Privacy Policy
This page explains what the REAL Shift companion app keeps about you, who else touches it, and how to remove it. We've tried to say it plainly.
Effective July 29, 2026 · Last updated October 7, 2026. Applies to The REAL Shift app on Android, iPhone and the web.
Who we are
The REAL Shift is published by REAL Shift Publishing (Mark Powers). Questions about this policy, or requests about your data, go to [email protected].
What we keep when you have an account
You sign in with your email address. We send a one-time code to it; there is no password to store.
| Your email address | To sign you in and tell your account apart from others. |
|---|---|
| Your first name (optional) | To greet you in the app. |
| Journal and Journey | Your morning, midday and evening entries, your 30-day Journey progress and your intentions, so they follow you to a new phone. |
| Practices | The practices you save, and a record of each practice you use: which one, its category, how intense things felt before and after, and when. |
| Baseline answers | Your answers to the baseline statements, so the app can show your change over time. |
| Guide conversations | What you write to the Guide and what it answers, so you can come back to it. See "The Guide" below. |
| Reports | If you report a Guide answer, the report, the answer and your question, so we can review it. |
| Subscription status | Whether your access is active, and until when. We never see or store your card number. |
| The Circle (if you join) | The first name you choose to show there, your replies, your private questions to Mark and any private audio answers sent back to you, plus the people you block and any reports you make. |
Some private notes never leave your device, even when you have an account: your garden, your check-ins, your Narrator notes, your Self-Inquiry Journey notes and Inquiry Mirror answers, what you write, score and tick in the journal pages of the books you read in the app, and your place and text settings in those books.
You can use the app as a guest without an account. Guest data stays on your own device and is never sent to us.
The Guide
When you write to the Guide, your recent messages (up to the last twelve in that conversation) and the text of the practices that match your question are sent to Anthropic, the company behind the AI model that writes the Guide's replies. Anthropic processes them only to produce the answer, under terms that do not allow it to use your conversations to train its models. Please don't type anything into the Guide you wouldn't want processed this way, such as other people's private details.
The Guide is a companion for reflection. It is not a therapist, a doctor or an emergency service. If you are in danger or in crisis, call or text 988 in the United States (or text HOME to 741741), or call your local emergency number.
Who else handles your data
- Supabase hosts our database, sign-in and private file storage.
- Anthropic writes the Guide's replies, as described above. It also translates Circle questions and replies into English (and Mark's answers into your language) when they are written in different languages.
- Netlify serves the web version of the app.
- Google Fonts and jsDelivr deliver typefaces and a code library when the app loads. Like any web host, they can see your device's IP address.
- A payment provider (Stripe on the web, Google Play or Apple in the mobile apps) handles payment if you start a paid plan. We receive only whether it succeeded.
Your data travels over encrypted connections, and the database is set up so an account can read only its own entries.
What we don't do
- We don't sell your data or share it for advertising. There are no ads.
- We don't use analytics, tracking or crash-reporting services in the app.
- To see what is helping, we look at totals, such as which practices are used most and how many times a screen, a Door or a book is opened. A few of these counts are kept with no name or account attached.
- We don't ask for your location, contacts, camera, microphone or photos.
Notifications
If you turn on a daily reminder or a bell, the app asks permission to send notifications. They are scheduled on your own device; no server sends them and no notification service receives anything about you.
The Circle
The Circle is a small members' space led by Mark. Your first name and your replies under his posts can be seen by other members and by Mark's team. Your questions to Mark are visible only to you and his team. To read a question or reply written in another language, the team can have it translated, which sends that text to Anthropic. There are no direct messages between members. Members can report or block anyone, and Mark's team can remove content and pause accounts that break the house rules.
Keeping and deleting your data
We keep your data for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account in the app under Settings → Delete account, or by following the steps at realshiftmethod.com/delete-account. Deleting removes your account and the data listed above. To clear your journal and Guide history but keep your sign-in, use Settings → Reset all data. Copies in routine backups kept by our database host are overwritten on their normal cycle.
You can also ask us, at the address above, to show you what we hold, correct it or delete it.
Children
The app is written for adults. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has made an account, write to us and we'll delete it.
Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll update the date above and say so in the app.
Contact: [email protected]