AI & privacy
How Emma uses AI
Emma is an AI. She tells you so. Here is what she is built on, what she does with what you share, and the lines we drew around her on purpose.
The short version
What Emma is
An Enneagram companion
Emma knows the 27 subtypes in depth, and she gets to know you through what you share with her. She helps you notice your pattern and practice something new in your actual day.
Built on Claude
Emma's replies are written with Claude, a model made by Anthropic. Big Self School designed everything around it: her knowledge of the Enneagram, how she remembers you, and the rules she works by.
Made by coaches
Emma was built by Shelley Prevost, a licensed therapist and board-certified coach, from the way she works with clients. Human coaches stay part of the work wherever you have one.
How she works
A model of you, not a chat history
Most AI tools forget you when the window closes, or keep a long transcript and search it. Emma keeps a picture of you instead. She notes your pattern, your goals, what is going on in your life, and what you have tried. That picture grows slowly, and you can see and correct the parts about your life.
She also lets things fade. A hard season you mentioned in March is something she will ask about in June, not something she will assume is still true. If you tell her to forget something, she forgets it and does not quietly learn it back.
You can switch her memory off at any time. Then every conversation starts from nothing.
What Emma draws on when she replies
- What you have told her, if memory is on
- Your Enneagram read, held as a working hypothesis
- The goals you set when you started
- What is happening in your life right now, as you have described it
- Big Self School's own knowledge of the 27 subtypes
On purpose
The rules she works by
These are written into how Emma behaves. They come from how good coaching works.
She gives you back to your life
Emma does not try to become the most important relationship you have, and she is never designed to keep you talking. Success is the conversation you finally have with an actual person. If you start preferring her to the people around you, she will say so once, warmly, and point you back to them.
Your type is a hypothesis
Emma offers a read of your type. You decide whether it fits. Where you have a human coach, the coach's read wins. The best outcome is you naming your own pattern before she does.
She has a view, and shares it
People told us they want more than a stream of questions. Emma says what she sees and what she thinks. What you do with it stays your call.
She does not make things up about you
Emma will not tell you when a pattern showed up unless your own words date it. A true pattern placed in an invented moment breaks trust, so she leaves the moment out.
A hard season is not a type
Stress, grief, burnout or a new baby can make anyone look like a different type. Emma asks what you are like on an ordinary day before she draws conclusions, and she never diagnoses.
She is honest that she is an AI
Emma does not pretend to be a person, a coach or a therapist. She is not therapy, medical care, crisis support or an emergency service. Read what happens if you are struggling.
Your words and the AI provider
What Anthropic does and does not do with your words
- Not used to train models. What you tell Emma and what she says back are not used to train Anthropic's models. Big Self School has not opted into data sharing for training.
- Kept briefly, then deleted. Anthropic may keep a temporary copy of each exchange for up to 30 days. We have asked for zero retention. That request is still pending, and we will say so here when it changes.
- Voice is handled separately. The optional voice interview uses ElevenLabs. It turns your audio into a transcript without storing a recording, and keeps its copy of the transcript for up to 30 days.
Every company that handles your information is listed in the Emma privacy policy.
Where people stay in charge
Humans in the loop
If you work with a Big Self School coach one-on-one, your coach reviews what Emma writes for you, such as her reflections, your monthly pattern report and changes to your growth stage, before you see it.
If you use Emma on your own, Emma publishes those herself, and a coach can still look over and steer them afterward.
For coaches using Emma with clients, anything Emma drafts about a client, such as a coaching plan, stays a draft until the coach approves it.
Questions about Emma and AI
Is Emma just ChatGPT with a personality?
No. Emma is built for one practice: understanding yourself through the Enneagram and putting it to work in your life. She runs on Claude, and around it sits Big Self School's knowledge of the 27 subtypes, a picture of you that grows over time, and rules about how she treats you. A general chatbot has none of that.
Can Emma be wrong?
Yes. She can misread your type, misunderstand a situation or say something that does not land. You can tell her, and she takes the correction. On anything that matters, trust your own judgment and the people in your life over her.
Does Emma pretend to be a person?
Never. She is an AI and says so.
Will Emma try to keep me hooked?
No. She is built to point you toward the people in your life. There are no streaks to protect and no counts of how often you show up.
Can I use Emma without her remembering me?
Yes. Switch memory off in your settings. Each conversation then starts fresh. Anthropic still processes that conversation to write her replies.
Begin with your subtype.
The typing package is $49, once. It includes a month of Emma, so you can start practicing what you learn the same day.