Terms of Service
Last updated: 17 February 2026
Welcome to The Living Journal, a product of The Digital Monastery. We have written these terms to be clear and honest rather than intimidating. They exist to protect both you and us, and to make sure you understand what this service is (and is not). By using The Living Journal, you agree to these terms.
1. What The Living Journal Is
The Living Journal is an AI-powered spiritual journaling tool. It provides daily prompts for reflection, generates personalised responses to your journal entries, and offers atmospheric worship music for contemplation.
The service is designed to support your personal spiritual journey. It uses locally hosted artificial intelligence to generate prompts and responses based on a curated library of public domain theological resources, including classic Bible commentaries and devotional writings.
2. What This Service Is Not
Please read this carefully. The Living Journal is not a counselling service, therapy, pastoral care, or professional mental health support. It does not replace a pastor, priest, therapist, psychologist, or any qualified professional.
The AI-generated responses you receive (including the "Friend voice" reflections and weekly summaries) are produced by a language model running on local hardware. While we have designed the system with theological care and built safety protocols to guide the AI, it is a machine. It does not understand you in the way a human does.
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, spiritual emergency, or any situation where you need immediate support, please contact a qualified professional or one of the crisis services listed at the bottom of this page.
3. AI-Generated Content
All AI-generated content in The Living Journal, including daily prompts, Friend voice responses, weekly reflections, and pattern observations, is machine-generated. This means:
- Responses may contain errors, inaccuracies, or content that does not reflect sound theology, despite our best efforts with the Berean Protocol safety system.
- AI responses do not constitute pastoral counselling, spiritual direction, therapy, or any form of professional advice.
- The AI may occasionally produce content that is inappropriate, insensitive, or not relevant to your situation.
- You should exercise your own judgment when reading AI-generated responses and consult qualified professionals for important decisions.
- The response flagging feature exists precisely because we know AI content is imperfect. We encourage you to use it.
We take theological accuracy seriously and have implemented safety protocols (the Berean Protocol) to validate AI output. However, no automated system is perfect, and we cannot guarantee the theological soundness of every response.
4. Your Content and Ownership
What you own
You own your journal entries, prayers, reflections, and all content you create within The Living Journal. Your words are yours. We do not claim any ownership over what you write.
The licence you grant us
To operate the service, we need a limited licence to process your content. By using The Living Journal, you grant us a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to:
- Store your journal entries on our local infrastructure
- Process your entries through our AI system to generate personalised responses
- Analyse patterns in your entries to provide weekly reflections and personalised prompts
- Detect sensitive content categories (such as potential crisis indicators) for safety purposes
What we will never do with your content
- We will never share your journal entries with third parties.
- We will never use your entries to train AI models.
- We will never sell, licence, or monetise your personal content.
- We will never send your entries to external cloud AI services (all processing happens on our locally owned hardware).
5. Data Storage and Sovereignty
We are committed to keeping your data under our direct control. Here is how your data is handled:
- All AI processing runs on locally owned hardware (a Mac Studio in Australia). No cloud AI APIs (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or similar) are used. Your prayers and journal entries never leave our infrastructure for AI processing.
- All user data is stored in a local SQLite database and Qdrant vector database on our owned server in Australia.
- Authentication uses sign-in link emails. We do not store passwords.
External touchpoints you should know about
While your journal data stays local, certain features involve external services:
- Tailscale VPN (beta period): Routes your encrypted connection to our server. Tailscale handles connection metadata only; your content is encrypted end-to-end.
- YouTube (soaking music page): Music is streamed via YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. YouTube may collect viewing data subject to Google's privacy policy. Your journal data is never shared with YouTube.
- Email: Sign-in link authentication emails and notifications transit through our email provider's servers. Email content is limited to login links and prompts, not your journal entries.
For full details on data collection and handling, please read our Privacy Policy.
6. Your Account
To use The Living Journal, you need to create an account using your email address. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your email account, as it is used for authentication.
You have the right to:
- Access your data: View all your journal entries through the History page.
- Correct your data: Contact us to correct any personal information.
- Delete your account: You can delete your account and all associated data through the Settings page. This action is permanent and cascading -- all your entries, reflections, patterns, and personal data will be removed from our systems.
7. Acceptable Use
The Living Journal is designed for personal spiritual journaling. We ask that you:
- Use the service for its intended purpose of personal spiritual reflection and growth.
- Do not attempt to circumvent rate limits or abuse the AI generation system.
- Do not use the service to generate content that infringes on the rights of others.
- Do not attempt to gain unauthorised access to other users' data or to our infrastructure.
- Do not use the service for any unlawful purpose.
We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, though we will always try to communicate with you first.
8. Beta Testing Terms
You are using a beta version of The Living Journal. This means the service is still in active development, and your feedback is helping us improve it.
During the beta period, the following additional terms apply:
- Features may change: We may add, modify, or remove features at any time during the beta period without prior notice.
- No uptime guarantee: The service runs on local infrastructure and may experience downtime for maintenance, updates, or unexpected issues. There is no Service Level Agreement (SLA) during beta.
- Developer access for debugging: The developer (Dave) may need to access system data, including journal entries, for the purpose of diagnosing technical issues and improving the service. This access is limited to what is necessary for debugging and will be conducted with respect for the sensitivity of your content.
- Data preservation: While we make every effort to preserve your data, beta software carries inherent risks. We recommend keeping personal copies of anything especially important to you.
- No cost during beta: The beta period is free of charge. Subscription pricing and terms will be communicated before any transition to paid service, and you will have the opportunity to review updated terms before being asked to pay.
9. Limitation of Liability
We care deeply about providing a meaningful and safe service, but we must be transparent about the limits of what we can guarantee:
- AI-generated content: We are not liable for any decisions you make based on AI-generated responses, prompts, or reflections. These are tools for contemplation, not authoritative guidance.
- Emotional or spiritual impact: While we design every prompt and response template with pastoral sensitivity, we cannot be liable for emotional or spiritual distress that may arise from using the service.
- Data loss: Despite our best efforts to maintain data integrity, we are not liable for loss of journal entries or other data due to hardware failure, software bugs, or other technical issues.
- Service availability: We are not liable for any losses arising from the service being unavailable, whether planned or unplanned.
- Maximum liability: To the extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claim arising from or related to your use of the service is limited to the total amount you have paid us for the service in the 12 months preceding the claim. During the free beta period, this amount is zero.
Nothing in these terms is intended to exclude or limit any rights you have under Australian Consumer Law that cannot be excluded or limited by agreement.
10. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms of Service from time to time, particularly as we move from beta to a paid service. When we make significant changes, we will notify you by email and/or through a notice in the app. Your continued use of the service after such notification constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.
A lawyer-reviewed version of these terms will be published before any paid subscription features are introduced.
11. Governing Law
These terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia. Any disputes arising from these terms or your use of the service will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Western Australia.
12. Getting in Touch
If you have any questions about these terms, concerns about the service, or need to exercise any of your rights described above, we genuinely want to hear from you.