metta circles · your data

How your reflections are held.

When you share what’s alive in you, we treat it as an offering — not data to extract. Here’s exactly what happens, and what doesn’t.

the principle

Seeds, not fuel.

We are tied in a single garment of destiny.— Martin Luther King Jr.

Most platforms treat your words as fuel — content to be indexed, profiled, monetized. We see your reflections as seeds: something to be planted with care, not harvested.

the flow

From your words to connection.

Your reflectionsWhat’s alive in you, shared in your own words.
with your identity · stays with us
→
Circle AgentStrips names, emails, and identifying details, then curates with intention.
anonymized
→
The language modelSees only anonymized themes and questions — never people.
can’t trace back to you

Your identity — name, email, any identifying details — never leaves our system. The AI only sees anonymized text, with no way to connect your reflections back to you. That’s for matching; circle calls are handled a little differently, below.

circle calls

What about the calls themselves?

Circle calls happen on Zoom and are recorded — for the safety of everyone in the circle, and so members who miss a call can catch up. Recordings are stored on Zoom’s cloud, accessible only to circle participants and the Metta Circles team, and are never published or shared externally.

A private reflection
after each call, the call’s transcript goes to a language model, which drafts a short reflection: the threads that emerged, and how the space was shared. It goes only to your circle’s anchor and the Metta Circles team — never posted anywhere, never shared with other circles or their anchors.
Not anonymized
unlike matching, the transcript isn’t anonymized first — the AI needs to follow who said what — so first names spoken on the call do reach the model. It’s used for this one purpose and never to train AI.
Across circles
from time to time, themes from many circles are combined into a short summary with no names, no quotes and nothing identifying, which the team may share with all anchors.
Nothing leaves the circle
no clips, excerpts, or transcripts leave the circle without the explicit consent of everyone involved.
our commitments

What we do with your reflections.

Used only for matching
your reflections help the Circle Agent surface non-obvious resonances — questions that rhyme, experiences that might speak to each other.
Anonymized before AI
names, emails, and identifying details are stripped before anything reaches the language model. The AI sees themes and questions, not people.
Stored with care
your data lives on secure ServiceSpace infrastructure, stewarded by volunteers who have tended community data for over 25 years.
Yours to delete
you can request removal of your reflections at any time. Contact us and we’ll remove your data.
boundaries

What we never do.

Never sold
no advertising, no data brokers, no monetization of any kind.
Never shared externally
your reflections stay within the ServiceSpace ecosystem. No third-party access.
Never used to train AI
your words don’t become part of any language model’s training data. Period.
Never profiled
we don’t build behavioral profiles, track patterns across platforms, or create marketing segments.
why this matters

The difference isn’t technical — it’s intentional.

If you typed into a chatbot

  • Your identity travels with your data — account, email, usage history.
  • Commercial incentives shape the data policies.
  • May be used for model training, depending on settings.

With the Circle Agent

  • Your identity stays with us, separate from the AI.
  • Only anonymized text reaches the language model.
  • Gift economy — no commercial incentives.
  • Never used to train any AI model.

We don’t have our own language model — we use existing AI (Claude, GPT, Gemini). The difference is what sits between you and them: a layer of intentional curation, anonymization, and care. For deeper technical detail, see Awakin AI’s technical architecture.

if applicable

About pod reflections.

If you’ve been part of a ServiceSpace Pod, you can opt in to include your pod reflections — letting the Circle Agent see deeper patterns, not just what you wrote for a circle but themes that have emerged across your contemplative journey.

What we access
your written responses to pod prompts and passages — the reflections you’ve already shared within the pod community.
How it helps
richer context lets the agent surface connections a single set of reflections might miss — a month-old contemplation might resonate perfectly with your current question.
Always optional
including pod reflections is your choice, and never required to join a circle.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. ← back to Metta Circles