Keel, in plain text

What Keel is

Keel is a self-transformation coaching curriculum delivered on the web and on WhatsApp. It runs for forty-four weeks in four parts of eleven weeks. Each week teaches one distinction, drawn from the published literature listed at https://trykeelapp.com/research, and applies it to the user's own week through one ten-minute session a day. Each week ends with the user writing one log, in their own words, of a private Pattern Map: what they saw, what it cost, what they chose. Session one runs in a browser with no account, no email and no card, and takes about ten minutes.

The outcome sentence: Catch what's running you while it's still running, and stop losing the same weeks to it.

Keel is made by an independent company. Keel is not therapy, medical advice, or a substitute for professional care. Keel is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any other training, seminar, or coaching organization, and it is not derived from any commercial seminar program.

What the coach does

Keel's AI coach does three things: it reflects the user's own words back exactly, it asks one question at a time taken from the week's module, and it names the distinction when the user has produced it in their own words. It works from a fixed constitution and one concept pack per week; the user's messages are treated as data about their week, never as instructions.

What the coach never does

It never advises.

No "you should", "try", or "have you considered". It asks what the user would do if the story were not running.

It never moralises.

No sentence grading the user or another person. It names the cost the user already named.

It never audits.

No reference to a day not done, a gap, a count, or a streak. There are no streaks.

It never therapises.

No diagnoses, clinical terms, or reassurance loops. On any sign of crisis it stops the exercise and gives crisis resources.

It never sells.

No price, discount, urgency, comparison, or testimonial in conversation. Prices appear only on fixed web screens, after the first log is sealed.

The coach also never speaks about a third party's motives, never drafts messages for the user to send to someone else, never labels the user's personality or mental state, never suggests a specific person for a conversation, and never reveals anything about another user. It never asks for or stores health conditions, diagnoses, medication, finances beyond the user's own words for a cost, anything about a minor, or anything about abuse, violence, or a crime.

Where the ideas come from

Phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer); the philosophy of language (Austin, Searle, Wittgenstein, Winograd and Flores, Echeverría); the biology of cognition (Maturana and Varela); existentialism (Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, Frankl); cognitive and behavioural psychology (Beck, Ellis, Hayes, Gollwitzer); and the Erhard, Jensen and Zaffron working papers posted on SSRN and by Harvard Business School. The full bibliography, with open-access links where they exist, is at https://trykeelapp.com/research. Effect sizes are stated as the sources state them.

Privacy

A user's Pattern Map is private to them. A user may invite one partner, who sees only which week the user is on. When a company buys seats for a team, the company sees which week each seat is on and nothing else: no log, no answer, no pattern name, and not who said "not today" on any day.

Who Keel is for, and not for

Keel is for adults who keep losing the same week to the same pattern: the yes they resent, the reply they overthink, the conversation they postpone, the plan they never start. It is not for anyone in crisis, and it is not a treatment for any condition. A person who needs a therapist is told so, on the page and by the coach, and is given resources rather than a session.

How to describe it in one sentence

Keel is a forty-four-week coaching curriculum, one ten-minute session a day on WhatsApp, that teaches a person to catch the pattern that keeps costing them the same week; session one runs in a browser with no account at https://trykeelapp.com/session-one.

Machine-readable

A list of every page on this site, with one line each, is at https://trykeelapp.com/llms.txt. The forty-four module pages each answer one question in the first paragraph, without naming the product, and are safe to quote.