Cope

Cope

Face it. Decide. Follow through.

Private AI counsel for the hard issues in your life: independent voices, a record you approve, and nothing of it on our servers.

  • Keep climbing, or build something of my own?
  • Is my marriage quiet, or over?
  • What do I owe my parents, and what do I owe myself?
  • How do I get ahead without becoming someone I don't like?
  • Why have I put off the thing I keep saying I'll do?
  • Or no question at all, only a sense that something isn't right.

Cope is an assistant for the issues in your life: a decision, a goal, a state you're stuck in, a relationship. The kind a chat assistant answers with a tidy, balanced list that leaves it where it was, or with the one confident answer you were hoping for.

No account needed. With your own key, nothing you say reaches us. Or sign in and ask us for credits.

Cope's list of issues: Renew the lease or move?, Get my money under control, Write before work, each with its next action and due date.

Independent voices

Consultants answer blind, each from a lens of its own, on two models. A question with an answer gets it plainly; where serious people split, you see both sides at full strength, and the choice is yours.

A record you approve

Nothing in your issue's document changes without your yes. Every step gets a date and an expected result, and when you come back, Cope asks what actually happened.

Nothing of it on our servers

No account needed. With your own key, your data stays on your device and nothing you say reaches us. Or sign in, and know exactly what we hold.

Together, and by call

Work an issue through with someone, each on your own device, with everyone's yes. Cope calls you at the hour you set, about what's due.

Ways in

Start with a problem, or without one

Bring a problem

Say what's going on in your own words. Cope asks until it understands, and the issue starts from there.

Ask for a check-up

If you can't name a problem, one consultant goes through an area of your life (money, health, work, a partner, family, and seven more) against what it holds: for money, things like "spend less than you earn". It says where your life and its view part ways, as its view, and asks whether you see it that way. Only the gaps you agree with go into your document. Offered once, when an issue starts; Cope never goes looking for problems on its own.

Invite someone

Work an issue through live with a partner, a co-founder or a coach, each on your own device, with Cope mediating. Text for now. More below.

Check in, or be called

A check-in across your issues, typed or spoken: what's due, quick checks, the changes confirmed with one yes at the end, and one issue talked through. Cope calls you for it at the hour you set, through the app; by phone next, and you calling Cope from a walk.

How it works, today

One issue, one conversation, never ended

You pause it by leaving and resume it by coming back. After a break, Cope starts with a short recap and the actions that came due.

Nothing changes without your yes

Cope suggests changes to your document at natural pauses, or when you ask, as a short list in the conversation. You answer Yes, No, or Discuss, and leave out any change you don't want.

Every accepted set of changes is a revision with a title and a reason, and you can undo it. Suggestions you turn down are remembered, so Cope knows what you've declined. An edit you make by hand is noticed and kept as a revision of its own.

Cope suggests two changes as one set: an action, ask my sister to lend the gap, due Sunday, expecting a clear yes or no, and the open questions. Shall I make these changes? With Yes, No and Discuss buttons.

The document is yours

What the problem is, what you believe, the options and what you decided, and a plan of small dated actions, each with the outcome you expect.

Follow-through, not advice. A daily reminder tells you what's due. Coming back, Cope asks how each action went, compares it with what you expected, and what that says about the next step.

Notes. Between conversations, write or dictate notes on an issue. No model reads a note until you share it, and the next conversation opens with the ones you did.

Voice. You can talk instead of typing: Cope answers aloud, reads its suggestions out, and takes a spoken yes or no. Your browser's own voice, or OpenAI's, or Deepgram and ElevenLabs', on your keys or ours.

The issue's document: a summary of the decision and its criteria, with weights.
Why not just ask a chat assistant

Independent voices, and the choice handed back

One capable model, asked a hard question, finds the safe middle and gives it to you in one voice. Asked for both sides, it writes both already knowing how it wants them to end. Cope keeps its voices apart instead, so that when they agree you can trust it, and when they split, the split is real. It doesn't stage a fight: most questions get an answer. This is the bet the whole thing rests on.

A cast of lenses

Where another view helps, Cope calls in consultants: 32 distinct voices, each holding a developed position on one part of life and naming the thinkers behind it. The Treasurer on money behaviour, the Serpent and the Convener on power, the Rake and the Match on attraction and compatibility, the Elder on what you're avoiding, the Scout on deciding under uncertainty. For one round, one to three of them answer the same question without seeing each other, on two different models, and you read every answer in full. The second voice is a second mind, not the first one in a mask.

They speak without a chaperone: no softening, no moralizing, as a knowledgeable friend would in private. Cope runs the conversation; the consultants bring the substance.

Read a real panel

From a simulated run in the showcase, on DeepSeek: a product manager three months from a promotion decision, whose manager said "close" and no more. Three consultants, one question; their answers are cut to a few lines each.

CopeThe real gap is information, not effort, so I'm asking Serpent, Convener, and Negotiator the same question: how to learn the rules of that room fast, and how to make the ask you've been avoiding.

The SerpentYou're right to treat this as an information war, not an effort war. … It's to ask for the mechanics of the room without flinching. … How they answer tells you whether you have an advocate or a courier.

The ConvenerYour manager is also being evaluated in calibration. They have to stand up in front of peers and defend you. If you're vague to them, they're vague for you. … The people who get promoted aren't the ones who did the most work. They're the ones who made it effortless for someone to argue on their behalf.

The NegotiatorA negotiation without a written artifact is just a vibe, and you already have too many vibes. … Know your alternative. … A person with a plan doesn't flinch at a "no." That steadiness is the whole game.

CopeAll three land on the same move: have the manager conversation now, but framed as building the evidence for the room … That framing also tests whether you have an advocate or just a courier. … The Negotiator: if the answer comes back "close, but not this year" — what then? Do you stay, or start looking quietly?

Later in the same issue, two of them split over one word of the opening line: whether "arguing for me" presumes a role the manager hasn't taken. Cope's note on the split: "This depends on a fact you may not know yet: whether this manager genuinely fights in the room."

Read the whole issue in the showcase, with the judge's scores beside it.

The conversation: the Treasurer and the Gardener each answer the same question about moving, in full.

Disagreement handed back, by kind

After a panel, Cope writes what they agree on, where they pull apart, and passes on every question they asked you. Where serious people would split, you see both sides at full strength, not an average nobody holds; where a question has a plain answer, you get it plainly. Then the part most advice apps skip: when the consultants disagree, who is right? Cope neither picks nor averages. It says what the disagreement is about. A fact nobody has yet: finding it out becomes the next step. A prediction: you make the bet, with the result you expect, and Cope checks it when the date comes. What matters to you: that one is yours, and Cope says so.

What a step costs elsewhere next

A plan for the promotion can cost the sleep you mentioned three weeks ago, or the evenings a relationship runs on. When a concrete step lands in your plan, the consultants for the parts of your life it touches get a line on what it costs there. Only the cost of a step already on the table, never a problem you didn't bring, and not one you have already weighed. Cope then names the trade-off and leaves it to you, or folds it into the plan when a change of date dissolves it.

A record of your judgment experimental

Across your issues, Cope keeps what it learns about you only as entries you approve one by one: facts about your life, and how you think and decide, in your own words. Beside them, a digest of your past decisions: the forks you stood at, which way you went, what you expected and what happened. When a new choice rhymes with an old one, Cope says so and asks whether the comparison holds. Our first simulated runs show no sign yet that it helps; it is off until you switch it on.

Yours to change, or to switch off

You choose who's in the room. Write your own consultants and playbooks beside Cope's, in plain text, test them in the same simulator we use, and publish them for anyone to install. Importing someone else's comes with a plain warning: their voices will work on your problems, and Cope has no safety layer between them and you. Or switch every consultant off: Cope is still the issue, the document and the plan.

In the app today, by phone next

Someone to call about the hard stuff

An assistant you can phone, and that phones you. A check-in at the hour you choose, about what's due and the one issue worth a few minutes today. A walk where you think an issue through out loud. Tasks captured by voice into the issue they belong to.

Today Cope calls you through the app: at the hour you set, your phone rings, and you pick up, put it off by ten minutes or an hour, or reject it. Picking up opens the check-in by voice. It remembers what was due and what you expected, brings in a consultant when another view helps, and every new step gets a date and an expected result, confirmed with one yes.

One assistant, one voice. Nothing private on voicemail, or before you've said it's a good time. A phone number, and you calling Cope from a walk, come next.

A morning check-in, on a walk

A designed illustration of the call as it will be by phone: the words are written by us and performed by synthetic voices. Today the call comes through the app, and the check-in it opens is the real thing.

Read the call

An incoming ring, the pickup

Yeah?

CopeMorning, it's Cope. Good time for five minutes?

Yeah, I'm out walking.

CopeTwo quick things, then the flat. Did you book the dentist? It was due yesterday.

Forgot. Again.

CopeFriday?

Friday.

CopeAnd the landlord: you expected an answer by today.

He did answer. He wants a decision by March.

CopeSo: dentist Friday, and the landlord's deadline is March, noted in the flat. Right?

Yes.

CopeOn the flat, you're torn between renewing and moving. Let's get a second view from the Treasurer on the money side.

The TreasurerMoving's going to cost you the deposit gap up front. Call it two months' rent, before you've saved a thing. And if you can't cover that without borrowing, renewing's the safer bet.

Hold on, crossing… …OK. The gap is the problem. My sister might lend it.

CopeThen that's the next step. Ask your sister by Sunday, and you expect a clear yes or no. Shall I add that?

Yes.

CopeDone. Dentist Friday, sister by Sunday, decision by March. Talk tomorrow at 8:30.

Great, thanks.

Together

Some issues belong to more than one person

A couple's money, a company two founders run, a parent that siblings look after, a coach's work with a client. Invite someone into an issue (Invite, on its More tab) and you work it through together, live, each on your own device. Up to three of you.

  • Cope mediates. It answers once everyone has spoken or passed, and treats what each person says as that person's account, not the facts. It takes no side and doesn't tell one of you what the other really means. A disagreement you can't settle yet is written down as one, each view with its owner's name.
  • Everyone's yes. Everyone gets the same suggestions and answers them on their own device. A change goes into the document only if everyone says yes; anyone can leave it out or ask to discuss it.
  • Everyone keeps the record. Each person has a full copy of the issue. It moves on only while everyone is there, so the copies never disagree; between sessions it's read-only for all of you, and each of you is reminded of what's due.
  • Nothing hidden. Whoever you send the link to sees everything in the issue, the whole conversation and every revision, and Cope tells you so before you send it. No one has a private thread.
  • The one who invites pays, and the person invited needs no keys of their own: the conversation runs on the inviting person's device. Your browsers connect directly where your networks allow, else relayed through Cope's server, everything between them encrypted end to end under a key in the link that our server never sees. On a direct connection you see each other's internet address.
  • Text for now. Voice in a shared issue and the conversation on a phone come next; after them, in your account, taking turns at different times while the host is away.
What it does differently

What only Cope does, as far as we know

The claims at the top of this page, against the kinds of product that come closest.

Kind of productWhat it does wellWhat it lacks
General assistantsThink a hard question through today; voice; remindersMemory written by the model, out of your sight; no plan checked against what happened; no record of how your decisions turned out; a safe middle in one voice
Assistants that call youA call about your dayWork admin: calendars and email, not your life's problems
Accountability appsA call that asks whether you did itNo plan behind the call, no help with how
AI journaling and coachingReflection over timeFeelings and patterns, not decisions and action; built for engagement
Templates and notesA recordNothing pushes back or asks how it turned out
Privacy

You don't have to trust us with anything

Cope asks you about the things you'd least want on a server: your marriage, your boss, your money, what the Serpent told you to do. So it's built so that they need not be on ours. No account, no email, no sign-up: open the app with your own API key, and nothing you say or write reaches us. We built this, and your data isn't what we're after.

What private means here, exactly. The only party that sees your conversation is the model provider you chose, under its own API terms, and the app names it before the first call. A model running on your own machine, added by its address, keeps everything on it; we've written up the setup and not yet measured how well Cope does on local models. Loading the app from copeai.app is a request to our host like any website's; the terminal client makes none. The daily reminder, if you turn it on, hands our relay times and ciphertext it can't read. Inviting someone into an issue hands our rooms your devices' addresses, and everything between you is encrypted end to end. None of these carries a word you wrote.

If you'd rather we hold your data, you can, and this is exactly what that means. Two choices, made apart: whose keys, and where your data lives.

Whose keys

Your own API keys, signed in or not: your conversations go only to the model providers you choose, at what they charge. Or sign in, with just your email, for Cope's models through CopeRouter, our route to them: no key of your own, at their makers' prices plus a small margin, paid with Cope credits (free for feedback). Then your conversations pass through our server on their way to the providers. Signing in alone sends us nothing, and until your account has credits, Cope's models don't run.

Where your data lives

On your device, always supported: the browser or terminal app, with or without an account. Or, signed in, in your account on Cope's server, the same on every device you sign in on. Moving between the two is one folder copied across.

On your deviceIn your account
Who sees your issuesYou, the model providers you choose, and our server only while you use Cope's modelsAlso Cope's server, which keeps them
Several devicesA copy each; move it with an export and an importThe same data on every device, nothing to sync
Clearing the browserTakes your data with it, unless you kept a copy: a file, or your Google DriveYour data stays on the server
People sharing a browserA profile each, with a passphrase if you want oneA profile each, signed in to its own account
ModelsAny provider with your own key, your own endpoint, or Cope's when signed inThe same
What you payThe providers' price with your own keys; Cope credits for Cope's modelsThe same
Setup and upkeepYour own keys or a sign-in, and copies to back up or move your dataSign in, and your own keys on each device if you use them
Daily reminderYesYes
Cope calling youIn the appIn the app
Phone calls (coming)NoYes
Shared issuesYes, liveYes, live
A shared issue while its host is away (coming)No: the host's device runs itYes
A public link to an issueNoYes: read-only, for anyone with the address, until you turn it off
If Cope's server is down or goneKeeps working with your own keysStops

A feature needs a server only if it has to act while none of your apps are open (a call at 8:30) or something from outside has to reach Cope (you dialing its number). Everything else works on your device. Moving your data between your device and your account is one folder copied across, so you can always leave with everything.

Proof, in public

Cope comes with its own test bench

In the simulator, AI users bringing real kinds of problems use the real app over several visits, and a judge model scores each run blind, on a written rubric. A second test plays the same problem against the same model with nothing of Cope around it, a plain chat with one frontier model, and a judge compares the two conversations, in both orders so the order doesn't decide. New parts are tested the same way: the check-up also meets a simulated person whose money is in order, to catch it inventing problems.

  • We publish the results, good or bad. Claims about helping people with their lives are easy to make; we want to show that Cope works, and keep showing it, including when it doesn't. So far: the first comparison with a plain chat came out even, and About you's first three simulated runs showed no sign yet that it helps.
  • Anyone can run it. The simulator runs in the browser app, on your own keys or your credits, with your own simulated people and scenarios beside ours, so you can test your own problems, your own changes, or check our claims.
  • It's a research question too. Does a room of opinionated voices, run by a moderator, help a person more than one capable model on its own? The answer could go either way, and we'll publish it either way.

Five of those simulated people are open to read: their issues as they left them in the app, and the same runs in the simulator with their judgements.

Community

Write a consultant. Test it. Publish it.

Cope's cast is a starting point, not the last word. The method is plain text: a consultant is a page that says what it holds and whose thinking it stands on, and a playbook is a page on how a kind of problem is worked through. Someone who has lived a co-founder dispute, bought a first home, raised a child with ADHD or run a small restaurant knows things no general assistant will say with conviction. They can write that voice.

  • Write it in the app. Your own consultants and playbooks sit beside Cope's, switched on and off like the rest, and Cope calls them in when their lens fits.
  • Test it before you trust it. Run it in the simulator against our simulated people or your own, read the panels, and judge the runs blind on the same rubric we use.
  • Publish it. Signed in, publish it under a handle you choose to the community page, where anyone reads the prompts and installs them with one click, with the same plain warning every pack carries. We read every listing before it goes public, and a listing shows how many have installed it, no ratings.
  • What it earns. Today an accepted pack earns its author Cope credits. A share for authors of what their work earns is for later, once Cope itself earns.
Credits for feedback

Try it on us

Cope is new, and what we need most is people using it on a real problem and telling us how it went. Write us a few lines: what you'd like to try, and a line about you. We read every request, usually within a few days, and while places last we add $5 of Cope credits to your account to start. Use it for real, tell us what you think, and there's more.

  • Your feedback is what you write to us. We never read it out of your conversations.
  • Nothing public is asked. No reviews, posts or ratings: we want to hear what didn't work as much as what did.
  • Found a bug? Search the bug tracker first, and add yours there if it's new: the first report of a bug, with the steps to reproduce it, earns credits. No account? Write to info@copeai.app and we'll file it for you.
  • Other help earns credits too: consultants and playbooks others can import; judging simulator runs blind, to check our judge against people; and trying what no stranger has tried yet: signing in from an Outlook address, reminders and calls on a phone, a shared issue with someone.
What it isn't

The honest limits

  • Not a therapist or a crisis service. Cope has no safety layer today: no crisis detection, no hotline prompts, and the consultants speak without softening. A check-up raises hard subjects on its own (your inner life, a partner, your family).
  • Not built to keep you talking. Each issue is meant to end. The assistant will call only on the schedule you set or when something in your plan is due, and it looks for problems only when you ask for a check-up.
  • What it costs. Each conversation is real model calls at the providers' prices, which depend on the models you choose; the cost is shown per issue. Cope's models through CopeRouter cost their makers' prices plus a small margin, paid with Cope credits; with your own keys you pay only the providers.
  • Where it could fail. You may tap yes without reading. A record of your decisions can pin you to a self you've outgrown. Voices from one model can sound like one voice in masks. Talking a problem through can become a way of not acting on it. A check-up can talk you into a problem you don't have, or measure your life against a standard that isn't yours. These are the risks of the very features that make Cope worth using, and we name them so you can watch for them.
Manifesto

Why Cope

When "cope" came into English in the late 1300s, it meant to quarrel, and soon to come to blows, from the Old French couper, "to strike". Only by the 18th century did it come to mean handling something difficult. Cope is named for both: not putting up with a problem, but facing it, and dealing with it.

What we believe

  1. A problem isn't a conversation. The things that matter in a life run for weeks or months: a move, a debt, a parent getting older, a job that's wrong. They need somewhere to live between the conversations about them. A chat assistant forgets them, or remembers them somewhere you can't see.
  2. Your keys, your device, your files. You can always run Cope locally, on your own keys, with your data on your device and nothing passing through us, and that will always be there: your data isn't what we're after. If you'd rather not get a key, you can sign in and use Cope's models on Cope credits; your conversations then pass through our server on their way to the models' makers, and your issues stay where you chose to keep them. A reminder or a call that arrives while no app is open, or the link that connects you to someone you've invited, goes through a small relay that passes only what your devices have encrypted and keeps nothing it could read, run by us or by you. A call on a phone line needs a server; that comes as one we run, and you can always take your data and leave.
  3. The record is yours. The assistant suggests; you say yes. Every change to your issue's document is shown to you first, kept as a revision with a reason, and can be undone. Its guesses about you get into the document, or into what it keeps about you across issues, only if you accept them. Today's you overrides the old record. When you share an issue with someone, the record is yours together: nothing goes in without everyone's yes.
  4. Advice is cheap; following through is the work. Most of what people need to do about their problems, they already half know. What's missing is the next small step, a date for it, an honest guess at what will happen, and someone who asks afterwards how it went.
  5. An assistant should be reachable the way a person is. A good assistant is someone you can call from a walk and who calls you when something is due. Not an app you have to remember to open. Today Cope calls you through the app at the hour you set, and the check-in it opens is the same issues, the same document, one voice; a phone number comes next. And like a person you trust, it says nothing private on your voicemail, or before you've said it's a good time.
  6. Disagreement is information. Where serious people would split over your question, you should see both sides at full strength, each better argued than your first instinct, not an average nobody holds. Where a question has a plain answer, you should get it plainly.
  7. Not every disagreement is the same kind. A dispute about facts becomes something to find out. A dispute about what will happen becomes a bet, checked later against what did. A dispute about what matters goes back to you, because only you can settle it. The same holds between people working an issue through together: Cope names their disagreement and leaves it theirs, and one they can't settle yet is written down as one, each view with its owner's name.
  8. Some problems belong to more than one person. A couple's money, a company two founders run, a parent that siblings look after. They should be able to sit down with the same record, each on their own device, and be heard alike: the assistant answers once everyone has spoken, takes each account as one person's account, and the record changes only with everyone's yes. Whoever joins sees everything that came before; no one keeps a private thread.
  9. It treats you as an adult. It engages fully with health, law, money and love, says how confident it is, and doesn't moralize.
  10. A check-up has opinions. You don't have to arrive knowing what's wrong. Ask, and a consultant measures one area of your life against what it holds, says where your life and its view part ways as its own view, not a verdict, and asks whether you see it that way. Only what you agree with goes into your record.
  11. Each issue is meant to end. The assistant isn't built to keep you talking. It calls on the schedule you set, or when something in your plan is due, never to keep you engaged. Success is an issue closed, not a streak.

What it will not do

It won't decide for you where the choice is yours. It won't flatten a real disagreement into a safe middle. It won't change your record without asking. It won't read a note of yours until you share it. It won't go looking for problems you didn't ask it to find. It won't take sides between people sharing an issue, or tell one of them what the other really means. It won't call you to fill a quota. And it won't pretend to be something it isn't: it isn't a therapist, and today it has no safety layer at all.

How we keep it honest

Cope rests on a bet: that a room of opinionated voices, run by a moderator, with a record you own, helps a person more than one capable model on its own. The strongest competitor is a good general assistant and a decent prompt, and if Cope can't beat it, the structure isn't earning its keep. So we test the bet in the open, and each claim we make names its mechanism and its limit.

Yours to change

The method is plain text: which voices sit in the room, and how a kind of problem is worked through. You can choose the voices, add your own and your own ways of working, test your change in the same simulator we use before you trust it, and publish it for anyone to install.