Keeping our sanctuary alive together

I built Our System Sanctuary with one person in mind: my child, who has recently joined this community. When I learned Simply Plural was closing, something didn’t sit right with me. I couldn’t understand how a tool this vital could be built and then taken away a few years later. So I started building.

I’m not here because I share the lived experience. I’m here because I care, and because I have watched how hard the day-to-day of plurality can be. I cannot control any of that. What I can control is me, and what I decide to put my time and money into.

So the essential tools, the ones inspired by my child’s journey, will not go away. The bigger features, the ones that could cost real money to keep running, might. I’m a single parent. I will not pour resources into this site that should be going to the child who is the reason any of it exists. That is why this page is here: to be honest about which parts are foundational, and which parts will, at some point, ask the community to help keep them going.

None of this is hidden. The bills are itemized and they grow with the community:

• Google Cloud AI. Every AI Insights feature (BlackoutBridge bridges, Daily digest, “What did I miss?”, Our Recent Days) calls Google Cloud and pays per word.
• Gemini API. The Learn Hub uses Google’s Gemini for searches. Same model: pay per call.
• Supabase. The database, the file storage, the edge functions, and the scheduled jobs that keep things running on time.
• Vercel. The hosting and the page-serving infrastructure.
• Resend. Supporter invites, daily digests, and other transactional email.
• Push delivery. Today push notifications go through the browser’s free web-push channel. Apple’s and Google’s native push services are not in the picture yet, and won’t be until Our System Sanctuary has its own iOS and Android apps. When it does, those services will have their own quotas and bills.
• Storage. 80MB photo and file caps add up fast across alters, journals, and chat attachments.
• My care. Bug fixes, security work, listening to feedback, reading every report, building the next thing.

The Google AI bills scale the fastest, which is why the AI Insights features are the most likely to live on the paid side. Everything below has to keep going either way.

These are the foundations. They are not “free for now” promises. They are the everyday tools you and your system rely on, and they will not be paywalled.

• Journaling (regular entries, private journals, edit history)
• Members and alters: profiles, roles, identity history
• Front log and switch tracking
• Internal weather, passive influence, internal polls
• Letters and internal messages between alters
• Whiteboard sticky notes for the whole system
• Privacy Veil and Sealed entries
• Crisis resources and grounding tools
• Notifications for the things you care about
• Direct messages, group chats, and Sanctuary community access
• Mobile access as a PWA
• Imports from Simply Plural / Apparyllis, PluralKit, and Tupperbox
• Full data export, any time you want it
• Account management and sign-in
• Trust, Terms, Privacy, Site Guide, and Mission pages

These are the optional layers on top of the free foundations. Nothing here is finalized. This list is shaped by what you tell me on the feedback page, especially the “I’d be okay paying for…” checklist. Items can move from this list to the always-free list if the community asks. Features that don’t exist yet are noted as such so you know exactly what’s on the page versus what’s on the horizon.

• AI Insights bundle (BlackoutBridge, Daily digest, "What did I miss?", Our Recent Days)
• Our Recent Days: shareable PDF summaries
• Learn Hub search (Gemini-powered question answering)
• Larger storage and upload caps, above the free baseline
• Custom theme packs
• Advanced supporter dashboards(not built yet)
• Family or shared-system plans(not built yet)

• The first 50 members who signed up are free for life. That is in the database, not in marketing copy.
• I will never paywall a feature that already exists for you without telling you, in the app, before it happens.
• I will never sell, license, rent, or aggregate your data. Not to advertisers, not to brokers, not to insurers, not to AI training partners. The Trust & Privacy page is the binding version of this.
• Data export will always be free and one-click. Everything you put into Our System Sanctuary, you get to take with you.
• Pricing changes will be announced on the website first, with a clear before-and-after, and with at least thirty days’ notice. (When iOS and Android apps exist, the in-app announcement will run alongside.)
• This is my project, and I am not selling it, transferring it, or stepping away from it. Our System Sanctuary is here to stay.

The whole reason the feedback page launched alongside the soft launch is so the freemium model gets shaped before any billing turns on, not after. If you have any feeling at all about what should stay free, what would be fair to pay for, or anything in between, the pricing section is the place. You can answer with checkboxes, a sentence, or both. You can do it anonymously if signing your name feels like too much.

I read every response. They go directly into the decisions.