What we hold, why we hold it, and how to make us let go of it.
Last updated 1 October 2026
Ascend is a personal-transformation practice. Using it means writing things down — reflections, moods, intentions, what you are struggling with. That is unusually personal material, so this page is specific about where it goes rather than reassuring in general terms.
Ascend is operated by Clark Pennington. For anything in this policy, including a request to see or delete your data, write to privacy@asyouascend.com.
| Data | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Email address and password | Signing up. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider; we never see them. |
| Display name, tagline, a quote you pin | Your profile. |
| Journal entries and insights | Free text you write in the app. |
| Daily check-ins — energy, mood and clarity ratings, plus free-text gratitude, intention and obstacle | The daily ritual. |
| Arc reflections — including your identity statement and letter to your future self | The 30-day Arc. |
| Habits you name, and which days you complete them | The habits engine. |
| Wins you choose to share | Only if you post one. |
Athena keeps a distilled summary of what you have told her and done — recurring words you use about yourself, commitments you made, the themes of recent conversations, and counts from your own record (which days you kept the practice, which mornings rated low). This is profiling in the legal sense: a summary built from your data rather than something you typed. It is never a type, a score against other members, a "moat" score or a churn estimate — the last two were removed on 29 September 2026 — and it is never used for pricing, eligibility or any decision about your account. You can ask for it, and you can ask us to delete it.
The transcript of your conversation with Athena is stored in your own browser, not on our servers. What we do store is the distilled summary described above.
To answer you, Athena has to send your message — and relevant context from your practice — to the AI provider that generates the reply. That context can include verbatim excerpts of your journal writing, your stated struggle, your current intention, your mood and streak, and the recent messages in the conversation. If you generate a Blueprint, a larger set of your insights and check-ins is sent in the same way.
If you turn on Athena's voice, the words she speaks are sent to a speech provider to be turned into audio.
These are our processors. Each receives only what its job requires, and none of them are permitted to use your data for their own purposes.
| Provider | What it receives |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Database and sign-in. Holds everything listed above. |
| Netlify | Hosting and server functions. Standard request logs. |
| Anthropic | Your message to Athena plus practice context, which can include verbatim journal excerpts. |
| ElevenLabs | The text Athena speaks aloud, when voice is enabled. |
| Stripe | Your email, name and card details, when you start your free trial or a plan (a card is required to begin the trial). Card numbers go to Stripe directly — they never touch our servers. |
| Resend | Your email address and name, to send account and billing email and, if you leave "Daily ritual reminder" on in Settings, one short morning message naming your own practice. Every such message carries a one-click link that stops them without signing in; we send no tracking pixels, so we do not know whether you opened it. |
If you work with an Ascend coach, that coach can see your progress data — the days you kept, your standing, and Athena's pre-session brief drawn from your own record — and can write private notes about you. A coach cannot read your journal entries or your conversations with Athena.
Your practice data stays for as long as your account exists, because the point of it is to accumulate. That includes any period when you hold no plan — because the trial ended, you cancelled, or payment failed: your data is kept so you can pick up where you left off, and it is not deleted for that reason. Delete your account and it is removed. Billing records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires, typically seven years. Server logs are kept on our providers' own schedules, generally weeks rather than years.
Wherever you live, we will honour these:
Ascend is not intended for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has an account, tell us and we will delete it.
Our providers operate primarily in the United States, so your data is processed there. If you are in the UK or EU, that is a transfer outside your region, made under the standard contractual protections those providers offer.
Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our providers, access is restricted by per-user database rules, and payment details never reach our servers. No service can promise it cannot be breached. If one ever affects you, we will tell you rather than wait to be found out.
If this policy changes materially, we will say so in the app rather than quietly editing the date at the top.