmed address for up to 7 days: our legitimate interest in making sure only the owner of an address joins (Art. 6(1)(f)).
• Answering what you send us: our legitimate interest in replying to you (Art. 6(1)(f)).
• The statistics platforms show us about our profiles: our legitimate interest in knowing whether what we post reaches anyone (Art. 6(1)(f)).
• Your account, the app and your subscription: our agreement with you (Art. 6(1)(b)).
• What you say, write and add in the app: your explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a)), because what you share can touch on your health, which the GDPR treats as a special category of data. You give it in the app before your first entry. It names what it covers: the check for signs of crisis, the record, Soundthought AI's replies and the plans you make with it, and your photos. We keep a record of your consent: which version you agreed to, when, and what it covered.
• Sharing entries to improve Soundthought: a separate explicit consent, off by default, recorded the same way.
• Keeping the site and app secure and working: our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)), which you can object to.

Withdrawing consent never affects what happened before. You withdraw your consent for the app by deleting your account, and the consent to share entries by switching it off in Settings, at any time.

Subscriptions

If you subscribe, Apple or Google handles the purchase and payment under its own terms; we never see your card. We keep which store and plan, the transaction number and your trial dates, so you get the paid features, while your account exists. If you delete your account while a subscription is running, cancel it in the App Store or Google Play too, because only the store can stop it.

Who touches your data

No analytics brokers, no ad networks, no data buyers. The complete list of processors is:

• Supabasedatabase, sign-in and photo storage, in Frankfurt
• Amazon Web Servicesholds the master key that locks the key unique to you, in Frankfurt; it never sees your content
• Modalthe computers Soundthought's self-hosted AI runs on, in an EU region
• Upstashshort-lived counters that keep the app within its limits and its safety rules, in Ireland; it holds nothing you said or wrote
• Sentryerror reports from our servers, built to contain no personal content
• Cloudflareserves this website
• Googleour email inbox (Google Workspace)
• Resendsends our emails, the waitlist's and your account's, from Ireland, and keeps its records of them in the US for 30 days; tracking off

Each processes data only on our instructions, under a data-processing agreement. Apple and Google are not on this list: when you subscribe, they sell the subscription themselves, under their own terms.

Where your data lives

Our database, your photos and our master encryption key are in Frankfurt, in the EU, and Soundthought's AI runs on Modal's computers in an EU region. Wherever you are, the same promises in this policy apply to you.

Some of our providers are based outside the EU: Supabase in Singapore, and Modal, Resend, Sentry, Upstash, Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services in the US. Our inbox is provided by Google's company in Ireland, which may store our email in the US. Wherever your data goes outside the EU, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the EU's standard contractual clauses cover it. You can ask us for a copy at hello@soundthought.ai.

What we will never do

• Sell your data, or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
• Show you ads.
• Use your entries for marketing.
• Let any AI learn from your words unless you say yes, and never anyone else's AI.
• Write your words into system logs.
• Contact anyone on your behalf. If what you write or say turns that way, the app puts crisis lines in front of you straight away, and they are always in the app, in Settings, under Support resources. It does not call or notify anyone.

Sharing entries to improve Soundthought, only if you say yes

Soundthought's own models can get better at what they do, but only from freely given help. If, and only if, you switch on “Share entries to improve Soundthought” in Settings, your entries may be used to improve Soundthought's own models: whole entries, kept apart from your account and your email address. This is off by default, entirely optional, and never a condition for using Soundthought. Switch it off any time: that stops any further use and removes what you shared within 7 days. What a model has already learned from them stays in that model. What you share improves Soundthought's models and no one else's. It is never shared, sold, or passed along. Deleting your account counts as switching it off.

Your controls

Delete an entry. Deleting an entry deletes everything made from it: its record, Soundthought AI's notes on it, its photos and its recording. It is an immediate hard delete from our live systems, not a hidden archive.

Your recordings. Delete any recording, or switch off keeping them, in Settings, under On this phone.

On this day. Leave any entry out of On this day with one tap.

Export everything. In Settings, Export everything gives you your whole journal and your plans, as text or PDF, on every version of the app.

Lock the app with your face, your fingerprint or your passcode.

Delete your account. Available directly in the app. This permanently erases your account and everything in it: your entries and their records, your photos, Soundthought AI's private notes, your sign-in, and the recordings on your phone. It happens at once in the app and our database, and in backups as described under Retention. There is no “deactivated” state, and no way for us to undo it.

If you are in the EU/EEA or UK, you have the right to see your data, correct it, delete it, limit how we use it, take a copy with you, and object to how we use it. You can withdraw any consent at any time, as easily as you gave it: through the link in any of our emails, or by writing to hello@soundthought.ai. That never affects what happened before. You can also complain to a data protection authority; in Germany, that is the one for your federal state. If you are anywhere else: we don't gatekeep by geography. The same controls are yours too.

Your right to object. Where we rely on our legitimate interest, which is keeping the site and app secure and working, checking that a signup really came from the owner of the address, answering what you send us, and the statistics about our social profiles, you can object at any time for reasons that come from your situation. Write to hello@soundthought.ai.

Retention

Your entries and everything made from them stay until you delete them, or your account. Plans you let go are deleted. Your purchase data (which store and plan, the transaction number, your trial dates) is kept while your account exists. Error reports are deleted after 30 days. One honest footnote: like any responsible service, we keep encrypted database backups for disaster recovery, for 7 days. Your content is encrypted with a key unique to you, so deleting your account destroys that key, and everything you wrote, and everything made from it, becomes unrecoverable at that moment, backups included. Your account record (your email address and account dates) leaves our backups within 7 days, as they roll over, and anything you delete while your account is open leaves them the same way. Backups are never used to restore anything you have deleted. Our email provider keeps its records of the emails we sent you for 30 days.

Security, including the part most policies won't say

Everything travels between you and Soundthought over encrypted connections (TLS). What you say and write, and everything kept from it, is stored encrypted with a key unique to you, never in plain text, and the disks underneath are encrypted too. On your phone, your journal is kept in an encrypted store whose key is held in your phone's own secure storage. When the AI needs your words, for a record, a summary or a reply, our servers decrypt them in memory, only for that moment, and keep nothing unlocked afterwards.

Here is the honest part: Soundthought is not end-to-end encrypted. The AI has to read your words to work with them, so our systems can decrypt them, which means, technically, we could read them too. We treat that access as something to minimize, not use: access to production systems is restricted, our system logs never contain your words, and your recordings never leave your phone. No system is perfectly secure, but Soundthought is built so that even in the worst case there is as little as possible to find. The safest data is the data that was never kept.

Who Soundthought is for

Soundthought is for adults. It is not directed at anyone under 18: you confirm you are 18 or older when you create your account, and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we learn we hold a child's data, we will delete it.

A note on what Soundthought is

Soundthought is a journal for reflection, not a medical service. It does not create medical records, and this policy is not a substitute for the protections that apply to healthcare providers. If you are in crisis, please reach for humans: in the US, call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741. In Germany, TelefonSeelsorge listens at 0800 111 0 111, free and anonymous. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com lists lines by country, and your local emergency number is always right.

If Soundthought ever has to stop

Soundthought is one person's company, so it is fair to ask what happens to your words if it does not make it. Here is the commitment. If Soundthought has to close, you will be told at least 30 days before the app stops working, and your data will stay exportable for at least 90 days after that. When that window closes, everything is erased from our servers. Your data will not be sold, and it will not be handed to whoever buys the wreckage. It is not part of the furniture.

The honest limit on that promise: it assumes we are in a position to give notice. No small company can rule out the sudden version, and we would rather say so than pretend the plan covers everything.

Changes to this policy

Soundthought is a small company with one person behind it, and this policy may change as the product grows. If anything changes in a way that matters, we will tell you plainly before it takes effect: in the app, and by email once you have an account. We won't bury it.