Safety

Effective August 21, 2026 · This page describes what Ikikata actually does when writing mentions self-harm. It is kept in sync with the product and will be updated as the product changes.

Get help right now

If you are thinking about harming yourself, please reach out to someone who can help. It is free, confidential, and available at any hour.

• 988 — call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (United States)
• Text HOME to 741741 — Crisis Text Line (United States)
• Outside the US — contact your local emergency number or crisis line.

What Ikikata is not

Ikikata is a journaling app with AI features. It is not therapy, not medical or mental-health care, and not a crisis service. Nobody is reading your entries as they arrive, and nothing you write here reaches a human on call. If something is urgent, use the resources above rather than the app.

You are talking to AI

Kirin, the companion you chat with, and Master Shen, who responds to what you write, are AI — not people. So are the weekly letter and the skills the app suggests it has noticed. Every message they write is labeled as AI-generated, and a notice appears when you start a session and again after every few hours of continued use. They are instructed never to claim to be human, never to diagnose anything, and never to present themselves as a therapist or counsellor.

What happens when writing mentions self-harm

Two checks run on what you write: a fixed list of phrases, and an AI classification. If either one flags a passage, a card appears alongside your entry with the crisis resources listed above.

The same checks run on every message you send Kirin in chat, and on the first entry you write during setup. In chat the card appears in the conversation. If Kirin was walking you through a set of journalling prompts at the time, the walk stops where it is and waits for you — what you wrote is answered, not filed as the answer to whatever question was on screen.

That is the whole of it. Specifically:

• Your entry is never blocked, changed, or deleted. It saves normally and earns the same points as any other entry.
• No diagnosis is made and no condition is named. The app is offering resources, not an assessment.
• No human is alerted and no emergency service is contacted. There is no one monitoring entries.
• Nothing extra is stored about what you wrote. The flag is calculated as your entry is processed and is not saved to your record; re-reading an old entry does not bring the card back. One exception, and only in chat: if a walk-through of journalling prompts is paused by this check, that pause is saved with the conversation so it is still waiting when you come back.

The limits of this

The checks will miss things, and they will sometimes appear when nothing is wrong. They are a safety net, not a monitoring system, and they are not a reason to wait before talking to a person. Please do not rely on the app noticing.

Age

Ikikata is for adults. Creating an account requires confirming that you are 18 or older. Setup asks your age, and an answer under 18 puts the account on hold before anything is written or sent to an AI provider — see the Privacy Policy for what happens next.

Questions

Email contact@ikikata.app. See also our Privacy Policy for how your writing is stored and how to delete it.