Frequently Asked Questions

Mates and Sheilas is a friendship app for people who care about their mates but keep forgetting to show it. You log conversations with mates, and AI pulls out the key details — job changes, family updates, upcoming trips — to build living profiles. Next time you meet, you've got personalised talking points ready.

Web app on any modern browser — desktop, tablet, or phone. Native iOS and Android apps too.

After chatting with a mate, open the app and write a quick note about what you talked about. Write naturally — no forms or templates. Premium users can use voice input and dictate it hands-free.

Personalised conversation starters based on what you've logged. Before your next meet-up, you'll see suggestions like "Ask about the Portugal trip" or "Congratulate the promotion". You can also write your own.

Mates and Sheilas is designed for personal relationships, but plenty of users find it works for work contacts too. The AI extracts the same kinds of details — role changes, projects, interests — regardless of the relationship type.

Mates and Sheilas can add birthdays, reminders, and time-sensitive talking points (upcoming trips, appointments) directly to your calendar app. You subscribe once with a calendar link, and your calendar app pulls updates automatically. Apple Calendar usually refreshes every 5–15 minutes; Google Calendar can take 12–24 hours to show new events. Set up calendar sync in your account settings.

Yes. You can import WhatsApp chats directly into a mate's profile. In WhatsApp, open the chat, tap the menu (three dots), and pick "Export chat" (without media). Then in Mates and Sheilas, go to the mate's profile, tap +, and choose "Import WhatsApp". Pick the .txt file and the app creates conversations grouped by date. AI then runs each one through the same extraction pipeline as manually logged notes — facts pulled out, profile updated, talking points generated.

It turns your entire chat history into a structured mate profile in minutes. After a .txt export, Mates and Sheilas groups messages by date into individual conversations and runs each through the AI extraction pipeline. Career updates, family news, travel plans, interests — pulled out, sorted, staged for review. Talking points generated automatically. Fastest way to get a new mate fully up to speed.

Group chats aren't supported in the current version. Mates and Sheilas works with one-on-one conversations to accurately map facts to the right person. In a group chat, attributing details to the right individual reliably is hard. Group chat support is on the roadmap.

Imported WhatsApp messages are treated exactly like manually logged conversations — encrypted at the field level and stored only in your account. AI processes them in an isolated, sandboxed environment and only sees the text you imported. Nothing is shared with third parties, and the same prompt injection protections apply.

Date Mode kicks in automatically when you set a mate's relationship type to 'Dating'. It unlocks specialised features: personalised green and red flags, AI-powered flag analysis on conversations, pre-date topic suggestions, and an AI dating coach.

Personalised criteria you define for what you're looking for (or avoiding) in a partner. When you log a conversation with someone you're dating, AI analyses it against your flags and highlights matches — helping you spot patterns early.

The dating coach is a conversational AI that knows your dating partner's profile, recent conversations, and your flag history. Ask it for advice, talk through how things are going, or get help planning your next date. It generates follow-up questions you can save as talking points.

Yes — all plans include Date Mode. Free users get 2 flags and 1 coaching session per month. Plus users get 10 flags and 5 sessions. Premium users get unlimited flags and coaching sessions.

Absolutely. The Free plan is fully functional with up to 5 mates and 10 conversations per month. No credit card required.

Three plans: Free (5 mates, 10 conversations/month), Plus (25 mates, 50 conversations/month, all reminders), and Premium (unlimited mates and conversations, voice input, data export, priority AI processing). See the pricing page for full details.

Yes. Upgrade and the new features kick in straight away. Cancel and your current plan stays active until the billing period ends, then you drop to Free.

Your data is never deleted. If you exceed the new plan's limits after downgrading, the extra data becomes read-only — you can still see it, you just can't add more until you're back within limits.

Premium users can dictate their conversation notes using speech-to-text instead of typing. Audio is never stored — it's converted to text in real time and only the transcript is saved.

Every Mates and Sheilas account requires mandatory two-factor authentication using an authenticator app. There's no option to skip 2FA — required for all users, so your account is protected even if your password is compromised.

All personal data is protected with field-level AES-256 encryption at rest. Every piece of personal content — mate details, conversation text, AI-generated profiles, and more — is individually encrypted before it reaches the database. Even if the database were accessed directly, the data would be unreadable without the encryption keys.

All data is stored in the EU, specifically in the Netherlands. This ensures compliance with European data protection standards and keeps your data under EU jurisdiction.

We use one-way cryptographic indexes for searching encrypted data. This lets you search for mates and conversations without ever decrypting the underlying data during the search — a technique that balances usability with strong privacy guarantees.

Your personal data is encrypted at the field level with keys managed through a dedicated secrets management service. AI processes your conversations in an isolated, sandboxed environment and only sees scoped data — never your account identity. We follow the principle of least privilege throughout the system.

When you log a conversation, AI reads your notes and extracts the key facts — new jobs, family updates, upcoming trips, interests. It sorts them automatically and detects when multiple mates are mentioned. You review and confirm every extracted fact before it's saved to a profile.

No. Your data is never used to train AI models. Conversations are processed in a sandboxed, isolated environment strictly for extracting facts and building your profiles. No data is shared with third parties for training purposes.

Audio is never stored. Voice input is a pure pass-through — streamed to Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, converted to text in real time, and only the text transcript is saved. The original audio is discarded immediately after transcription.

Premium users can export everything: mate profiles, conversation history, extracted facts, and talking points. Your data belongs to you.

When you delete your account, all your data is permanently deleted — mates, conversations, profiles, facts, talking points, reminders. This action is irreversible. There is no soft-delete or recovery period.

Settings → Apps → Mates and Sheilas → Storage → Clear cache. This removes temporary files and can help if the app behaves oddly or feels slow. Your account data, mates, and conversations are stored on our servers and are not affected.

iOS doesn't give apps or users direct access to clear the cache. The system manages cache automatically and reclaims space when needed. If you're hitting issues on iOS, the most effective reset is delete the app and reinstall from the App Store — your account data is safely on our servers and will be available as soon as you log back in.

No. Clearing the cache only removes temporary files on your device — images, preloaded content. All your mates, conversations, profiles, and settings are stored on our servers and unaffected.