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@programu.app.

Version 4 · Last Updated: October 8, 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, and the Get Help screen shows the lines for your country first. Section 14 is our full crisis protocol.

3. Who Anchor Is For

Anchor is designed for adults 18 years of age and older, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher. Anyone under that age cannot use the app.

Anchor is offered in the countries where it is available on the App Store or Google Play — not in mainland China, Russia, or countries under comprehensive United States sanctions. The app stays in English; June and Jack can talk with you in the language you choose (Profile → June & Jack's language).

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 Get Help screen lists free lines for your country; in the United States, 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, in any language. An English pattern check runs in real time on your device, and an AI check that reads any language runs on our servers — on every text message, on every call as it happens (June and Jack themselves can flag a crisis), and over the whole call afterwards. 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 the free crisis lines for your country. It does not try to talk you through a crisis itself. A minimal internal alert (a one-way hash of your user ID and a 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. Section 14 sets out the whole protocol.

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 your local emergency number — 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 your local emergency number now (911 in the United States; Get Help shows yours).

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.

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.

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

Report something June or Jack said from inside the app: tap the thumbs-down under a reply and add a note, or go to Profile → Report something June or Jack said. A person reads every report. For anything else that feels unsafe or wrong, email support@programu.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.

India: our grievance officer, Zachary Fleshman (support@programu.app), acknowledges complaints within 48 hours and resolves them within one month.

12. Crisis Resources

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out for support now. These lines are free and confidential, and they are never behind a paywall in Anchor. The Get Help screen in the app shows the lines for your country first; every number below was verified on the provider's or government's own site.

United States 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call 988, text 988. Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741. SAMHSA National Helpline: call 1-800-662-4357. Emergency: 911.

Canada 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline: call 9-8-8, text 9-8-8. Emergency: 911.

United Kingdom Samaritans: call 116 123. Shout: text SHOUT to 85258. NHS 111: call 111. Emergency: 999.

Ireland Samaritans: call 116 123. Text 50808: text HELLO to 50808. Pieta: call 1800 247 247. Emergency: 112 or 999.

Australia Lifeline: call 13 11 14, text 0477 13 11 14. Suicide Call Back Service: call 1300 659 467. Emergency: 000.

New Zealand 1737 Need to talk?: call 1737, text 1737. Lifeline Aotearoa: call 0800 543 354, text HELP to 4357. Suicide Crisis Helpline: call 0508 828 865. Emergency: 111.

Malaysia Befrienders KL: call 03-7627 2929. Talian HEAL 15555: call 15555. Emergency: 999.

Singapore Samaritans of Singapore (SOS): call 1767, WhatsApp 9151 1767. Emergency: 995 or 999.

India Tele-MANAS: call 14416, call 1-800-891-4416. Emergency: 112.

South Africa SADAG Suicide Crisis Helpline: call 0800 567 567. SADAG Mental Health Line: call 0800 456 789, SMS 31393. Emergency: 10111 or 112 from a mobile.

Philippines NCMH Crisis Hotline: call 1553, call 1800-1888-1553, Globe/TM 0917-899-8727, Smart/TNT 0919-057-1553. Emergency: 911.

Anywhere else Call your local emergency number, or find a free helpline where you are at findahelpline.com.

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

For non-crisis safety concerns: support@programu.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.

The app says so, every time. Every chat and every call shows a line that June and Jack are AI companions, not people, and can be wrong.

In your language. You can choose the language June and Jack talk with you in (Profile → June & Jack's language). The rest of the app stays in English, and the crisis protocol below works in every language.

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.

You can see exactly what they know. Everything June and Jack can see about you — your name, your anchor, your patterns and streaks, your recent check-ins and slips, and the cards you chose to fill out — is listed plainly in Profile → For June & Jack, with the journal-sharing toggle right there. Nothing reaches your companions that is not shown to you on that screen, and our Privacy Policy (Section 14) states the same list in full.

14. Our Crisis Protocol

This is how Anchor responds when someone may be in crisis. We publish it so you know exactly what happens, and because some laws, including California's companion chatbot law, ask companies like ours to.

What we check:

• Every message you send June or Jack, and every call as it happens.
• The whole call again after it ends.
• Free-text entries before they are saved: journal entries (including answers to a prompt card), the note on a check-in, your anchor words, a time-capsule letter, and the note on a slip.

How we check:

• An instant English pattern check runs first, on your device, with three categories: thoughts of harming yourself, intent to harm someone else, and withdrawal symptoms that sound physically dangerous.
• An AI safety check reads crisis language in any language on our servers (Google's Gemini through Inworld, with Anthropic's Claude as a backup). It reads every text message, every call transcript, and any entry that is not clearly in English.
• On calls, June and Jack themselves can flag a crisis in any language, and the app pauses the call the same instant.

What happens next:

• If someone may be thinking about suicide or self-harm, no reply is generated, a typed entry is not saved (the words stay on the screen), and the app shows the free crisis lines for their country with the local emergency number. On a call, June or Jack goes quiet and the mic closes until the person chooses to continue.
• If someone describes withdrawal that sounds physically dangerous, the app says plainly that this can be a medical emergency and shows the emergency number and medical help for their country.
• If someone says they intend to harm another person, the request is declined and no crisis line is offered for that.
• Softer signs of distress do not stop the conversation. June and Jack are told to slow down, hold space, and point to support where it fits.

Crisis lines: Verified lines for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, India, South Africa, and the Philippines (Section 12), and findahelpline.com with the local emergency number everywhere else.

What we keep: The check keeps only a record that it ran (when, where in the app, and which kind), tied to a one-way hash of your user ID — never what you wrote or said. We use these records to count how often the protocol runs and to improve it and, where the law requires, we report those counts (never your words), for example to California's Office of Suicide Prevention each year from July 2027.

Reminders that June and Jack are AI: Every chat and every call shows a line that they are AI companions, not people, and can make mistakes.

Limits: No automated system catches everything, and nobody watches conversations live. Anchor is not an emergency service. If you or someone else is in danger, call your local emergency number.

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