The reason I kept the free tier basic is that I wanted to create a "Trust Bridge." In a niche like addiction recovery, asking for $9.99 upfront is a huge hurdle because users have a lot of "privacy trauma" from apps that mine their data. By keeping the free tier as a simple, gamified logger, people can verify for themselves that the app actually respects their anonymity before they ever open their wallet.

To answer your question about the differentiation:

No Email Required: This is the big one. I collect zero PII (no name, no phone, no email). You register with just a username. Even if my database leaked, there is nothing there to link a user’s private mental health logs to their real-world identity. I even encrypt sensitive data at the application level as an extra layer of defense.

The "Cold Start" Solution: The free tier acts as the data collector. Recovery often starts with the manual act of just "showing up" and logging. Once a user decides to upgrade, the AI doesn't start from zero—it "wakes up" with all that historical data already available to find patterns that a human might miss.

Sustainability: LLM tokens and vector storage aren't free, and since I refuse to monetize through ads or selling behavioral profiles, the Premium tier is what keeps the lights on. I’d rather be transparent about charging for AI intelligence than have a "free" app that secretly sells your data to gambling networks to pay its API bills.

Essentially, the free tier is a secure safety net for anyone at rock bottom who just needs a private place to track a streak, while Premium is for those ready for active, strategic analysis.