ESSENIAL
Life goes on.
Answers to common questions about preserving a life with ESSENIAL.
You can preserve your own life, help someone you love record theirs, or bring together the memories of someone who has died. Photographs, biographical details, letters and existing audio or video recordings can all help build a picture of their life, with family contributions clearly identified as such.
You can keep your material locally on your chosen main device, or store it on secure ESSENIAL servers with a backup on your own device. Local storage gives you a personal, device-based archive; server storage makes collaboration possible. If others are helping build a profile, its material needs to be held on our servers, at least temporarily. You can also have everything stored both locally and online. Another advantage of online storage is that, as it is continuously backed up, you can revert to older versions of your Essenial Person if you wish.
Yes, if you have opted to keep it on the online server in the first place. You can keep an independent copy of the material you have entrusted to ESSENIAL. The current prototype prepares a folder-based download of available stories, photographs, recordings and transcripts, with missing files clearly listed. A browsable HTML edition and automatic annual download reminders are planned; they are not yet verified production features.
An ESSENIAL subscription costs €100 per year or €12 per month, giving you a choice between annual and monthly billing. You can cancel with one month’s notice. If you decide to leave, your uploaded material will be offered for download, so you can keep the memories you have entrusted to us.
Your ESSENIAL Person is kept for as long as you remain a subscriber, allowing its collection of stories and memories to grow over time. If you decide to end your subscription, you will be offered a download of all your uploaded material—including questionnaire answers, recordings, videos and photographs—so that you can retain a personal copy.
You can cancel with one month’s notice. Before your subscription ends, you will be offered a download of your uploaded material, so your family can keep its own copy of the stories, recordings and photographs you have gathered. Keeping that copy is separate from continuing the hosted ESSENIAL service.
Yes. Building an ESSENIAL Person can be a shared family project: relatives and trusted helpers can contribute photographs, recordings, biographical details and memories. Permissions determine who may view, contribute to or manage the collection. Contributions remain attributed to their authors, and collaboration requires online storage of your project, at least temporarily.
The person whose life is being preserved and their appointed Stewards—the trusted people helping look after the archive—control access. Being a relative does not automatically grant permission to see everything. Visitors and contributors can access only the material and activities covered by their permissions.
No. An ESSENIAL Person is a careful resonance of a life, drawn from preserved memories, words, voice and approved images—not the person themselves. It does not restore consciousness or bring someone back. Its value lies in helping families explore what was genuinely preserved, while clearly distinguishing original recordings from generated responses.
It should acknowledge the gap rather than invent a memory, opinion or fact. With permission, an unanswered question can be passed to the person themselves or to a family member or Witness who has agreed to help. Any reply is added with its source clearly named, rather than presented as something the original person said.
We remember people at different stages of their lives. Approved portraits let families choose a familiar life stage or explore an earlier chapter, where supporting material is available. Choosing an age changes the presentation, not the underlying record: it does not imply that a particular answer was recorded or spoken at that age.
Yes. Relatives can enrich the archive with their own memories and help clarify names, dates or other details. Their contributions remain clearly attributed and separate from the person’s own recorded words. A Steward can review or hide contributions, while factual corrections can be recorded without rewriting the original account.
Start with a photograph, a few details about yourself and one story you would like to preserve. The guided interview offers gentle prompts, and you can speak or type your answers. You do not need a finished biography or a carefully organised album: the collection can grow one memory at a time.
You do not need to write your life story first. The guided questions help you begin with familiar people, places and experiences, then explore work, interests, values and everyday memories. More adaptive follow-up conversations are planned; the current interview uses a prepared set of prompts that you can explore at your own pace.
Yes. The interview includes a recording control so you can answer in your own voice, or type whenever that feels easier. You can listen again and review the written version before approving it for the answer archive. Automatic transcription is being prepared and still needs end-to-end verification before it can be relied on.
One meaningful memory is a worthwhile beginning. You can spend a few minutes on a single question or stay longer with a story you enjoy telling, then return another day. There is no need to finish everything at once: a life archive is something to enrich gradually, not a questionnaire to complete under pressure.
Yes. You can skip a prompt, pause a session or choose another subject. Preserving your life should never mean sharing more than you want to. A story you choose not to record simply remains outside the archive; ESSENIAL should not fill that gap with guesses or treat it as something that did not happen.
Yes. A family member, friend or trusted helper can sit with you, help operate the recording controls and bring photographs or keepsakes into the conversation. Your memories remain your own words. If someone contributes their own recollection, it should be identified separately rather than quietly becoming part of your first-person account.
Yes. A single photograph and a few memories are enough to begin a useful collection. Older recordings and family material can provide valuable context, although supported import formats will depend on the release. A small archive will naturally answer fewer questions; ESSENIAL should make those limits clear rather than invent what is missing.
Absolutely. The ordinary details often make a person most recognisable: how they cooked a favourite meal, told a joke, repaired something or offered advice. These can be recorded as stories or written answers alongside the major milestones. Preserving a life is about its texture and character, not simply its dates and achievements.
Yes. Looking at a photograph or reading an old letter can bring back people, places and details that a general question might miss. You can describe the object and record the story it prompts. Photo captions and notes are supported in the prototype; automatic reading and interpretation of documents remain planned capabilities.
Yes. A written transcript is a working version until you deliberately approve it. You can correct names, places and wording, save a draft or return to it later. Approval is a separate action: an automatic transcript should never silently become your accepted testimony. The original recording remains the reference for what was actually said.
The recording and its written version are treated as separate parts of the archive. A transcript helps you review and find a memory; it does not replace the sound of the original voice. Private cloud recording storage still needs production verification, and you should keep a separate copy of irreplaceable recordings rather than rely on a prototype alone.
Yes. The Fact Check workspace provides a separate place to review factual details and mark them as needing checking, confirmed or corrected. An entry can be linked to the interview answer it came from. Correcting a date in that ledger does not rewrite the original recording or erase the way someone remembered an event.
The Archive view shows which areas have saved material and which have only been started or are not yet preserved. It also highlights practical review tasks, such as unchecked facts or transcripts awaiting approval. These are guides to the collection, not scores for your life: a missing recording never means that an experience did not happen.
That is the intention: your collection can grow as you remember another story, find an old photograph or receive a contribution from someone close to you. You can return to earlier subjects as well as record new chapters. Future additions should retain their dates and sources so that later reflections are not confused with earlier recordings.
Different recollections should remain attributed to the people who supplied them. A Steward can review the accounts and add context or a factual correction without making one relative’s memory silently replace another’s. More detailed dispute and version-history controls are planned. Where the record remains uncertain, an answer should acknowledge the uncertainty rather than pretend it has been resolved.
Yes—that is part of the intended family experience. Access need not wait until someone has died: you can explore your recorded stories together and see what you might like to add. The prototype lets you test conversations from saved answers; private invitations and shared family access still require production implementation and verification.
Yes. The conversation view accepts a freely typed question as well as suggested prompts. Its current matching is deliberately limited and draws on saved answers, not an unrestricted invented personality. A question may therefore produce an honest ‘not recorded’ response even when related material exists. Richer evidence-based retrieval is planned.
Yes. The conversation view suggests questions for which the archive already contains saved material. A ‘Tell me about your life’ starting point also offers supported topics rather than an invented life summary. This gives visitors a gentle way into the collection while keeping the suggestions grounded in what has actually been preserved.
A Source button beside a grounded reply opens the saved answer and its capture question, along with available date, transcript-review and recording information. It explains where the response came from, not whether every recollection is beyond dispute. In a shared family release, access to original material must also respect each visitor’s permissions.
This is planned. You would be able to record a message for a named person and choose who may open it. The aim is to preserve your own words—perhaps a story, encouragement or a birthday message—rather than generate a new message on your behalf. Recipient verification, access rules and any release conditions must be in place before launch.
This is the planned ‘Your people’ experience: one personal account, with a private collection of the people you have been invited to visit. Each archive would have its own permissions, so access to one person would not reveal another. The invitation and multi-person collection are designed but are not yet a verified production feature.
Yes. Choose ‘See a demonstration’ on the home page to explore the public demonstration without creating an account. It introduces recording a life, the family experience and the evidence-first approach. Demonstration personas and browser narration illustrate the idea; they should not be mistaken for a verified recreation of a real person’s voice or a complete production service.
Your original recording preserves words you actually spoke. A recreated voice would generate new audio from approved text and is a separate, planned capability—not the same as replaying that recording. It would require explicit permission, suitable voice material and clear labelling. Current browser narration is a general synthetic voice, not a clone of your voice.
Yes. Written memories, photographs and original recordings are valuable in their own right. Preserving a story must not automatically grant permission to clone a voice or animate a face. Those future presentation features need separate consent, and declining them should not prevent you from building an ordinary archive of your life.
The current experience is a website, so there is no separate app to install. You can open it in a browser on a phone, tablet or computer; recording requires microphone permission and a compatible browser. A browser-based prototype should not be confused with a fully offline application, and device support is still being tested.
The public website currently offers English, Greek, Spanish, Italian, French, German and Portuguese. Interface translation is not the same as verified support for transcription, voice recreation or cross-language conversation. You can preserve original wording in your chosen language, but those advanced language features will be described separately as they become available and are tested.
The design offers written answers as an alternative to recording, readable text alongside audio and the option of help from someone you trust. You can take breaks and work at your own pace. Accessibility is an ongoing development priority; we do not yet claim that every assistive technology or individual requirement has been tested.
That is the intended permission model. You would be able to decide who may visit an archive and, where supported, which sources or personal messages they may open. Fine-grained sharing is still being built and verified. Until those controls are available, do not upload sensitive material on the assumption that selective family sharing already works.
A Steward is a trusted person who helps care for your archive, review contributions and manage access. You might choose a family member or another person who understands your wishes. The role model is documented, but nomination, verification and succession procedures still need to be completed before they can be relied on for long-term family arrangements.
The intended approach is for a nominated Steward to continue looking after the archive according to your recorded wishes. It is important to choose a trusted person and keep an independent download. Verification of death or incapacity, authority disputes, succession and ongoing payment arrangements are still being finalised; ESSENIAL is not a substitute for an estate plan.
For a living person, begin with their informed agreement and respect their choices about recording and sharing. Existing photographs, letters and recordings may also involve other people’s rights. For someone who has died or cannot consent, authority and appropriate safeguards need careful review. ESSENIAL’s detailed verification process is still being finalised; voice or likeness recreation requires separate consideration.
You should remain in control of what you preserve and which future uses you authorise. The prototype includes removal controls for certain material, while complete production deletion and consent-withdrawal workflows are still being verified. Copies already downloaded by an authorised person cannot be remotely recalled, and backup-retention periods must be stated in the final policy.
Our proposed policy is not to use private archives, voices or likenesses to train general-purpose or third-party AI models without a separate, specific opt-in. Processing a recording to provide a requested function is different from training a general model. This policy still needs to be verified against the contracts and settings of every production provider before launch.
The aim is to let families keep a useful copy that does not depend on ESSENIAL continuing to operate. Regular downloads are therefore an important safeguard. A formal service-closure plan, including notice and export arrangements, is still being finalised. We should not promise perpetual hosting or automatic transfer to another provider before those arrangements exist.
The proposed offer is three months of free core access, with an extension to six months for completing a meaningful first-life-chapter milestone in the first fourteen days. The aim is to let you build and explore a real collection before deciding. Trial activation, exact milestones and end-of-trial arrangements are not yet live subscription terms and must be confirmed before enrolment.
The current pricing is framed around one ESSENIAL Person: €100 per year or €12 per month. Separate visitor charges, family bundles and additional-profile allowances have not yet been settled. Our provisional preference is to make ordinary invited family access part of the archive experience; the final inclusions must be clearly stated before anyone subscribes.
Practical limits will be needed to keep storage and processing reliable and affordable, but the final allowances have not yet been set. Any limits or additional charges should be shown clearly before purchase or upload. The prototype also has browser and device constraints, so it should not be treated as an unlimited storage service.
The current prototype export provides ordinary folders containing available stories, photographs, recordings, transcripts and structured data. You can keep and open those files without the hosted service. A friendlier HTML browsing format is planned. An independent copy does not automatically include interactive AI conversation, voice generation or other services that require a running application.
This is planned. You would choose a gentle reminder rhythm and a preferred time, then open a secure conversation when it suits you. The prototype saves scheduling preferences, but does not yet deliver real reminders. Invitations should be optional, easy to pause and free of private story details; they are not unexplained automated telephone calls.
This is a future, optional experiment. A younger portrait, supported by approved photographs, could present interview prompts or invite you to reflect on an earlier chapter. It would not have independent memories or know what you thought then. Separate consent, clear labelling and an ordinary interviewer alternative are essential before this mode is offered.
A connected timeline and family tree are planned to help organise people, places and events across the archive. The current Fact Check workspace already provides a place to record dates, relationships and source links. Future automatic suggestions should remain reviewable and visibly uncertain until checked, rather than turning an ambiguous memory into a definite fact.
This is a possible future programme, not a service currently being offered. A trained facilitator could help someone record stories in a calm, supported setting. Participation would need to be voluntary, with appropriate consent and safeguarding. The resident and authorised Steward—not the care provider automatically—should control the archive and decide who may access it.