a private ai journaling app
- written from experience
the second a journal feels watched i stop writing the real thing, and the real thing is the entire point. i couldnt put the 2am version of myself anywhere that lived on a server. so i made the one where the page stays yours, on your phone, and something still asks the question that moves you.
a private ai journaling app gives you the usefulness of ai reflection without making your journal feel public. your entries stay on your phone by default, and the ai's only job is to read what you wrote and ask the next question, not to store you, sell you, or analyze you.
privacy without giving up the part that helps
i built sotie around a tension i couldnt get past. i wanted the usefulness of something that asks me questions back, but i did not want my journal to stop feeling private. most ai journals solve that the easy way, everything you write lives on someones server because its simpler to process there.
i went the other direction on purpose. private writing comes first, the ai support comes second. the reflection still happens, but its not paid for with that quiet dread that your most unguarded thoughts now live somewhere you cant see and cant take back.
a journal you self-censor is just a tidy diary of the version of you that has it together. thats never the version that needs the page.
what it actually promises, and what it doesn't
sotie is not therapy, not coaching, not an advice engine. its an ai journal that helps you find clarity one question at a time, and keeps the writing itself on your phone. that framing matters to me.
its not promising to diagnose you or fix you, and its not promising to be a fortress for your data, because its not holding your data in the first place. it promises one thing, the next good question, and lets the entry stay yours. i wanted to make something i could tell my own scared 2am self to trust, and that meant not quietly keeping her words somewhere she couldnt reach.
the thing you're probably leaving to come here
most of us already journal, badly, in the notes app or by venting to chatgpt in a browser tab. the notes app never asks anything back, so you just reread the spiral. chatgpt asks plenty but lives on a server and tends to agree with you. both feel exposed in their own way, and neither was built to be the place you put the 2am version of yourself.
so when i need to actually get under a spiral now, i take it to sotie instead of either of those, because its the one where the page stays mine and something still asks the question that moves me forward. that was the whole reason it had to exist.
questions that come up a lot
where are journal entries stored?
on your phone. entries stay local by default, and the app nudges you to export now and then so you always have a backup. the flip side of keeping it on your device is that the backup is on you. if you lose the phone without an export, the entries go with it. thats the trade i made on purpose, your writing stays yours, and keeping a copy is the small price of keeping it private.
does sotie use my journal to train models?
the ai's job is to read what you wrote so it can ask the next question, not to train on your spirals. for the exact processing language, the privacy policy is the real source, and i kept it readable on purpose so you dont need a law degree to know whats happening with your own words.
why does privacy matter so much for a journal?
because the second a journal feels watched, you stop writing the real thing, and the real thing is the whole point. private-first writing is what lets you put the 2am spiral down honestly instead of a tidier version of it. a question can only reach the thing underneath if you actually wrote the thing underneath. a journal you self-censor is just a nicer-sounding diary of the version of you that has it together, which is never the version that needs the page.