Frequently Asked Questions

Therma is a daily reflection and mood-tracking app with an AI companion that listens. Each day, you check in with how you're feeling — it takes about 10 seconds — and optionally explore a guided reflection prompt or talk through something with the AI companion. Over time, Therma surfaces patterns in your mood and habits so you can understand what actually affects how you feel, rather than guessing.

Most journaling apps give you a blank page and hope for the best. Therma meets you where you are with a quick mood check-in, then offers guided prompts if you want to go deeper. The AI companion adds a layer that traditional journaling can't — it asks follow-up questions, reflects back what it hears, and helps you notice things you might miss on your own. It's less "dear diary" and more like thinking out loud with someone who pays attention.

Therma is not therapy and is not a substitute for working with a licensed professional. It's a self-reflection tool — closer to a daily practice than a clinical intervention. Many people use reflection apps alongside therapy to stay aware of their patterns between sessions, and therapists often encourage that kind of daily awareness. If you're in crisis, Therma will always point you toward professional resources.

Therma is for anyone who wants to understand themselves a little better, day by day. That includes people building new habits, managing stress, working through a transition, or just trying to be more intentional about how they spend their time and energy. You don't need to be "going through something" to benefit — most users simply want a quiet place to check in with themselves regularly.

The AI companion is designed to listen, reflect, and ask thoughtful follow-up questions — not diagnose or advise. When you share something during a check-in or reflection, it might ask what triggered that feeling, or gently surface a pattern it's noticed across your recent entries. All conversations are end-to-end encrypted, and the companion never stores or shares your data with third parties. Think of it as a mirror that occasionally asks good questions.

Therma will offer a free tier that includes daily check-ins and basic mood tracking. The AI companion, advanced pattern insights, and deeper reflection features will be part of a paid plan. Early waitlist members get extended free access to premium features during beta and a permanent discount when pricing goes live. Exact pricing will be announced closer to launch.

A daily check-in starts with a simple question: how are you feeling right now? You tap a mood, optionally add a short note, and you're done. From there, you can choose to explore a guided reflection prompt or open a conversation with the AI companion. The whole experience is designed to feel low-pressure — no word counts, no streaks that punish you for missing a day, no guilt.

The core check-in takes about 10 seconds — just a mood tap and an optional note. If you choose to do a guided reflection or talk with the AI companion, most people spend 2 to 5 minutes. Some days you'll want to go deeper, and some days 10 seconds is exactly enough. Therma is built around the idea that consistency matters more than depth on any single day.

Guided reflection prompts are short, thoughtful questions designed to help you notice something you might not think about on your own. They draw on principles from cognitive behavioral therapy, positive psychology, and mindfulness research — things like "What drained your energy today?" or "Name one thing you did well this week that you haven't acknowledged." They rotate daily and adapt based on your recent moods and patterns.

Yes — mood tracking over time is one of Therma's core features. Every check-in contributes to a personal mood timeline that helps you spot trends across days, weeks, and months. You can see how your mood shifts around specific habits, events, or times of week. Research consistently shows that simply tracking your mood improves emotional awareness, which is the foundation for making real changes.

A reflection streak counts the number of consecutive days you've checked in. Streaks can be motivating, but Therma takes a gentler approach than most habit apps — missing a day doesn't reset your streak to zero. Instead, Therma tracks your "best streak" and your overall check-in rate, so a single missed day doesn't undo weeks of consistency. The goal is building a sustainable practice, not perfection.

Therma integrates with Apple Health and Google Fit to pull in data like sleep, steps, and exercise. This lets you see how physical habits correlate with your mood — for example, whether you tend to feel better on days you slept more than seven hours or went for a walk. All health data stays on your device and is never uploaded to Therma's servers. The integration is entirely optional.

Yes — privacy is foundational to how Therma is built, not an afterthought. All reflections and AI companion conversations are end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one at Therma can read your entries. Your mood data is stored in a way that cannot be linked back to your identity without your encryption key. Honest self-reflection requires feeling safe, so Therma is designed to make privacy the default, not a setting you have to find.

No. Therma does not sell, share, or monetize your personal data in any way. The business model is straightforward: you pay for premium features, and that's how Therma makes money. There are no ads, no data brokers, and no third-party analytics that can identify you. Your reflections are yours.

Therma is built on a HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, which means it meets the security and privacy standards required for handling health-related information in the United States. This includes encrypted data storage, secure transmission, access controls, and regular security audits. While Therma is a wellness tool and not a covered entity under HIPAA, building to that standard ensures your data gets the highest level of protection available.

You can export all of your data at any time in a standard format, and you can request full deletion of your account and all associated data. Deletion is permanent and typically processed within 48 hours. Therma believes your data belongs to you — you should always be able to take it with you or remove it entirely.

Your data is stored on encrypted servers in the United States, hosted by infrastructure providers that meet SOC 2 and HIPAA security standards. End-to-end encryption means that even if someone accessed the servers, they couldn't read your reflections without your personal encryption key. Health data from Apple Health or Google Fit stays on your device and is never uploaded.

Therma is currently in closed beta with rolling invites going out to waitlist members. The public launch is planned for later in 2026. Joining the waitlist is the fastest way to get access — invites go out in the order people signed up, and waitlist members also get early pricing benefits that won't be available after launch.

Therma is launching on iOS first, with Android following shortly after. A lightweight web version for reviewing your mood history and patterns is also in development. The core experience — daily check-ins, reflections, and the AI companion — is designed for mobile because that's where most people naturally pause to check in with themselves.

Waitlist members get early beta access before the public launch, an extended free trial of premium features, and a permanent discount on the paid plan. You'll also get occasional updates on development progress — no spam, just honest notes about what's being built and why. Signing up takes about five seconds and only requires your email.

Rolling beta means invites go out in waves rather than all at once. This lets the team gather feedback and improve the app between each wave. Your spot in line is based on when you joined the waitlist. When your invite is ready, you'll get an email with a download link and setup instructions. Each wave is typically a few hundred people.

Absolutely. The AI companion is entirely optional. You can use Therma purely as a mood tracker and guided reflection tool without ever opening a companion conversation. Some people prefer to reflect on their own, and Therma fully supports that. The companion is there if you want it, and invisible if you don't.

Daily reflection is supported by decades of research in psychology. A landmark study by James Pennebaker at the University of Texas found that expressive writing for just 15 to 20 minutes a day improved immune function and emotional well-being. More recent research from Harvard Business School showed that employees who spent 15 minutes reflecting at the end of each day performed 23% better than those who didn't. Therma lowers the bar further — even a 10-second mood check-in builds the awareness muscle that makes reflection valuable.

Mood tracking improves mental health primarily through increased emotional awareness. Research published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that people who regularly tracked their moods showed significant reductions in anxiety and depressive symptoms over eight weeks. The mechanism is simple but powerful: when you notice a pattern — like consistently feeling drained after certain activities — you gain the information needed to make a change. Tracking turns vague feelings into specific, actionable data.

Journaling typically means freeform writing about your day or thoughts. Reflection is more structured and intentional — it involves asking yourself specific questions, noticing patterns, and connecting how you feel to what you've done. Therma leans into reflection because research suggests that prompted, focused thinking produces better outcomes than open-ended writing alone. You don't need to write paragraphs; you just need to notice honestly.

Habit tracking can meaningfully reduce anxiety by creating a sense of control and predictability. A 2020 meta-analysis in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy found that self-monitoring — the act of tracking behaviors and emotions — was one of the most effective components of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety. The key is that tracking makes the invisible visible. When you can see that your anxiety tends to spike on specific days or after specific triggers, it stops feeling random and starts feeling manageable.

Therma builds self-awareness through three layers: daily mood check-ins that capture how you feel in the moment, guided reflection prompts that help you explore why, and pattern insights that show you trends over time. Most people overestimate how well they know their own patterns. Therma's mood timeline and AI companion help close that gap by reflecting back what you've actually said and felt, not what you think you said and felt. Self-awareness isn't a personality trait — it's a skill you build through practice.