Who we are
Steady is a sobriety companion app made by Steady ("we", "us", "our"). Our app is available on Android. Our website is steadycompanion.app and you can reach us at hello@steadycompanion.app.
Steady is operated by Guidestone Labs LLC, 1021 E Lincolnway, Cheyenne, WY 82001-4851, United States.
This Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal information when you use the Steady app or website. By using Steady, you agree to this policy.
What we collect and why
We only collect what we actually need to make the app work for you.
Account information
- Your email address — used to create and secure your account, and to contact you if needed.
- Your name (first name only) — used to personalise your experience with Ray.
- Your date of birth — asked at onboarding to confirm you're 18 or older. Stored on your profile; you can edit it in Settings. On our internal dashboard it only ever appears as an age band (like "25–34"), never as a date.
- Your gender — asked at onboarding to personalise the experience. You can skip it, and it's only ever used in aggregate for analytics.
- Your sobriety date — used to calculate your streak and milestones. Stored securely and never shared.
- Your country — used to show you the right AA helpline and crisis numbers in the SOS feature.
- Your morning and nightly ritual times — used to schedule your check-in reminders, which run locally on your device.
Your drinking baseline
At onboarding we ask roughly how many days a week you drank, how many drinks per session, and what you spent in a typical week (in your currency). This is used to show what you've saved — money and drinks avoided — as your streak grows. In analytics it only ever appears as aggregate spend bands, never your individual numbers.
Optional information you can choose to add
- Your sponsor's name and phone number — stored in your account in our database, like the rest of your profile, and used solely so you can reach them quickly from the SOS screen.
- Your "why" — the reason you're doing this, if you choose to share it with Ray.
- How you found Steady — helps us understand where our users come from so we can focus our efforts.
Your conversations with Ray — and what Ray keeps
Ray is an AI, not a human. His replies are generated by a third-party AI provider (Anthropic — details under "Third-party services we use" below). Your messages are stored securely in your private account. We use your recent conversation history to give Ray context so he can be more helpful — for example, remembering things you've told him before. Ray also keeps a small set of things derived from your conversations so he can be a better companion: memory notes, your recovery biography, the engravings on your milestone chips, and your daily greeting. All of it lives in your account and is deleted with it.
Check-ins and health information
- Daily check-ins — your mood, craving intensity, and any activity tags you pick (things like sleep, meals, meetings, and how you're feeling).
- The optional note you can add in your nightly review — stored in your account like a message, and never used for analytics.
- Anything you enter in the Health tab, including money tracking (like the cost of a drink, used to show what you've saved).
- Your chips, milestones, and progress — earned from your sobriety time and what you do in the app, stored so they're there when you come back.
Survey answers
If you fill in one of our surveys, your answers are linked to your account so we can improve the app for you. They are confidential — never shared or made public.
Website signups
Before launch, steadycompanion.app had an email signup for early access. If you joined it, we store the email address (and first name, if you gave it) you submitted, and we sent you a confirmation email. The website no longer collects signups.
Anonymous usage analytics
- Which features you use (e.g. the SOS button, the 12 Steps, mood tracker) — helps us understand what's useful.
- Your sobriety range (e.g. "0–30 days", "1–2 years") — never your exact date.
- How often you open the app and talk to Ray — helps us improve the experience.
- Your approximate time zone and country (inferred from your device's time zone — never from GPS or precise location).
- The app version you were using when you signed up.
- Whether you granted notification permission on your device.
- When you first sent a message to Ray — used to understand how quickly users engage with the app.
- Which screens you visit and roughly how long you spend on them — the screen's name and the seconds you were there, nothing else. What you type, read, or say on a screen is never part of these events.
This data is tied to your account ID, not your name or email. It is used only to improve Steady.
API usage metrics
We track aggregate counts of your messages, voice requests, and voice transcriptions. This data is used solely to monitor and manage the cost of running Steady. It is not used for profiling, advertising, or any other purpose.
Crash and error logs
If something breaks in the app, we record the technical details of the error — the error message, a stack trace, and the app version — in our database so we can find and fix it. These logs describe what the code did, not what you wrote: your messages, notes, and check-in content are never part of them.
Who can see your data
Honesty matters more to us than sounding perfect, so here it is plainly: your data is stored in our database (Google Firestore). As the app's operator, we have administrative access to it. We don't read your conversations as a routine matter, and we never use them for advertising or to train AI models. We may access specific data only in limited circumstances: to investigate a safety concern or a malfunction (for example, if Ray responds in an unexpected or harmful way), to diagnose technical problems, to prevent abuse or protect someone's safety, or when required by law.
What we never do
- We never sell your data. Ever. To anyone.
- We never give advertisers access to your identity, conversations, or recovery data — the only thing that ever touches an ad platform is the hashed email described under "Advertising measurement" below.
- We never use your conversations with Ray for advertising, or to train AI models.
- We never show you ads inside Steady.
- We never share your identity or sobriety status with your employer, insurer, or any other organisation.
Third-party services we use
To make Steady work, we use a small number of trusted third-party services. Each handles your data according to their own privacy policies.
- Google Firebase — stores your account data and conversation history securely. Firebase is a Google service subject to Google's privacy policy.
- Anthropic Claude — powers Ray. Your messages — and the context that makes Ray helpful (his memory notes, your chip engravings, your recovery biography, and your daily greeting) — are sent to Anthropic's API to generate them. Anthropic does not use your messages to train their models (under standard API terms). See Anthropic's privacy policy at anthropic.com.
- OpenAI Whisper & TTS — used only if you use voice features. Whisper transcribes your speech to text; TTS converts Ray's replies to audio. Audio is not stored after processing.
- Google Sign-In — an optional way to create or log into your account. We only receive your email address and name from Google.
- Resend — sends our emails: signup confirmations and survey invitations.
- Vercel — hosts this website and our API, and provides the website's page-view analytics.
Nothing on this list profiles you across the web, and none of them get your conversations except Anthropic (to generate Ray's replies) and OpenAI (to process voice).
Advertising measurement (website only)
We run ads on Reddit to reach people who might need Steady, and we measure whether those ads work. Two things happen on this website only — never inside the app:
- The homepage loads the Reddit Pixel, which tells Reddit that the page was visited and whether a signup happened. Like any ad pixel, it uses cookies and may be linked to your Reddit account if you have one.
- If you sign up on the website, we send Reddit a SHA-256 hashed copy of your email address so their system can count the signup against the ad that led to it. Reddit receives the hash for ad measurement — never your name, your conversations, or anything about your recovery.
That's the entire overlap between Steady and any ad platform. The app itself contains no ad SDKs, no pixels, and no trackers.
How we protect your data
- All data is transmitted over encrypted HTTPS connections.
- Your data is stored in Google Firebase, which provides industry-standard security and encryption at rest.
- Access to your data is restricted to your authenticated account, plus the administrative access described in "Who can see your data" above.
- We do not store your password — authentication is handled by Firebase.
No system is 100% secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, please contact us immediately at hello@steadycompanion.app.
Children's privacy
Steady is not intended for anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created a Steady account, please contact us at hello@steadycompanion.app and we will delete the account promptly.
Where your data is stored
Steady uses Google Firebase, which stores data on Google's global infrastructure. If you are based outside the United States, your data may be transferred to and stored on servers in the United States or other countries. By using Steady, you consent to this transfer. We ensure that all transfers are covered by appropriate safeguards.
How long we keep your data
We keep your data for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account, everything described above — profile, conversations, Ray's memory, check-ins, progress, and analytics — is removed immediately. Short-lived technical and security logs may persist briefly and are cleared in the ordinary course.
Your rights
You are in control of your data.
- Access — you can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Correction — you can update your name, sobriety date, and other profile details at any time in the app.
- Deletion — you can permanently delete your account and all associated data at any time: in the app via Settings → Delete Account (immediate), on the web at steadycompanion.app/delete-account, or by emailing us. This deletes your profile, conversation history, memory, check-ins, and analytics data from our systems. It cannot be undone.
- Portability — you can request a copy of your data in a portable format by contacting us.
- Objection — you can object to how we process your data by contacting us.
If you are based in the European Economic Area or the UK, you have additional rights under GDPR / UK GDPR, including the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.
To exercise any of these rights, email us at hello@steadycompanion.app.
Cookies and tracking
The Steady app does not use cookies, ad SDKs, or trackers of any kind. This website uses essential cookies for basic functionality, Vercel Web Analytics for anonymous page-view counts, and the Reddit Pixel described under "Advertising measurement" above — that pixel is the one advertising cookie on the site, and it exists solely so we can tell whether our Reddit ads work.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. If we make significant changes that affect how your data is used, we'll notify you inside the app or by email. Continued use of Steady after changes means you accept the updated policy.
Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, we'd love to hear from you.
Email: hello@steadycompanion.app
Or use the Contact Us option in the app under Settings.