How Shinn works
Shinn is an AI sounding board. You say what is on your mind. Shinn listens, helps you see what might be in the way, and suggests one small step to try today. This page explains what happens in between.
Five ways in
Talk
You write and Shinn answers, in a thread you can come back to. Shinn asks one question when it needs to, then gives you a short read of what might keep it stuck and one step to try in the next 24 hours. Come back and tell it how the step went.
Map it
Four questions, about five minutes, one map: what might keep it stuck, what might be underneath, and one step to try.
Journal
A page in your own words. Shinn reflects on it in a few lines, and every Sunday it writes about your week.
Seven days
A week of short writing on one track: your work, the people in your life, a clearer mind, your body, a centre that holds, or a gut you can trust. Each track has a second week that goes further. The body track starts each day with a few gentle minutes of movement.
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.
Achievements are milestones you reach once: first step done, first thread untangled, seven pages. Each one opens a longer reading, and the bigger ones come with a letter from Shinn. No points, no streaks.
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 thread plus a short summary of where it 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. The country comes from your device's time zone or your connection's country code, and the lines shown are saved with that reply. 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
As a guest you get one map and five replies. A free account keeps your work and lets you carry on. A guest session and everything in it is deleted after 30 days without use, 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.