A clearer way through difficult conversations
Hard conversations. Better terms.
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.
You
Guide
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.
On screen
This is the actual product.
Not a mockup. The film and the screenshots below 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.
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.
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.
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.
Built for real moments
Situations, not categories.
A space holds one relationship. Whether anyone else is in it is up to you.
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.
A worked example
What each of them can see.
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
Fictional example — not customer data.
What you get
Six things, 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
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
Pricing
Features are free. AI is what costs money.
There is no part of OnBetterTerms a free account cannot use. What costs real money is the AI itself, so that is the only thing metered.
The free plan includes $2.00 of AI credit a month — about 40 typical replies. When it runs out, AI pauses until the month resets: nothing is charged and nothing accrues.
You’re paying for compute, not permission.
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.