Privacy

Three different kinds of thing, worth separating because people often assume only the first exists:

• Your conversations, in full. The messages you send and the coach’s replies are stored as written. We do not store only summaries — the actual text is kept, because the coach needs it to remember what you have already told it.
• Notes about the people you mention. When you talk about someone, Amkala may record a short note and group them into a relationship — “sister”, “manager”. These are the coach’s inferences, kept separately from your conversation, and you can delete any of them at any time from Your relationships.
• Your account and settings. Your name and email (from Google, if you signed in that way) or your Telegram/phone identifier, and your timezone. We also keep usage and cost records, which contain no message content.

If you share a photo, it is kept, along with a written description of it that the coach can refer back to later. It stays until you delete the message or your account.

Amkala stores information about people who never signed up — your sister, your manager, your kids. They cannot see it, correct it, or ask us for it, because we have no relationship with them and no way to know who they are beyond what you called them.

We think that deserves saying plainly rather than burying. In practice this is limited to the short notes and relationship labels described above, plus whatever you yourself wrote in your messages. You can delete any person and everything recorded about them from Your relationships, and it is removed immediately.

• Conversations you keep: retained for as long as your account exists, because that is what makes the coach useful over time.
• Conversations you delete: removed from your account immediately, and permanently deleted from our systems within 10 days. That includes the message text, any photos in storage, and internal processing copies.
• People you delete from your relationships: removed immediately, along with every note about them.
• If you delete your account: your messages, relationships, photos and connections are deleted.

One exception, and we want to be specific about it. If a message triggered a safety concern — content suggesting risk of harm — that message is kept even if you delete the conversation, along with the record of the concern. We think destroying the record behind a safety flag is the wrong default. Nothing else from that conversation is kept.

No person at Amkala reads your conversations. There is one exception, and it is the safety case above: if a message raises a serious concern, the message that raised it is shown to a person, so that someone can actually judge what is happening and respond. That is deliberate, and it is the only case.

Off-topic classifications are not that case. When the system flags something as outside what Amkala is for, we are told that it happened and why, but not what you wrote.

Amkala is built on services that necessarily handle your data to make it work:

• AI model providers — your messages are sent to a language model to generate replies. Calls are routed through our own proxy rather than sent directly.
• Supabase — sign-in, database, and photo storage.
• Railway and Vercel — hosting for the app and its backend.
• Nango and Google — only if you connect Google Calendar. We read your upcoming events and can create check-in events. We do not store your calendar.
• Telegram or your SMS provider — if you use Amkala on those channels, your messages transit them, subject to their own terms.

If you choose to use Amkala over SMS, you opt in by texting our number or by giving us your mobile number and asking to be reached that way. Message frequency varies with how you use the coach. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP at any time to opt out, and HELP for help.

Your mobile information will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with, or sold to, any third party. The only party that handles your texts is the SMS carrier and provider needed to deliver them.

• We don't sell your data.
• We don't advertise to you, and we don't share your data with advertisers.
• We don't use your conversations to train our own models.

• Delete any conversation, or any person from your relationships, at any time.
• Disconnect Google Calendar at any time.
• Ask us to delete your account and everything in it.

For anything above, or any question about your data, write to privacy@amkala.com.

Amkala is a coaching tool, not therapy and not emergency support. If you are in danger or thinking about harming yourself, please contact your local emergency number or a crisis line — those services can help in ways this one cannot.