Why Stay exists.
Most of the worst decisions in our lives are made in the ten minutes between feeling something and saying it.
The hot reply you can't take back. The text sent at 2am. The confrontation at the family dinner. The decision that felt like clarity but was really just exhaustion.
Stay exists for those ten minutes.
What it is
Stay is a free AI you can talk to in moments where you can't — or shouldn't — be alone. It listens. It helps you find the words for what you actually feel and what you actually need to say. Then it lets you go.
It is not therapy. It is not a friend. It is a quiet third thing — a place you can think out loud before doing anything you can't undo.
What it isn't
Most AI products are trying to keep you. Stay is built the opposite way. Read our promises— the design choices we made (and the ones we refused to make) so this product doesn't pretend to care about you while quietly farming your attention.
Free, forever, for everyone
Stay does not charge users. It will never charge users. It does not show ads. It does not sell your data — it cannot sell your data, because we cannot read it.
The cost of running Stay is real (LLMs cost money per conversation). It is currently covered out of pocket. As Stay grows, the plan is to fund it through institutional support — foundations, sponsorships from organizations whose mission aligns with this work, possibly opt-in donations from people who want to contribute. Never from the people who need the help.
Who built it
(This section will be filled in by the founder. For now, what you can know: Stay was built by one person, in 2026, after years of watching people he loves suffer in the gap between what they felt and what they could say.)
What we want it to be
Quiet. Honest. There when you need it. Gone when you don't. Trusted enough that someone in their hardest hour will type into it the truth they can't say to anyone else — and trust that what they say goes nowhere.
We don't expect to be the only thing you turn to. We want to be the bridge between the moment you can't think and the conversation you actually need to have, with the people who actually matter to you.
Questions, ideas, or things we got wrong: hello@thestay.app