Frequently asked questions
Plain answers to the questions people actually ask about Kept. For the technical privacy model, see how privacy works.
The basics
Do you know who I am? Do you have my email?
No. Kept does not collect an email address, a phone number, or your real name. You sign up with a username — a private handle that only exists inside Kept. We don't verify it, we don't send anything to it, and it can't be tied to a real identity. If you type an email into the username field, Kept refuses it and asks for a handle instead.
What is Kept?
A private journal. You speak; Kept transcribes, tags, and stores your entries end-to-end encrypted. Only you can read them.
Is Kept therapy?
No. Kept is not a medical, therapy, or crisis service. If you're in danger, please contact a local helpline.
Where does my journal live?
Encrypted on our servers. The decryption key is derived from your passphrase, in your browser. Without the passphrase (or a recovery key) the stored data is unreadable noise.
Passwords and passphrases
Why do I have both a password and a passphrase?
They do different jobs. Your password proves to the server that you're you — it signs you in. Your passphrasenever leaves your browser; it derives the key that decrypts your entries. We physically cannot reset the passphrase, because we never see it.
Mental model: the password is the key to the building. The passphrase is the key to the safe inside. Neither one can be recovered from the other.
What if I forget my password?
Because Kept has no email on file, there is no reset link to send. If you saved a recovery key during onboarding, you can use it at /auth/recovery to unlock your vault and set a new password and passphrase. Without a recovery key, a forgotten password means the account is gone. That's the trade for anonymity — no email address to leak, but no email-based reset either.
What happens on a new device?
Sign in with your username and password, then enter your passphrase once. Your browser derives the key locally and unlocks your vault. We never sync the passphrase between devices, because we don't have it.
Can I change my passphrase?
Yes — via the recovery flow. Generate a recovery key first, then use it at /auth/recovery to set a new passphrase. (Direct in-place passphrase change without recovery is on our list.)
Recovery keys
What is a recovery key?
A 24-character code that wraps a second, independent copy of your data key on the server. If you lose your passphrase, the recovery key is the only way to get back in. We strongly recommend generating one the day you start journaling.
How do I generate one?
Sign in, unlock your vault, then go to Settings → Recoveryand choose Generate recovery key. You'll see the 24-character code once. Print it or copy it into a password manager immediately — Kept never shows it again and never stores it in a form we can read.
How do I use it if I forget my passphrase?
Go to /auth/recovery (or click Forgotten passphrase or password?on the unlock screen). Sign in with your username and password, paste the recovery key, and set a new passphrase. Kept unwraps the data key using the recovery key, re-wraps it with your new passphrase, and you're back in.
What happens to the recovery key after I use it?
It's consumed — deleted from the server. Generate a fresh recovery key from Settings right after you reset, so you're covered again. Treat each recovery key as one-shot.
What if I lose both my passphrase and my recovery key?
Your entries are unrecoverable. There is no support backdoor, no admin override, no second copy we can decrypt. This is the cost of the guarantee that we cannot read your journal.
Can I delete or rotate the recovery key?
Yes. In Settings → Recovery you can delete the current key (and immediately generate a new one). Do this if you think a printed copy was seen or lost.
What should I do with the printed key?
Treat it like the spare key to a safe. A locked drawer, a home safe, a trusted password manager. Don't email it to yourself, don't store it in the same place as your passphrase, and don't photograph it onto a cloud-synced camera roll.
Reflections
What is a reflection?
A short note from Kept that quotes your own words back to you, with dates. Kept will not name your feelings, diagnose you, advise you, or ask you a question. It looks for six shapes: recurrence (a phrase that keeps coming back), contrast (two entries about the same thing that land differently), novelty (something new), absence (a phrase that stopped), cadence (streaks and gaps), and anniversaries.
Example: You wrote "the meeting with Sam" on [12 Mar] and again on [18 Mar] and [24 Mar].
How often do reflections arrive?
In the background, roughly daily, when there's something clear enough to say. There is no chat, no prompt, no notification pressure — you'll see a reflection card when there is one. If you want to ask Kept about a specific stretch of time, use Ask Kept.
How can Kept notice patterns if my journal is encrypted?
Reflections are opt-in. If you turn them on, Kept stores a second, wrapped copy of your data key (called an escrow key) that only the background reflection worker can briefly unwrap, in memory, during a scheduled run. Nothing decrypted ever leaves that worker — it's not written to the database, not logged, not returned in any response. You can revoke escrow at any time in Settings; the wrapped copy is destroyed and reflections stop. Without escrow, Kept cannot read your entries — including for reflections.
Why doesn't Kept tell me how I feel or what to do?
Because that would be pretending to know things it doesn't. Kept's job is to hold up a mirror, not to interpret. Naming your feelings, giving advice, or asking probing questions would collapse the distinction between a journal and a therapist. We're not the second thing.
Why is my reflection card sometimes empty?
Kept is instructed that a weak mirror is worse than no mirror. If no pattern is clear enough to quote back with confidence, it stays silent. Silence is a feature. It also remembers what it has already shown you, so it won't repeat the same observation next week.
Can I turn reflections off?
Yes. In Settings you can revoke the escrow key, which stops all background reflections and destroys the wrapped key on the server. Ask Kept (the on-demand button) also stops working, because it uses the same mechanism.
Voice and transcription
Where does transcription happen?
Audio is encrypted in your browser before being sent for transcription via our AI gateway. The transcript comes back, is tagged, and the ciphertext is stored. Plain audio and plain text are never written to our database.
Why is the microphone sometimes missing on the passphrase field?
Kept only shows the mic on browsers where speech recognition is known to run fully on-device (Safari on macOS/iOS, recent Chrome with the on-device flag). Everywhere else we hide it rather than quietly route your passphrase through a cloud STT service.
What is voice training for?
It enrols a voiceprint so Kept can verify that the speaker on a new entry is you. If verification fails, the entry is discarded — this stops other people's voices from being added to your journal. You can reset the voiceprint anytime in Settings → Voice.
Crisis support
Does Kept watch what I say?
A keyword tripwire runs in your browser, before your entry is encrypted and sent. If it matches, Kept surfaces local resources immediately. The check happens on your device — we don't see the entry.
Is Kept a substitute for a crisis service?
No. If you're in danger, contact a local helpline. Kept is a journal, not a responder.
Reliability and offline
What happens if the network drops mid-entry?
Nothing is lost. The moment you stop recording, Kept saves the raw audio into a durable queue in your browser — an outbox — before it tries to talk to the server. Everything after that (compression, upload, transcription, tagging, save) runs from the outbox with automatic retries. If a step fails, it resumes from where it stopped rather than starting over.
What if I close the tab or my phone dies?
The outbox lives in your browser's persistent storage (IndexedDB), so entries survive tab close, reload, browser restart, and reboot. When you reopen Kept, the queue picks up from the last checkpoint. You'll see a small "sending in the background" note on the capture screen when there's still work to flush.
What about airplane mode or being on the train?
Record as normal. Entries wait in the outbox and send themselves the moment you're back online — triggered by the browser's own "network back" signal, so you don't have to reopen anything.
Could tapping Send twice create duplicates?
No. Every queued item carries a stable client-side ID. The server treats a repeat with the same ID as a no-op and returns the original entry. Retries are safe by design.
Where does encryption sit in all this?
Before it enters the outbox. Your transcript and themes are encrypted with your data key in the browser; the queue stores ciphertext plus the raw audio blob (which is uploaded to end-to-end-encrypted storage). If your vault auto-locks while something is waiting to send, the queue pauses that item until you unlock again — the server never sees plaintext even during a retry storm.
What if something genuinely can't send after many tries?
After several failed attempts an entry is marked stuck rather than silently retried forever. It stays on your device, visible on the capture screen, so you can retry manually or discard. Nothing is thrown away without your say-so.
Your data and deletion
What can I export?
In Settings → Data you can export your decrypted entries (decryption happens in your browser) as a portable archive.
What does "wipe" actually do?
Deletes your entries, audio, embeddings, voiceprint, recovery key, vault metadata, and authentication record. Kept retains only the minimum crisis-dispatch audit metadata required for safeguarding integrity — no entry content, no audio.
Can Kept staff read my journal?
No. We hold only ciphertext. Anyone with database access — including us and including a subpoena — sees encrypted bytes, not your words.