How to use The Mind

The Mind is a private, working model of how you think, and an honest AI coach that uses it. It starts empty. Everything it comes to know about you, it learns from you: what you answer, how you answer, and whether its guesses about you come true.

This guide takes you from installing it to the end of your first week. Read the first four sections before you start. The rest is reference for when you need it.

1. Install it

The Mind comes as one installer, about 13 MB. It installs for your Windows account without administrator rights, and it brings its own copy of everything it needs, so there is nothing else to install first.

• Choose whether you want a desktop shortcut, and whether it should start with Windows so it's ready in the background every day.
• Windows may warn you the first time, because the installer isn't code-signed yet. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
• The Mind opens in its own window, and lives in your Start menu from then on.

To update, run a newer installer. It replaces the program and leaves your mind alone. To remove it, use Windows' Installed apps. Your mind is kept unless you tick Also delete my minds.

2. Connect an AI

The Mind uses an AI to read your answers, talk with you and write your reviews. The first time you open it, it takes you to Settings › AI, looks at what's already on your computer, and recommends the best option. Most people are done in about a minute.

A subscription takes three steps: install the maker's own tool, sign in through the maker's own window, and pass a one-word test. Your password never passes through the Mind. Nothing switches over until the test answers, so a half-finished setup can't break one that already works.

No AI yet? You can still take the modules, see your scores, and track your goals and habits. The AI features switch on when you connect one.

3. Your first sitting: about 35 minutes

Open Extract and start Phase I, Contact. It's five short modules:

You don't have to finish in one go. Every module picks up where you left off.

To get the most out of it:

• Answer fast. Your first answer is usually the true one. The Mind notices how long you wait before typing and where you pause.
• Don't tidy up. It also notices what you type and then delete. It treats that as a hint, never as a fact, and you can switch it off in Settings.
• Skip freely. A skipped question costs nothing. An invented answer costs accuracy.

Inside a module, 1–9 pick an answer, Enter continues, Esc skips, and Alt + ← goes back a question.

4. Make it a two-minute habit

The Mind gets useful through small, regular contact, not long sessions. A rhythm that works:

• Morning. The first time you open it each day, you get a short briefing: one line from the Mind, what's due today, and what it wants to know. Then answer the Daily three, three quick questions where it knows least.
• During the day. While the Mind is running, press Ctrl + Alt + M anywhere in Windows to jot down a thought or tick off a habit, without opening the app.
• Evening. Do the daily sync under Grow › Today. It takes two minutes, and the Mind reflects on it.
• Weekly. Read your weekly review. It's also written as a letter you can print.

Reminders arrive as Windows notifications, and never during your quiet hours.

What happens between sessions

While you're away, the Mind reads your new answers and turns them into short statements about you, written in the first person. Each one shows:

• Evidence: the answers it came from.
• Confidence: how sure it is.
• Salience: how central it is to who you are.
• Distinctiveness: how unusual it is compared with people in general. A statement that would fit anyone scores low, so it can't pass as insight.

It also predicts you. Before you answer many of its questions, it seals a guess. Your answer then scores that guess, and compares it with a naive guess about anyone. The difference, shown under Model › Accuracy, is the honest measure of whether it actually knows you.

On the Mirror, you can watch the map of its 13 regions fill in as it works.

The six spaces

Everything sits in the dock on the left. Press 1–6 to jump between them.

Talk to it: seven modes

Open Dialogue and pick a mode. It answers from evidence, cites what it's reasoning from, and tells you how sure it is.

• Converse. Ask it anything about yourself. "Why do I put off the things I care about most?"
• Coach. Honest, specific coaching. It can propose new habits and changes to your goals, and nothing is applied until you approve it.
• Interview. It asks about whatever it knows least, and seals a guess at each answer first.
• As me. Describe a situation and it answers the way you would, then walks down through your inner monologue to what's driving it.
• Future self. Talk with the you who reached your goals, built only from your goals, your values and the selves you hope to become.
• Decide. Work through a choice with your own patterns: how you'll probably decide, how each option would likely feel in three months, and what could distort the decision.
• Write. Get a message drafted in your own voice.

Press Enter to send, and Shift + Enter for a new line.

Change something on purpose

Grow is where the model turns into change. It leans on methods with evidence behind them, not on motivation.

• Goals. Each goal gets a motivation check: is this really yours, or something you feel you should want? Goals held for your own reasons last longer. Then plan it with WOOP: wish, outcome, obstacle, plan.
• Protocols. Small if-then habits, like "When I sit down at my desk, I'll write the day's one task first." Each has a streak, a 14-day history, and a reminder at the time you choose.
• Reframe. When a thought is running you, examine it with the Mind: spot the distortion, weigh the evidence, and find a thought you can actually believe.
• Reviews. Every week, an honest look back, with suggested changes to your protocols.

Keep it honest

The Mind can be wrong about you, and you are the final word.

• Is this you?, under Model, walks through its guesses one at a time. Press Y for yes, N for no, P for partly.
• Contradictions finds statements that pull against each other, and asks you to settle them.
• Anything you reject is never added back.
• What you said yourself is marked supported. What it inferred stays a hypothesis until you confirm it.
• Changed your mind? Ctrl + Z undoes confirming, rejecting, archiving and logging.

For a lighter test, try Beat the Mind under Extract: ten questions, each guessed before you see it. Try to surprise it.

Going deeper: Phases II to V

Once Phase I is done, take the rest in any order. One module per sitting is plenty.

Two modules deserve an evening of their own: Life Chapters (about 45 minutes) and People Map (about 25). The Wellbeing Check takes three minutes and is worth repeating every few weeks, so you can see the trend.

Your privacy, in plain terms

• It lives on your computer. Your answers and the model of you are stored on your machine, not on ours. Its screens load nothing from the internet, and other websites open in your browser can't read it.
• What your AI sees. When the Mind thinks, it sends the relevant part of your model to the AI you connected, under that provider's terms. Settings › AI usage lists every call and exactly what was sent. With no AI connected, nothing leaves your computer.
• A daily budget. Routine work goes to a lighter model, and background work stops for the day at a budget you set, so it won't use up your plan's limits.
• Privacy lock. Add a passphrase in Settings to put a lock between the screen and your mind.
• Backups. Daily and automatic, and restored in one click.
• Signals you can switch off. Recording deleted text, and noting which Claude Code projects you worked on recently (folder names and times only), are on by default. Both switch off in Settings.
• Voice typing. Windows voice typing (Win + H) sends your audio to Microsoft's online speech service. The Mind says so wherever it suggests it.
• Several minds. Settings › Minds keeps separate minds on one computer, for someone else or for an experiment, each with its own lock. Deleting one removes it completely, backups included.

Keyboard shortcuts

The Mind coaches; it is not a clinician and doesn't diagnose or treat anything. If you're in crisis, contact local emergency services, a crisis line, or someone you trust.