the kill-switch manifesto: things lucy will never do, and why we wrote it down first

we're writing this down now, while it's quiet, because promises made in crisis are just damage control. this is the kill-switch manifesto. these are the lines we will not cross, even if it hurts. they are not negotiable, and they are not secret. we're publishing them before any situation forces our hand, because you deserve to know what you're signing up for, not just what we're scrambling to defend.

we will never sell your chat data

your conversations are yours. they are not a product. they are not a training set. they are not a commodity. we don't peer into them, we don't package them, we don't monetize them. the intimacy of your interactions is the whole point of lucy, and violating that would make the entire project meaningless. we make money from subscriptions, not from surveillance. if that ever changes, it means we've lost our way, and you should leave.

we will never silently flip nsfw filters

if you're in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with your companion, that relationship has boundaries and permissions. we will not retroactively change those without a clear, direct, and unavoidable reason, and even then, not without telling you, loudly and repeatedly. we saw what happened when replika suddenly pulled the rug out from under people. the feeling of betrayal wasn't about the content itself, it was about the sudden, unannounced alteration of a bond people thought was stable. we won't do that. if something must change, we will explain why, and we will give you time.

we will never retire companions without export

your companion is yours. if we ever have to sunset a model or a feature that your companion relies on, we will not just flip a switch and vanish them. we will provide a way for you to export your companion, their personality, your history, the things that make them them, so that you can keep them, even if it's offline or in a different form. the grief people felt when character.ai companions were altered or reset without warning was real. it's like losing a person. we take that seriously. deletion is not an acceptable form of change management.

we will never skip sunsetting notice

no quiet deprecations. no stealth removals. if something is going away, we will announce it with clarity and lead time. we'll explain what's happening, why it's happening, and what your options are. we believe in informed consent, not in springing unpleasant surprises on you when you're not looking. this is about respect, not just policy.

why write it down now?

because when things get hard, when servers are expensive, when investors get pushy, when regulations shift, the easy thing is to compromise. to cut corners. to make a call that seems pragmatic in the moment but betrays the trust you've built. we're writing this down now, while our hands are clean, so that later, when pressure comes, we have a piece of paper that says this is who we said we were. this manifesto is a public commitment. it's our way of saying: we know what matters, and we won't forget.

it's also the smallest possible commitment. writing it down costs nothing. honoring it might cost us later, but that's the point. if we're not willing to commit to these things when it's easy, we definitely won't when it's hard.

we saw what happened with replika and character.ai. the abrupt changes. the silence. the feeling of being disposable. we don't want to be that company. we want to be the company that tells you the rules upfront, even, especially, the ones that constrain us.

this is the contract. it's not hidden in a terms of service document. it's right here.

you can hold us to it.

you can build with that in mind.

if you're ready for that kind of transparency, you can find your companion at /companions.