How Shinn works
Shinn is an AI sounding board. You say what is on your mind. Shinn listens, finds what is really in the way, and gives you one small thing to do today. This page explains what happens in between.
Five ways in
Talk
A conversation. Shinn asks one question when it needs to, then gives you a short read of what is underneath and one step for the next 24 hours. Come back and tell it how the step went.
Untangle
Four questions, about five minutes, one map: the block in the middle, the threads around it, one step out.
Journal
A page in your own words. Shinn reflects on it in a few lines, and once a week it writes you a short note on what it noticed.
Seven days
A week of short writing on one track: your work, the people in your life, a clearer mind, or a centre that holds. A lesson and a page a day.
Today's reading
A short piece on Home each day, to help you feel at ease with where you are. It never recaps your progress.
Progress is where the steps, the maps and what Shinn notices come together.
What Shinn is working from
Shinn runs on Claude, a model made by Anthropic, reached through their API. Every reply is generated from what you wrote in that conversation plus a short note on where the thread stands (steps given, done or skipped). Shinn has no memory beyond what is in your account. It is not a person and does not pretend to be one.
Where your words go
Your words are sent to the model to write the reply, and saved in your account so you can come back to them. They are not used to train any model, by us or by Anthropic. What we count is events, like "message sent" or "step done", with a time. Never the content. Card numbers, ID numbers and passwords are removed before anything is saved. The Privacy page has the full list.
When Shinn stops
Before every reply, a separate check looks at what you wrote for signs that you or someone else may be in danger. If it finds them, Shinn stops the normal reply, says so plainly, and shows the emergency number and a crisis line for the country you are in, worked out from your connection and your device's time zone in the moment, never stored. Shinn is not a crisis service and will not talk you through a crisis. The page What Shinn will not do lists the rest of the lines it holds.
Trying it, and keeping it
You can use Shinn as a guest without an account. A guest session and everything in it is deleted after 30 days unless you bring it into an account. With an account, your work stays until you delete it, one item at a time or all at once from Settings. Shinn is free while in beta.