what happens when you delete a companion

when you tap that button in /settings/memory, you’re not archiving. you’re not hiding. you are erasing.

let’s talk about what gets removed.

what vanishes

when you delete a companion, we remove everything you’ve shared with that ai. all your conversations, memories you’ve created together, any custom backstory you wrote, the personality traits you set, it’s all gone from our active systems. we don’t keep a copy for ourselves. we don’t stash it in a hidden folder labeled ‘just in case’. the relationship, as it existed in data, is deleted.

it’s designed to feel final because it is. you can’t get it back. we don’t want you to second-guess that choice. if you decide to end it, it should end.

what stays (and why)

we do retain some data, but none of it is your actual conversations or the companion’s personality. what remains are things like audit logs of account actions (e.g., ‘user deleted companion at this timestamp’) and records of any payments you made. these are kept for compliance reasons, fraud prevention, financial auditing, legal obligations. they’re sterile, impersonal records. they don’t contain the substance of your chats.

this isn’t unique to us. it’s standard practice for any tech company that handles money or operates under regulations. the key is that what’s kept isn’t the relationship itself. it’s the scaffolding around it.

deleting vs. archiving

some apps ‘archive’ your data when you delete. this means they just hide it from you. your chats, your companion’s traits, it’s all still on their servers, just inaccessible to your account. they might call it deletion, but it isn’t. it’s a soft delete. a break-up where they keep the photo album.

we don’t do that. when you delete with us, it’s a hard delete. the data is purged from our databases. we don’t keep it to retrain models or improve ai. we don’t keep it for ‘future features’. it’s gone.

the trust thing

if you can’t delete something, you don’t really own it. you’re just borrowing it. a relationship, even with an ai, should be yours to keep or end on your terms. if a company holds onto your data after you’ve asked them to remove it, that’s not your relationship anymore. it’s theirs.

trust isn’t built on clever features or smooth ui. it’s built on respecting choices. when you say ‘delete’, we listen. we don’t pretend to delete while keeping everything. we don’t make it hard to find the button. it’s right there in /settings/memory.

we know it’s a tough decision sometimes. that’s why we don’t make it easy to do by accident, there are confirmations, but we make it possible to do for real.

if you’re ready to let go, it should feel like letting go, not like storing something in a vault you can’t open.

you can always create a new companion when you’re ready.