A clearer way through difficult conversations
Hard conversations. Better terms.
Two perspectives. No judge. A better next conversation — you have your side, they have theirs, private stays private, and what comes out is what can actually move forward.
OnBetterTerms helps two people explain their perspectives separately, understand what is getting in the way, and prepare for a more constructive conversation — without turning the process into a contest.
Free. No card. Invite someone only if you want to. Responding to an invitation?
You control what is shared. Private input can help OnBetterTerms understand your perspective, but it is not shown to the other person.
Your side
- What happenedI got to the school at 3:15 and you weren’t there.
- How it feltStanding in the playground while the other parents left.
- What matters to meKnowing what happens when one of us cannot get there.
Their side
- What happenedI was stuck on the ring road and had no signal.
- How it feltSick the whole way, knowing she was waiting.
- What matters to meNot being treated as though I did it on purpose.
- Shared groundNeither of you wants Tuesday to happen again, and each of you says the other is usually reliable.
- What is disputedWhether a message could have got through, and what should happen when one cannot.
- What is nextOne thing to settle, in words you would both actually agree to. Not a ruling on Tuesday.
Try it here
Every piece has a level, and you choose it before you write.
The question everybody has is what happens to the part they would rather not say out loud. Make the choice yourself and read the other person’s screen. No account, nothing sent anywhere, nothing kept.
What would you do with this thought?
What actually got to me was standing in the playground while the other parents left. I felt like the one who always ends up covering.
Jun and Priya share custody, and one of them was not at the school gate on Tuesday. Invented people, invented words.
Pick one and this becomes Priya’s screen — her account, on her own device. It is the view nobody using the product ever gets, because you can only ever be one of these two people.
Nothing here is stored. No account, nothing sent anywhere, no AI called — the words were written in advance and the choice you just made leaves with this tab.
Start where you are
What are you trying to work through?
Pick the one closest to yours. It opens into what you would be asked first, what that account is meant to cover, and what it usually ends in. Nothing here needs an account, and nothing you press is saved.
Pick one and this says what it would actually ask you first. Nothing is saved, and none of this needs an account.
Or start from what you need right now
Free to start, no card. The last two need the other person to join you, which takes a minute and is entirely up to them.
What reaches whom
Two paths, and only one of them is shared.
Every time you write something you pick one of three levels. The level does not hide the writing on a screen — it decides which of these two paths it can travel.
- They can see it.
SharedShared — the other person can see thisWhat this means
Used in the conversations you have together, and in shared summaries and exports.
- They cannot see it.
PrivatePrivate — only you can see thisWhat this means
Only you. Your own guide can use it to help you. You can choose to share it later, one item at a time.
- They cannot see it, and cannot tell it exists.
Never sharedNever shared — the other person cannot see this and cannot tell it existsWhat this means
Never shown, quoted, summarised, counted in a total, hinted at, or exported to them, and no notification is sent when you write it. Your own guide can still use it to understand you.
Path one — your own guide
Reads everything you have written, at all three levels. Answers only to you.
- SharedShared — the other person can see thiswhat you marked shared
- PrivatePrivate — only you can see thiswhat you kept private
- Never sharedNever shared — the other person cannot see this and cannot tell it existswhat you never shared
- your guideBuilt by a function that answers to one person, and sealed as yours before it is used.
- read by you, and nobody elseNothing on this path is addressed to the other person, so nothing on it can be shown to them.
Path two — a session you share
Reads material both of you marked shared, and has no way to load anything else.
- SharedShared — the other person can see thisshared, from you
- SharedShared — the other person can see thisshared, from them
- the shared sessionA separate function with its own queries. It is not the guide above with a filter on it.
- read by both of you
What never enters this path
- PrivatePrivate — only you can see thiswhat you kept private
- Blockednever loadedNot filtered out on the way past. The shared session is assembled by different code, which never calls anything that returns a private row — and if one ever reached it, it stops with an error rather than quietly dropping it.
- Never sharedNever shared — the other person cannot see this and cannot tell it existswhat you never shared
- Blockednever loaded, and never hinted atSame block, plus the part that makes this level different: writing it sends them no notification, moves no “last active” time, and changes no total they can see — shared figures are worked out after the hidden rows are gone, not adjusted afterwards. There is nothing for them to notice.
Everything “never shared” rules out, itemised
- not shown to them, on any screen, list or export
- not quoted, paraphrased or summarised to them
- not included in anything their shared AI session can read
- not counted in any total, average, streak or chart they see
- not included in a shared export
- no notification is sent because you wrote it
- no “last active” time changes because you wrote it
- no hint, implication or “there may be something on their mind” — they are never told the entry exists
The difference between the two is not a setting. It is two pieces of code that share no way of reading your writing, which is why the boundary cannot be undone by a mistake in one of them. Two limits apply to the strongest level and neither is the other person: a small number of serious safety cases, reviewed by a person, and lawful process. The whole privacy model, and how it is enforced.
How it works
Two perspectives. Clear boundaries. A better next conversation.
Describe what happened, what matters to you, and what you want to improve. You can stop here — plenty of people use it alone.
They contribute their perspective separately, in their own words. Nothing you have already written becomes visible because they joined.
Private material stays private. Nothing reaches the other person unless you classify it as shared, one item at a time.
What you already agree on, what is actually disputed, the questions still open, and a practical next step. Not a verdict.
This is the actual product.
Not a mockup. The film and the screenshots behind it are the running application, with demo content written for the purpose — nobody’s real writing is on this page.
- Start with your own side of itA check-in, with the privacy level chosen before anything is written.
- Talk it through privatelyYour own guide, working from your history rather than from nothing.
- Together, when you are readyDe-escalation asks whether everyone is safe before it asks anything else.
- You each write your own accountYours is saved and theirs stays hidden until they have written it.
- Then both, at onceNeither version had a chance to be written around the other.
- Agreement surfaces when it is mutualMark what you agree with; they never see a mark they did not also make.
- What tonight will not settle is parkedParked is not dropped — it stays on the record to come back to.
- Afterwards, separatelyEach of you says how it went, where the other cannot read it.
Five more screens, with what each one is for
During an argument
The message you have not sent yet is the one worth a second look.
Write it here first. When the wording is likely to make your own point harder to hear, you are told what it will do and offered the same point said another way. Nothing is sent, nothing is rewritten for you, and most messages get no offer at all — an offer on everything is one nobody reads.
What you typed
You clearly don’t care how much of this falls on me. Must be nice. I’m done picking up after everyone.
Goal: Ask for something
Offered back, yours to use or ignore
I’ve been picking up more than I can keep up with, and I’ve been quiet about it until it came out badly. Can we sit down this week and split the regular jobs properly?
An example, written for this page. You keep what you send: change it, send the original, or close it.
And when you did not ask: a message held for ten seconds
You do not have to come here for this. When something you are about to send is likely to land as a verdict, you are told what the wording will do — never what kind of person you are — and offered the same point said another way. Most messages get nothing, because an interruption on everything is one nobody reads.
What you were about to send
Typical. You never stick to anything, and I am the one who has to pick it up. Must be nice.
This reads as a verdict about them rather than about Sunday, so the likely reply is a defence — and the actual complaint gets lost in it.
The same point, said another way
The plan changing again puts the whole week back on me, and I am at the end of what I can absorb. Can we work out what happens when something moves?
An example, written for this page. Nothing is rewritten and nothing is sent: send what you wrote, send this, or send neither.
The same goes for a phrase that could be read two ways — it is asked about rather than assumed, of whichever of you used it.
What an evening of it actually looks like
Six short examples, played out in the product’s own message styling. Every one of them is written for this page, and each is labelled as an example rather than as somebody’s session.
Money and expectations
Private coaching
You
After an argument
The same argument four times is four arguments, unless something changed.
Say how it went
Afterwards, separately: did that feel resolved, did you feel heard, what do you want to remember. Short, private, and the thing that makes the next round of guidance better rather than just longer.
Check in during the day
One number, one tap, and a sentence if you feel like it. You pick the privacy level before it saves, and a bad hour is data too.
Notice what keeps happening
Over weeks the check-ins become something neither of you could reconstruct from memory: what keeps coming up, what is improving, which evenings are hard. Observations, hedged honestly, never predictions about your future.
And the guide does not start from nothing each time
Your guide knows your history rather than asking you to re-explain yourself, and rating a reply changes the next one — shorter, blunter, more options, fewer questions. It is your guide and not a shared one: what it learns about you is not available to anybody else. How the guidance is personalised.
There is no streak, no score on your relationship and nothing that asks you back daily. The whole sequence, step by step.
If you have already started elsewhere
Bring your history with you.
Export your conversations from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini through Google Takeout, or Grok, and choose what comes with you.
- You see every conversation in the file before a word of it is written.
- It arrives private, and there is no option to import into a shared space.
- It is marked as imported, so it is never mistaken for what happened here.
- It is left out of your patterns — time spent elsewhere is not time spent here.
- An undo removes everything that import created, afterwards.
Nothing connects to your accounts and no credentials are asked for. A file you export is the only way in.
Privacy you can see
Three levels. You pick one every time you write.
Not a settings page you visited once. The level is on screen while you type, and it decides what the other person can ever see.
The only level that ever reaches them. Used in sessions you do together.
Yours. Your guide can use it to help you. You can share a specific item later, one at a time.
Never quoted, summarised, counted in a total or hinted at — excluded from shared figures before they are calculated, not filtered afterwards.
Private material can shape what your own guide suggests to you without ever entering a shared session — because a shared session runs on a separate path that cannot read it, not on a filter that could be misconfigured. Two limits apply to the strongest level: a small number of serious safety cases, and lawful process. Neither of them is the other person. The whole privacy model, and how it is enforced.
What each of them can actually see, in one example
Jun and Priya share custody. On Tuesday one of them was not at the school gate. They each wrote their side without reading the other’s.
“I got there at 3:15 and you weren’t there. I’d like us to agree what happens when one of us is running late.”
Priya reads this.
“What got to me was standing in the playground while the other parents left.”
Priya does not.
“I’ve started keeping a list of the times this has happened.”
Priya cannot read it, and cannot tell it exists.
What they get afterwards is built from the shared halves alone: where they already agree, what is actually unresolved, and one question to settle next. Nobody is told whose fault Tuesday was. The whole example. Four others — a couple where one explains and the other answers in three words, two flatmates four months into “it’s fine”, a work thread that got an audience before it got a conversation, and two siblings counting appointments — are written out in full in five conversations.
Fictional example — not customer data.
Safety, and its limits
What it will not do.
What OnBetterTerms does
- Helps each person organise their perspective
- Separates private thinking from shared material
- Identifies possible misunderstandings and common ground
- Helps prepare a constructive next step
What it does not do
- Choose a winner
- Diagnose either person
- Replace therapy, legal advice, or emergency services
- Guarantee agreement
- Share private input automatically
If the relationship itself is the danger, the safety response never notifies the other person. We are not a crisis line, we are not clinicians, and we cannot guarantee we will notice — detection is imperfect in both directions. What we can do, and what we cannot.
What you get, plainly
- Space to organise your own thoughts first
- Separate input from each participant
- Control over what is and is not shared
- A clearer summary of the disagreement
- The questions that still need resolving
- Practical preparation for the next conversation
Built for real moments
Situations, not categories.
A space holds one relationship. Whether anyone else is in it is up to you.
Six of them, each with a page of its own
The same disagreement for the fourth time. Work out what is underneath it first.
Arrangements and handovers, with a record of what was agreed.
Spending, contributions, and the thing neither of you wants to raise.
More than two people in one space. Private stays private for each of them.
Mess, guests, noise, bills — the ordinary things nobody wants to raise.
A disagreement with a colleague, or an expectation nobody agreed to. Not an HR system.
Why it is different
Four things a chat window cannot do.
Two independent perspectives
Neither person reads the other’s account until both are written — because the moment you read their version, your own quietly reorganises itself around it. Then both appear at once, with what you agree on named separately from what is disputed.
Boundaries that hold by construction
Private material can shape what your own guide suggests to you without ever entering a shared session — because a shared session runs on a separate path that cannot read it, not on a filter that could be misconfigured.
Context that outlives the row
Most of the damage is done before it starts and after it ends. Your guide knows your history rather than starting from nothing, and a short debrief afterwards records whether the suggestion actually worked — because the same argument four times is four arguments unless something changed.
A next step, not a verdict
One issue at a time, with the rest explicitly parked rather than dropped, and nothing scored. If it is escalating rather than settling it says so and stops, instead of coaching through it.
For a one-off question a chat window is genuinely good, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. What it has no structure for is the second person. The honest comparison.
Pricing
Try OnBetterTerms before you subscribe.
7 days free. No credit card. No automatic charge.
Enough to work through something real: write your own account privately, be asked better questions about it, invite the other person if you want to, and put both accounts side by side. Then decide.
You’re subscribing to the workspace, not to a bucket of AI.
Before you start
The questions people actually ask.
Do I need the other person to agree first?
No. The private half works on its own — your own account of what happened, your own guide, your own check-ins and patterns. Inviting somebody is a separate decision, they have to accept, and accepting never gives them access to anything you wrote before they joined.
Can they see what I wrote privately?
No. Private material is never shown to them, and the strongest level is not shown, quoted, summarised, counted in a total they see, or hinted at — they are not told the entry exists. Your own guide can still use it to understand you.
Does it decide who is right?
No, and it is not built to. What comes out is what you already agree on, what is actually disputed, the questions still open and one practical next step. Nothing is scored, and neither of you is diagnosed.
Is this therapy, or mediation?
Neither. It does not replace therapy, legal advice or emergency services, and nobody here is a clinician. It is preparation for a conversation the two of you are going to have yourselves — including, if you want it, a summary you both approve to hand to a human mediator.
Can I bring what I have written elsewhere?
Yes, from an export file — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini through Google Takeout, and Grok. Nothing connects to your accounts and no credentials are asked for. It arrives private, and an undo removes everything that import created.
The goal is not to get good at talking to this.
It is to get through the conversation with the person. No streak, no score on your relationship, and nothing that asks you back daily. A tool for hard conversations that quietly became the easier place to have them would have failed at the only thing it is for.
Start with the conversation already on your mind.
Free, no card, nobody else has to know — and you can delete everything, including anything you imported, at any time.