Your space.
Know how it works.
Penguin is an early-access journaling and reflection tool for adults 18+. This guide describes the current product, including its limits.
Start wherever you are.
- Check in. Choose a feeling on Today. Add a note if you want, then save. Your rhythm shows the most recent feeling recorded each day.
- Write a page. Open Your journal. Use a prompt or start fresh. Give the page a title and press Save. Unsaved editor text is not included in backups.
- Make it yours. Edit a saved page. Archive it to move it out of the main list, or restore it from Archive. Archiving is not deletion.
- Talk it through. Select the cloud-processing consent box before sending a message. Conversation context uses up to eight recent turns, shortened further when necessary.
- Keep what helps. “Save to journal” makes a browser-local copy of the conversation. Chat is otherwise held in this tab; closing or reloading it clears the conversation.
A conversation you can hear.
The voice pilot is invite-only for adults aged 18 and older. Invitations remain closed until release checks pass. Declaring your age is not identity or age verification.
Choose Enter pilot and read the message-processing notice. Admission does not open your microphone. If your invitation is active, you can type. For voice, separately accept cloud audio processing and choose Start voice. Speak in English for up to 25 seconds. A pause or Done speaking stops the microphone and prepares an editable transcript. Review is the default: Edit your words, Discard, or Send & hear reply. Automatic sending requires explicitly selecting its checkbox.
Stop reply pauses playback. Resume listening begins a new recording. End voice, leaving this conversation, and backgrounding stop capture. This is turn-based voice, not simultaneous listening and speaking. Recognition can mishear names, numbers, accents, noise, and meaning.
Each invite has 30 chat turns and 30 transcription attempts daily, resetting at midnight UTC. One turn per invitation can run at a time. Busy, slow, or unavailable models can interrupt a session. Typed chat uses the same chat service and is not an independent outage fallback.
Your data, in plain language.
Your journal and check-ins stay in this browser's unencrypted local storage. They are not cloud memory. Anyone with access to your browser profile may be able to read them. Save to journal is your choice; chat otherwise stays in this tab until cleared or reloaded.
Moving from the original Penguin address to withpenguin.app does not move your journal automatically. Export your saved journal at the original address, keep that backup, then import it at the new address. Unsaved editor text must be copied separately. The original site remains available.
With consent, microphone audio goes to Penguin's Namecheap VPS for Whisper transcription. Your reviewed text and recent conversation context go to the Hugging Face-hosted Qwen chat service. Reply text returns to the Namecheap VPS for Kokoro speech generation. These are distinct cloud processors. Model errors, queues and host outages may occur.
Penguin does not intentionally write recordings, transcripts or replies to application logs or use them for model training. Temporary gateway results expire 60 seconds after completion; abandoned queued work is cancelled after 120 seconds. Running inference may finish before its memory is released. Provider processing and retention can differ and are not a promise of clinical confidentiality.
Invitation and daily usage records support access control. Usage metadata is retained for up to seven days. Session cookies are Secure and HttpOnly and expire after 12 hours. Withdraw AI consent stops new requests and signs this browser out; journals are preserved. Feedback is optional: no audio, journal or conversation is automatically attached.
Disclosed minors are excluded from this adult pilot. Safety routing is a limited set of patterns and can miss concerning content or misread quotations. Penguin is software, not therapy, diagnosis, crisis care, or a replacement for qualified care.
When something gets in the way.
The AI did not reply
Free GPUs have queues and daily limits. A request times out after two minutes; your text stays in the input. Retry later or use the journal. A timeout does not guarantee that cloud processing was cancelled.
Voice stopped or the microphone did not open
Check microphone permission for this site and use a current browser on HTTPS. Keep Penguin in the foreground. Speak clearly, one short turn at a time. Silence, moving to another tab, service limits, or a network failure ends voice. If a transcript is visible, review it before sending again to avoid repeating a turn. You can always type instead.
I cannot find my pages
Check that you are on the same device, browser profile, and exact Penguin address. Look in Archive and clear the search field. Private browsing, clearing site data, or moving devices may remove or hide local pages. Restore a backup if you have one. Penguin has no server copy to recover.
Saving is paused or unavailable
If another tab changed the journal, saving pauses to avoid overwriting it. Export new work from this tab, reload, then restore that export. If browser storage is full or blocked, export before leaving. Unsaved editor text should be copied separately.
My backup was rejected
Use a Penguin JSON export below 5 MB. A file with an unsupported format, duplicate page IDs, invalid values, or too many records is rejected before replacing the current journal. Keep the original file.
An AI answer feels wrong
You can disagree, stop the conversation, or start a new one. Penguin can misunderstand and should not be treated as an authority. Do not change medication or treatment based on its responses. For care, contact a qualified professional.
Support during early access.
For product questions and bug reports, email support.penguin.stoop741@simplelogin.com. Please do not include journal pages, medical details, passwords, or other private information. Support is handled during early access without a guaranteed response time.
When reporting a product issue, the useful details are the page you were using, the action you tried, the visible error, and your browser type. A description using invented example text is usually enough.
Frontend release 0.2.1
Separate text-only pilot entry, clearer queue states, cancel controls, readable status text and accessible dialogs. Voice remains closed while performance and safety checks continue. This frontend release does not certify the backend for admission.
A growing space.
Frontend 0.2.1 · Voice access remains closed
- English speech recognition and generated replies with open models running in the cloud.
- Clear microphone status, automatic turn ending, and transcript review by default.
- Stop reply and End voice controls; recording stops when the tab moves to the background.
- Separate cloud speech consent and updated data guidance.
Qwen3-4B remains the chat model. This preview does not add Google account access, actions, cross-device memory, or a teen experience.
Early access 0.2 · October 31, 2026
- First-use guide and a new introduction to Penguin.
- Edit journal pages, archive them, and restore them later.
- Gentle prompts when the blank page feels too blank.
- Save an AI conversation to your journal by choice.
- Recent check-in notes alongside your seven-day rhythm.
- Stronger backup validation and clearer data guidance.
The base model has not changed in this release. Better models are being considered; model quality and clinical safety have not been independently validated.