Anchor — Trust & Safety

Anchor exists to support adults on their recovery journey — from alcohol, porn, drugs, nicotine, gambling, social media, caffeine, sugar, gaming, spending, or any habit they define themselves. We take the privacy, safety, and wellbeing of our users seriously. Anchor is operated by ProgramU LLC. If something feels unsafe or wrong, reach out at support@quitwithanchor.app.

Version 1 · Last Updated: July 19, 2026

1. What Anchor Is

Anchor is an AI-powered recovery companion. It supports your recovery journey with:

Pattern tracking — track every addiction that matters to you, free, with streak counters, daily check-ins, a calendar, and milestones
The craving button — "It's pulling at me": one tap to breathwork, your why, and (on a plan) a live talk — the free tools always work
Companion conversations — voice and text conversations with June and Jack, AI companions built to be there when cravings hit, 24/7 (Anchor's paid feature)
Breathwork and the audio library — follow-along breathing patterns and pregenerated tapping, meditation, hypnosis, and rest tracks — free for every user
Your Anchor — your why in your own words, photos, and a video message to yourself; media stays on your device
Pattern insights — your hardest windows, top triggers, and trends, computed from your own data

Anchor is a wellness tool. It is science-informed and habit-focused, and it is designed to work alongside your existing support — your sponsor, your therapist, your meetings, your people.

2. What Anchor Is Not

Anchor is a support tool for your recovery journey. It is not a healthcare product.

Anchor is NOT:

Medical care. Anchor does not provide medical advice, medical monitoring, or medical support of any kind.
Therapy. Conversations with Anchor's AI companion are not therapy and do not replace a therapist, counselor, or treatment program.
A diagnostic tool. Anchor does not diagnose addiction or any other condition, and nothing in the app should be read as a diagnosis.
An emergency service. Anchor cannot call for help, dispatch anyone, or respond to an emergency.

> Anchor is not a substitute for professional medical care, therapy, or treatment. If you are experiencing a medical emergency or severe withdrawal symptoms, contact a healthcare provider immediately.

If you are in crisis, please use the resources in Section 12. They are always free and never behind a paywall.

3. Who Anchor Is For

Anchor is designed for adults 18 years of age and older. Anyone under 18 cannot use the app.

Anchor is built for people pursuing self-directed recovery — people who have decided, on their own terms, to change their relationship with a substance or habit. That might mean full sobriety, cutting back, or simply understanding a pattern better. You define the goal; Anchor supports it.

Anchor works best alongside your existing support. If you have a sponsor, a therapist, a treatment program, a recovery group, or a doctor involved in your care, Anchor is a companion to that support — never a replacement for it. If you do not have that kind of support yet and you want it, the SAMHSA National Helpline (1-800-662-4357) offers free, confidential, 24/7 treatment referral.

4. Our Approach to Your Data

Recovery data is sensitive personal information, and we treat it that way. What you track in Anchor — the addictions you name, your check-ins, your slips, your conversations — could harm you if it were mishandled. So we hold ourselves to plain commitments:

We do not sell your data. Ever, to anyone.
We do not run ads, and we do not share your data with advertisers.
We do not share your data with employers or insurers.
You can delete your data. Account deletion removes your data on request, including your slip and relapse history — it is your data.
Conversation transcripts belong to you. They are stored in your account and you can delete them.
Crash reports are scrubbed of personal information before they leave your device.

For full details on what we collect, who processes it, and how to exercise your rights, see our Privacy Policy.

5. Safety Guardrails

We built specific protections into how the AI companion behaves.

Crisis detection in conversations. Crisis detection runs in real time on your device during conversations, and a second safety review runs on our servers after a conversation ends. If a conversation suggests you may be in crisis — thoughts of harming yourself or someone else, or dangerous withdrawal symptoms — the companion steps out of its role and the app routes you directly to real help: the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, the SAMHSA National Helpline, or 911. It does not try to talk you through a crisis itself. A minimal internal alert (a user ID and category only — never what you said) may notify our team so we can verify the safety systems worked. Crisis resources are always free and never paywalled.

No moralizing a slip. If you tell Anchor you slipped, the companion will never shame you, lecture you, or treat the slip as a mark against your character. A slip is data, not a verdict. See Section 8.

No tapering or medical advice. The AI companion will not tell you how to taper off a substance, what dose is safe, how to manage withdrawal, or anything else that belongs to a healthcare provider. If you ask, it will tell you to ask a professional.

Withdrawal symptoms always route to real care. If you describe withdrawal symptoms in a conversation, Anchor points you to a healthcare provider or 911 — every time, without hedging. Section 9 explains why this one is non-negotiable.

6. Safe Listening

Anchor's audio sessions are designed to relax you, ground you, or guide you toward sleep. Use them only in safe settings.

Do not listen to Anchor audio sessions while:

Driving or operating machinery
Using power tools or sharp objects
Doing anything that requires your full attention or physical alertness

Hypnosis-style and sleep audio deserve extra care: use them only when seated or lying down in a safe place, and use sleep audio only when you are actually ready to sleep — not in any situation where you may need to be alert afterwards.

7. AI-Generated Content

Anchor's companion conversations are AI-generated, and the audio library is produced with AI voice synthesis. Here is how that actually works:

Live conversations run on Inworld's realtime agent API — speech-to-text, a fast large language model via Inworld's model router, and text-to-speech (text mode uses the language model only). Your audio is processed in transit and is not stored by ProgramU LLC.
Background work — conversation titles, weekly reflections, and the post-conversation safety review — runs through the same model router, after the fact, never in the live loop.
Your numbers are real. Streak counts and pattern figures the AI speaks aloud are computed by our servers from your actual data. They are never generated by the model.
Transcripts are yours. Conversation transcripts are stored in your account and you can delete them.

AI can produce errors, biases, and unintended output. We choose our models and guardrails carefully and keep refining them, but if something an AI says feels off, trust your judgment over the AI — and if it feels unsafe, report it (Section 11).

8. Shame-Free by Design

Most tracking apps reset you to zero when you slip. We think that design teaches people to hide their slips — and hiding is the opposite of recovery.

Anchor is built differently:

A relapse never zeroes your lifetime data. Your history is preserved by architecture. A slip ends a streak; it does not erase the months of effort behind it.
The learning compounds. Every day you have tracked — including the hard ones — feeds the patterns Anchor can show you. Your slips are often where the most useful insight lives: the trigger, the time of day, the stack of stressors that preceded it.
Your slips are your data. They exist to help you, not to judge you, and you can delete them at any time.

Recovery is rarely a straight line. Anchor is designed so that coming back after a slip feels like continuing, not starting over.

9. Withdrawal Can Be Medically Dangerous

This section is deliberately blunt.

Withdrawal from alcohol, benzodiazepines, or opioids can be medically dangerous. Stopping suddenly after heavy or prolonged use can cause seizures and other life-threatening complications. This is not a situation for an app.

If you are experiencing withdrawal symptoms — shaking, sweating, confusion, hallucinations, a racing heart, or anything that frightens you — seek medical care. Contact a healthcare provider or call 911 now.

Anchor's AI companion is built to give you this same answer every time, without hedging. It will never coach you through withdrawal, suggest a tapering schedule, or tell you it will be fine. Medical detox exists because it saves lives. Please use it.

10. Difficult Material Can Surface

Recovery work goes deep. Tracking your patterns, talking honestly about cravings, and sitting with grounding audio can surface material you did not expect — old memories, grief, shame, trauma, or emotions that feel bigger than the moment.

This is a normal part of the work. It is also a signal to pause.

If using Anchor brings up:

Strong emotions you cannot process alone
Memories of trauma
Persistent distress that lasts beyond a session or conversation
Thoughts of harming yourself or others

Please pause and reach out to a human — a therapist, a sponsor, a trusted person, or one of the crisis resources in Section 12. Anchor is a companion for the journey. It is not a replacement for human support during the hardest parts of it.

11. Reporting Safety Concerns

If you encounter content, behavior, or an experience in Anchor that feels unsafe or wrong, please email support@quitwithanchor.app.

We review every report. Credible safety concerns are investigated and acted on, including:

AI responses that should have routed you to crisis resources and did not
AI responses that offered medical, tapering, or withdrawal advice
Content that felt shaming, harmful, or wrong
Technical issues that affect user safety

We will not always be able to share the outcome of an investigation, but we always read what you send us.

12. Crisis Resources

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out for support immediately. These resources are free, confidential, and available now — and they are never behind a paywall in Anchor.

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988. Free, confidential support for people in distress, 24/7.

Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 741741. Free crisis support via text message, 24/7.

SAMHSA National Helpline 1-800-662-4357. Free, confidential, 24/7 treatment referral and information for substance use and mental health.

911 — Emergency If you or someone else is in immediate danger — including severe withdrawal symptoms — call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.

For non-crisis safety concerns: support@quitwithanchor.app

13. About Companion Conversations

Anchor's companion is an AI you can talk to — by voice or text — when a craving hits, when you need to think out loud, or when it is 3 a.m. and nobody else is awake. A few things to hold in mind:

It is AI, even when it feels like more. The voice is generated. The empathy is a design. The companion can be genuinely useful precisely because it is available, patient, and unshockable — but it is software, not a person.

It is not a relationship, and it is not therapy. The companion cannot replace human connection — your sponsor, your meetings, your friends, your family, or qualified professional care. If you notice yourself leaning on it for support you would normally seek from a human, treat that as a signal to reach toward the humans too.

It stays in its lane. The companion is built to support your recovery journey — to listen, to help you understand your own triggers, and to be there in hard moments. It will not give medical, legal, or financial advice, it will not coach you through withdrawal, and if a conversation turns into a crisis, it steps out of frame and routes you to the resources in Section 12.

Your conversations are private and yours. Transcripts are stored in your account and deletable by you. Live voice audio is processed in transit, not stored by ProgramU LLC. See Section 7 for exactly which systems are involved.

Questions about anything on this page: support@quitwithanchor.app