Where your chat lives — and why it clears after 90 days
A fair question we get: "If I talk to InspireLog every day, where does all of that go? Is it on my phone? Will it pile up like a messaging app?" The short version: the thread you scroll is kept on your phone, it clears itself on a rolling 90-day window, and the part that actually matters — what InspireLog has learned about you — is a separate thing that never gets cleared. Here's the longer version.
Two different things, stored two different ways
It helps to separate what a conversation looks like from what it means.
The chat thread is the bubbles: what you said, what InspireLog said back, in order. It's a display. It's how you look at a conversation, not what the app knows about you.
The memory is what those conversations added up to: the decision you were weighing, the person you mentioned twice, the thing you said you'd do, the plan that grew out of it. Your reflections, to-dos, reminders and plans all live here. This is the record, and it's what InspireLog reads from when it talks to you.
Both are on your phone
The thread and the memory are both stored in a database inside the app's own private space on your device. There's no cloud inbox holding your chat that you (or we) scroll back through. When you talk, what you type or say goes to InspireLog's server and on to an AI provider to produce the reply, together with the memories chosen for that turn — that's how any assistant works. InspireLog's server stores no copy of the conversation, only delivery metadata; the record of the conversation comes home to your phone and stays there.
That's also why "Delete everything" in Settings is a real delete. It empties the database on the device; there isn't a second copy of your chat somewhere that would need chasing down.
The thread clears on a rolling 90 days. The memory doesn't.
Each time the app starts cold, it removes chat turns older than 90 days. Nothing else is touched: every reflection, plan, to-do, reminder and memory stays exactly where it was, for as long as you keep the app. So a conversation from last spring is gone as a scrollable thread, but whatever InspireLog learned from it is still there, still shaping what it says to you today.
The sweep is quiet on purpose. There's no "your history is about to expire" banner, because nothing you'd miss is expiring. If you want the raw thread kept, the export below is always there — and it's a one-tap habit, not a rescue.
Why not keep it forever, like a messaging app?
You've probably noticed that messaging apps get heavier the longer you use them. Most of them keep every message and every attachment on the phone, indefinitely, and leave the cleanup to you. Scrolling back to something from two years ago means the app is digging through a very large local database — which is why it gets slow — and the storage line in Settings creeps up until someone clears the cache. That's a defensible choice for a messaging app, where the thread is the product.
For InspireLog the thread isn't the product; the understanding is. Keeping years of bubbles would make the app slower to open, take up space on your phone that buys you nothing, and leave more raw text sitting around than it needs to. A 90-day window keeps recent context scrollable — enough to re-read last month's conversation — without any of that.
We also didn't want to solve it the other way, by moving the thread to a server so the phone stays light. That would mean your conversations sitting in an account somewhere, which is exactly what we'd rather not build.
Take a copy any time
Settings → Privacy & Data → Export My Data writes two files and hands them to the share sheet: a structured JSON file, and a plain-text version you can just read. Both include the chat thread the app currently holds (the last 90 days) alongside everything else — memories, reflections, plans, to-dos, reminders, and the rest of what's in your database. The export is built entirely on your phone from the local data; it doesn't need a connection.
If you'd like an archive of the thread beyond 90 days, exporting once a season is all it takes. Nothing stands in front of it, either: no sign-in and no update prompt — the app opens straight into your chat, and the export reads only the database on your phone. Neither an account nor an update should stand between you and your own record.
In one breath
Your chat is on your phone. It keeps the last 90 days as a thread and clears the rest on its own. What InspireLog has learned about you is stored separately and is never cleared by age. You can export all of it, any time, from Settings. And it stays yours.