Questions about the product, the privacy, and the price.
What follows are the questions we are most often asked, organised into seven categories and answered in plain language. For a quick factual answer (pricing, account, billing, refunds), ask the helper bot · it answers in two or three sentences. If your question is not here or there, write to us at [email protected]; we read every message and many of the answers below grew out of those we received in the first weeks.
What Counsel.day is, and who it is for.
What is Counsel.day, in one paragraph?
Counsel.day is a private-voting product for solo decision-makers, couples, and families facing a meaningful joint decision. Participants vote privately each evening on the same question, for a duration of your choosing (a week to a year). The votes are sealed from each other for the whole period. On the final day, every verdict unlocks at the same instant, along with a five-layer analysis that names the underlying axis of your disagreement and a single specific question to open the conversation that follows. Counsel.day comes before the conversation; it does not replace it.
Who is Counsel.day for?
Solo decision-makers, couples, and households facing a meaningful joint decision that has been on the table for weeks or months without resolving. The decision is usually one of four kinds: family and reproduction (whether to have a baby, second child, IVF, schooling), home and place (whether to move cities or countries, buy a house, downsize), career (whether to leave a job, take a role), or the partnership itself (whether to marry, separate, open or close the relationship). Family extends the tool to households of three to six.
What kind of decisions does Counsel.day work well for?
The decisions Counsel.day is built for share three properties: the stakes are high, the timeline is long enough that feelings will shift, and the question has been circling for some time already. If your question can be settled in a single dinner conversation, it does not belong here. If it has been on the back of your minds for a month, it does. Counsel.day is not built for low-stakes day-to-day choices, procurement decisions, or work-style decisions.
How is Counsel.day different from a couples app like Paired or Lasting?
Paired, Lasting, Coupleness, and the rest of the couples-app category sell daily relationship prompts and conversation starters. They are built for the steady-state work of a relationship. Counsel.day is built for the punctuated work of resolving a single hard decision over a period of time. The unit of value is the verdict produced on the final day, not the daily prompt. The product is also priced per decision ($15.99 USD) rather than per month, on the principle that you pay for the analysis you have already decided is valuable.
Why the name Counsel.day?
The name is the product, said in two parts. Counsel is the older word for thoughtful weighing: the act of seeking and giving counsel, of considering a question with care, of arriving at a position rather than being told one. We did not want a name with advice, coach, or therapy inside it, because those words imply a position handed down from outside; counsel implies a position arrived at from within. .day is the mechanism, said as the domain. The product runs day by day, evening by evening, across the duration the question deserves. The .day TLD was a deliberate choice over .com; the suffix is part of the meaning.
How a typical evening works.
How does a typical evening vote work?
At a time you set during composition (typically after dinner), each participant receives a single private prompt. The prompt opens to the question, the format you chose, and the buttons or fields appropriate to that format. You tap once. You may, if a thought has landed, add a sentence or two or a paragraph. The vote takes between five seconds and a couple of minutes, depending on whether you write a note. No other participant can see your vote or your note before the verdict day.
Can I speak the note instead of typing it?
Yes, on paid decisions. A microphone button sits next to the note field on the evening-vote page. Tap it, speak for up to thirty seconds, and the words appear in the field as text · edit them before sealing if you like. The thirty-second cap is per decision per day per person, so you can record one long thought or several short ones until you use it up. The free Solo decision is type-only. On most browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari) the transcription happens locally on your device and no audio leaves the browser; on other browsers the audio is sent to a transcription sub-processor (OpenAI Whisper) and discarded immediately after the text comes back. Whichever path produces the text, it feeds the same sentiment and theme analysis the verdict reads on day N. If the mic doesn't work: open /diag-voice.html · it runs eight health checks plus a live end-to-end test and tells you exactly which layer is failing.
What are the eight question formats?
Yes / No (clean binaries); Strong / Lean (a four-point conviction scale, recommended as the default for most life decisions); A vs B (two named alternatives); Photo A vs B (a daily tap between two uploaded images); Scale 1 to 10 (magnitude rather than direction); Pros vs Cons (reasons that accumulate over the period); Pick best of N (one of up to six named alternatives); and Rank options (a daily ordering of up to six options). Full descriptions and worked examples live on the method page.
How do I choose the right duration?
Match the duration to the weight of the question. A fortnight suits a house with an offer deadline. A month suits most career and home decisions. Sixty days suits questions about the shape of the partnership itself: marriage, ending it, moving countries. Ninety days suits the decisions that need to survive a season of moods, especially family and reproduction. You set the duration once, at the start. You may extend a running decision; you may not shorten one.
What happens if one of us misses an evening?
Nothing breaks. The progress bar registers a skipped day; the verdict still arrives on the scheduled date; the analysis still runs on whatever votes and notes did land. If a participant misses three consecutive evenings the product sends them one gentle reminder. Beyond that we leave you alone. We will not nudge a person into voting on a question they have decided not to engage with.
Can I change the question or format mid-decision?
No. A change mid-decision contaminates the data: votes you cast on the old question are not comparable with votes you cast on the new one, and the analysis would be reading two different decisions stitched together. If your question has materially shifted, close the decision and open a fresh one with the new framing. Solo decisions close at no cost; paid decisions are not refunded once composed (see the refund policy).
What sealed actually means.
Are the votes really sealed until the final day?
Yes. The database is designed so that no participant's votes or notes are visible to any other, in any form, until the verdict is generated on the scheduled day. The only thing visible to anyone before then is whether the other participants have voted today. There is no settings panel to override this. There is no support workflow to override this. We could not show you another participant's votes early, even if you asked us to.
What does my partner see while the decision is open?
They see the question you both agreed to, the format, the duration, the day count, and whether you have voted today. They do not see the direction of your vote, the value of your vote, or any of your notes. They see nothing else about your activity. The same is true in reverse.
Where is my data stored?
Encrypted at rest, in a managed PostgreSQL instance in the region closest to your account location. Encryption keys are per-decision, not per-account, so the failure mode of any single key compromise is one decision rather than your full history. Backups are encrypted with a separate key. Vote and note content never appears in our application logs, and the logs themselves ship to an append-only store. Full architectural detail is described on the method page.
What about analytics, cookies, advertising?
We measure how visitors arrive at the marketing site with standard analytics, gated behind a cookie-consent banner you see on first visit. Those tools see which page you read, which campaign sent you, whether you signed up. They never see the question you composed inside a decision, the votes you cast, the notes you wrote, or the verdict you received. The in-app content lives in a separate database with row-level security; analytics SDKs are not loaded on those pages. The only third party that ever sees note content is the our AI vendor API on verdict day, and that request carries no identifying metadata. You can review the full cookie list and reject non-essential ones from the privacy page at any time.
What arrives on the final day.
What does the verdict look like on the final day?
On a paid decision, at the same instant for every participant, the verdicts publish on the same page. Beneath them, a five-layer analysis: the agreement rate across the period, the conviction trajectory for each participant, the themes extracted from your notes, the synthesis paragraph that names the underlying axis of your disagreement, and one specific question to open the conversation that follows. The full verdict can be exported as a branded PDF. A walked-through example lives on the verdict page. On the free first Solo decision, the verdict ships with the Python summary analysis only (trajectory, trend, stability, sentiment, top themes, readiness), without the AI-written synthesis paragraph or the conversation prompt.
What are the five layers of the analysis?
Layer 01: the agreement rate (and how it moved across the period). Layer 02: each participant's conviction trajectory (rising, falling, flat, or spiky). Layer 03: the themes extracted from your notes with frequencies per participant. Layer 04: the synthesis paragraph that names the axis of your disagreement underneath the surface question. Layer 05: a single specific question for the conversation that follows. The layers are stacked so every claim further down is checkable against the data above it.
How is the analysis generated?
In two distinct tiers. On a paid decision (Solo at $9.99 USD, Couple at $15.99 USD, Family at $29.99 USD), every vote and every note is read by a pipeline that computes the trajectory and the agreement curve in pure Python, clusters the themes locally, then submits the clustered data and the question framing to our AI synthesis tool with a prompt template iterated through hundreds of test verdicts. our AI synthesis tool writes the 600-to-1200-word synthesis paragraph that names the underlying axis of the disagreement in plain English. The model receives the data with no identifying metadata; it is not used to train any further system on your content. On the free first Solo decision, the AI synthesis is not run; the verdict ships with your own conviction chart and your own notes back. The 600-to-1200-word written verdict is the part reserved for paid decisions, because that single our AI vendor API call is the part of the output that costs us real money to produce.
What it costs, in US dollars.
How much does Counsel.day cost?
Three SKUs across three audiences. Solo: your first lifetime decision is free; additional Solo decisions are $9.99 USD each. Couple is $15.99 USD per decision for two participants. Family is $29.99 USD per decision for three to six participants. Per-decision only, no subscription · charges are taken upfront on the day you compose.
When am I charged?
Upfront, on the day you compose a decision; the verdict is generated on the final day of the duration you chose. We charge upfront because a Stripe authorization cannot be held for the full 7-to-365 day duration. Charges are final at checkout. Refunds are limited to technical defects on our part (the verdict pipeline failed, you were double-charged, the product was offline for a meaningful portion of your decision) and to whatever your local consumer-protection law requires. No change-of-mind, no partial-completion, no didn't-use-it refunds. See the refund policy for the full detail.
Is there a free version?
Yes. Your first Solo decision is free, no card required. You can run a full thirty-day Solo decision end to end and decide for yourself whether to continue. The free decision ships with your own conviction chart and your own notes back · no third-party AI call, no five-layer written analysis. The 600-to-1200-word written verdict paragraph (the synthesis that names the axis of your question in plain English) is generated by our AI synthesis tool and is reserved for paid decisions, because that single API call is the part of the verdict that costs us real money to produce. After your first decision, additional Solo decisions are $9.99 USD each, charged per decision.
When it does not look like a textbook couple.
Can I use Counsel.day alone, without a partner?
Yes. Solo is built for one-person decisions, in full, free for the first lifetime decision. Many of our users begin alone with a question they have not yet brought to their partner. Some never invite a partner at all; the Solo product is the whole product for them.
What if my partner stops engaging mid-decision?
You can pause the decision, extend its duration, or convert it to a Solo decision without losing your data. Your partner receives one gentle reminder if they miss three consecutive evenings; beyond that we leave them alone. We will not nudge a person into voting on a question they have decided not to engage with. If your partner withdrew from the decision entirely, the verdict day for the Solo version produces a verdict and the agreement-rate and trajectory layers for your votes alone.
Can same-sex, polyamorous, or non-traditional couples use Counsel.day?
Yes. The product is built around participants in a decision held jointly; the relationship structure between those people is your business, not ours. The pronoun and the name of each participant are set by you at composition. Group decisions for three to six participants run on the Family edition.
Is Counsel.day a substitute for couples therapy?
No. Therapy is the guided conversation, with a trained third party present. Counsel.day is the data underneath one specific decision: the captured private positions across the period, the themes from your notes, the synthesis. We have no clinical training and the product is not a therapeutic intervention. Many users will benefit from both, in sequence; bring the verdict to a therapist when the verdict reveals the decision sits on something larger. See the full Counsel.day vs Couples Therapy comparison.
The rest of the practical questions.
Do you offer a therapist program?
Yes. We run a simple referral program for therapists, counsellors, and other practitioners who recommend the tool to clients. Write to [email protected] (or [email protected] if you are a non-clinical decision-support practitioner) with your practice details and we issue a unique referral code. When a client mentions the code at composition, the client pays the standard price (nothing about their billing changes), and we pay you 20% of the attributed spend at the end of each quarter via Stripe Connect, bank transfer, or PayPal. No billing to your practice, no subscription cost, no enrolment commitment. The program is a sales channel, not an endorsement: we have no clinical training and we do not offer workshops or training on therapeutic use of the verdict.
Can a therapist see our verdict?
Only if you choose to share it. The verdict is private to the participants by default. Many couples bring a printed copy to their first session; some share the PDF directly. Therapists do not have any back-channel access to your data.
How do I delete my account and data?
From the account page, in a single click, with a single confirmation. Deletion is honoured within twenty-four hours and propagates to backups within thirty days. We do not retain a tombstone copy. If you have a paid decision in flight at the moment of deletion, the verdict is generated and emailed to you before the data is destroyed, so you receive the analysis you paid for.
Is Counsel.day available worldwide?
Yes. The product is built for a worldwide market from day one, in English. Pricing is in US dollars (USD), charged worldwide; local taxes are added at checkout based on your billing address. Stripe handles the currency conversion at the moment of charge using the rate your card issuer posts. Additional language localisations are on the roadmap for the second year.
Does Counsel.day use my data to train AI models?
No. On a paid decision, your notes and votes are submitted to the our AI synthesis tool on the verdict day only, for the single purpose of generating your synthesis paragraph. our AI vendor does not train on data submitted via the API, and our integration disables data sharing in addition. Your data is not used to train any model, ours or theirs. On the free first Solo decision, no data reaches our AI vendor at all; the summary analysis is generated entirely by Python models running on our own server.
The companion product: a one-minute reflection and a Monday verdict.
Counsel Journal is a separate product from the flagship decision tool. It runs alongside · or stands alone. A single $4.99 USD/month subscription that includes the nightly entry, weekly Monday verdict, monthly themed verdict, and unlimited history.
What is Counsel Journal, in one paragraph?
Counsel Journal is an evening journal that runs alongside Counsel.day (or on its own). Each evening you type or speak for thirty to a hundred-and-eighty seconds about your day. The entry seals for seven days the moment you submit · you cannot re-read it. Every Sunday evening, the past week of unsealed entries becomes a Monday morning verdict: three to five recurring positives, one or two strains, one paragraph throughline, and one specific question for the week ahead. Same sealed-vote DNA as the flagship; not even the founder can read your entries.
How is The Daily different from the flagship decision tool?
The flagship gives you a single verdict at the close of a seven-to-ninety-day question you posed deliberately. The Daily gives you a verdict every Monday about the week you actually lived · not a question you posed, but the texture of the week itself. They share the same sealed-read database design and the same observational voice. Many users run both: the flagship for the high-stakes decision under deliberation, The Daily for the everyday signal that surrounds it.
What does Counsel Journal cost?
Counsel Journal is a single paid subscription: $4.99 USD per month. There is no free tier. The one price includes everything the Journal does: nightly entry (text or voice transcription), seven-day seal, weekly Monday verdict, the monthly themed verdict on the first Monday of every month that reads the past four weekly verdicts together and names what the month was actually about, and unlimited history. Cancel any time in your account · the subscription stops at the end of the current period and you keep access until then. (If you also use Counsel.day Decision, your active decisions get their own daily reflection thread · that lives inside the Decision product and is free with any active decision, separate from the Counsel Journal subscription.)
How does voice transcription work?
Tap the microphone, speak naturally for thirty to a hundred-and-eighty seconds, tap stop. The audio is transcribed by Whisper (OpenAI's open speech-to-text model) and the resulting text appears in your entry box where you can lightly edit before sealing. The audio is never stored · only the resulting text is saved. Whisper is integrated with the same no-train data agreement as the verdict synthesis on the flagship.
Can I re-read my entries before they unseal?
No. The whole point is that future-you reads what tonight-you actually wrote, not what you wish you'd written. Once you tap "Seal tonight's entry," the entry is invisible to you for seven days. After it unseals, it appears in your entries list, in that week's verdict, and (Pro) attached to any active decision you linked it to.
What happens if I miss a night?
Nothing. You skip the day. The weekly verdict generates from however many entries you filed that week · three or more produces a full verdict; fewer produces a short note. There is no streak, no shame, no nudge to "make it up." Missing a night is itself data: the week the journal felt impossible is also a week worth noticing.
Will my partner or family see my Daily entries?
No. Daily entries are private to you, always. The Daily is a single-user product even when you also share a flagship decision with a partner or family. (The flagship's privacy model · partner sees that you voted, never which way · is separate from The Daily, which has no shared dimension.)
A hundred real questions, grouped by who decides.
25 solo, 50 couple, 25 family. Browse for permission to bring your own · or copy one as a starting point. Every question is editable in the composer before you file.
- 01Should I leave the job I have for the contract on the table?
- 02Should I take the promotion if it means moving city?
- 03Should I quit my job and write the book?
- 04Should I go back to study this year?
- 05Should I move to a new country for a year?
- 06Should I stop drinking entirely?
- 07Should I commit to weekly therapy?
- 08Should I sell the house and rent?
- 09Should I take the surgery the consultant recommended?
- 10Should I take the medication the doctor has prescribed?
- 11Should I delete social media for the rest of the year?
- 12Should I take the freelance contract over the salary role?
- 13Should I train for the half marathon next year?
- 14Should I move out of my parents' home this year?
- 15Should I leave the church I grew up in?
- 16Should I sell my car and live without one?
- 17Should I tell the friend the difficult truth?
- 18Should I cut contact with the relative who hurt me?
- 19Should I take the year off to look after my parent?
- 20Should I move my savings into the riskier portfolio?
- 21Should I freeze my eggs this year?
- 22Should I rent the studio for the creative practice I keep postponing?
- 23Should I take the long flight to see my estranged parent before they die?
- 24Should I close the side business I have been carrying for two years?
- 25Should I sign the year gym contract instead of the monthly one?
- 01Should we have a baby this year?
- 02Should we try for a second child?
- 03Should we stop trying for a baby?
- 04Should we try one more cycle of fertility treatment?
- 05Should we adopt?
- 06Should we take the surrogacy option?
- 07Should we get married?
- 08Should we sign the prenup their family is asking for?
- 09Should we get a dog this year?
- 10Should we get a second dog?
- 11Should we buy the house we put the offer on?
- 12Should we sell the house and rent?
- 13Should we move closer to their parents?
- 14Should we move back to my home country?
- 15Should we move overseas for the year?
- 16Should we renovate the kitchen or move?
- 17Should we take on the investment property?
- 18Should we co-sign the mortgage with my parents?
- 19Should we share finances fully from now on?
- 20Should we keep our finances separate?
- 21Should we take the long-distance year for their job?
- 22Should we both quit and travel for a year?
- 23Should we both take the sabbatical at the same time?
- 24Should we start a business together?
- 25Should we sell the business we built together?
- 26Should we put our child into the private school?
- 27Should we move our child to a different school next year?
- 28Should we let our teen take the gap year?
- 29Should we let our adult child move back in?
- 30Should we lend my sibling the money they asked for?
- 31Should we keep hosting Christmas at our house?
- 32Should we say no to the family holiday this year?
- 33Should we go to the wedding that clashes with our anniversary?
- 34Should we go to couples therapy?
- 35Should we end couples therapy?
- 36Should we open the relationship?
- 37Should we end this relationship?
- 38Should we file for divorce?
- 39Should we move my parent into our home?
- 40Should we put their parent into residential care?
- 41Should we tell our parents we will not be having children?
- 42Should we tell the family we are leaving the religion?
- 43Should we change our last name when we marry?
- 44Should we agree on the same parenting approach this year?
- 45Should we cut off the family member who keeps causing harm?
- 46Should we accept the inheritance terms the family is offering?
- 47Should we take the early retirement package?
- 48Should we delay the wedding by a year?
- 49Should we stop drinking together?
- 50Should we stop hiding the relationship from the family?
- 01Should we move to a different country as a family?
- 02Should we move to a new city for the school catchment?
- 03Should we sell the family home?
- 04Should we sell the holiday house we never use?
- 05Should we get a family dog?
- 06Should we take the year off and travel as a family?
- 07Should we move the household to mostly plant-based meals?
- 08Should we agree on a household screen-time rule?
- 09Should we move grandma into our house?
- 10Should we send our eldest to boarding school?
- 11Should we host the foreign exchange student this year?
- 12Should we get a second car or share one?
- 13Should we end the regular family holiday tradition?
- 14Should we go to family therapy together?
- 15Should we keep the family business going to the next generation?
- 16Should we close the family business?
- 17Should we sell the family farm?
- 18Should we agree on the inheritance plan the parents have proposed?
- 19Should we change schools for the younger siblings?
- 20Should we hold the big family birthday the eldest does not want to attend?
- 21Should we move Christmas to a different relative's house?
- 22Should we move our parent into residential care?
- 23Should we agree to be vegetarian as a household?
- 24Should we cancel the family WhatsApp?
- 25Should we keep the family religion in the next generation or change?
None of these fit yours? Write your own in the composer · the only rule is that it can be answered yes or no, lived with for the duration you set, and that more than one evening of you has something to say about it.
Write your own question in the composer →Write to us, and we will write back.
Every message is read by a person, replied to within one business day, and very often added to this page if it turns out to be a question we have not heard yet. Plain prose is welcome. There is no form.
For most questions, write to [email protected]. For the therapist referral program, write to [email protected]. For security disclosure, write to [email protected] and you will be acknowledged within one business day.