Frequently Asked
Questions

Career & professional decisions (job changes, starting a business, quitting, promotions), relationship decisions (marriage, divorce, ending friendships), financial decisions (investments, debt, major purchases), relocation decisions (moving cities or countries), and seeking-input posts where you haven't yet decided and want collective wisdom.

Your decision enters a moderation queue, gets approved, and is published to the archive. It becomes searchable and will appear in other users' AI reports when relevant. You'll receive automated follow-up emails at 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years asking how you feel about the decision now. These follow-ups are the core of what makes The Regret Index unique - the longitudinal arc.

The regret level is a 0–10 scale. 0 means zero regret - you'd make the same decision again immediately. 10 means profound regret - you'd undo it without hesitation. Most decisions cluster in the 2–7 range, and interestingly, many people report lower regret at the 3-year mark than at the 1-year mark, as outcomes become clearer and adaptation sets in.

You can update your regret score and add context via your dashboard. Core details like the decision type and year are locked after publication to preserve data integrity. If you need to remove a post for privacy reasons, contact us through the support page.

Follow-ups are the heartbeat of The Regret Index. At 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years after your submission date, you'll receive an email with a unique link asking you to revisit your decision - update your regret score, share what's changed, and reflect with new perspective. Follow-up responses are attached to your original post so others can see the full arc.

An AI Insight Report is a personalised analysis generated by querying the archive with your specific situation. You describe your decision scenario, and our AI searches thousands of similar real decisions - matching on category, context, regret patterns, and outcomes - then synthesises the findings into a structured report covering common regret triggers, what went right for people who don't regret it, red flags from those who do, and a regret probability curve.

Reports are only as good as the data behind them. For popular decision categories with hundreds of cases (career changes, relationship endings, major purchases), the reports are rich and nuanced. For niche scenarios with fewer matches, the AI will tell you the match count is low and widen its search parameters. We never fabricate data - all insights are grounded in real archived decisions.

Free accounts receive 3 AI Insight Reports per week. Pro subscribers get unlimited reports. You can also purchase credit packs: 10 reports for $5 or 50 reports for $19, which never expire.

Yes. Every generated report can be shared via a unique public link. The shared version is read-only and doesn't require the viewer to have an account. Reports can also be saved to your dashboard for future reference.

Reports are generated by OpenAI GPT-4o-mini using semantic search over embedded decision vectors. In high-load periods, we fall back to Cloudflare Workers AI (Llama 3.1). The underlying archive search uses vector similarity to find the most contextually matched decisions - not just keyword matching.

We collect the information you voluntarily submit: your decision details, regret score, reflective text, and optional demographic context (age at decision, country, income bracket). Account data includes name, email, and authentication method. We do not sell your data to third parties. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

Approved decisions are publicly visible on the archive by default. If you want to submit privately - visible only to you - use the 'Private' toggle at submission. Private decisions are excluded from the public archive and AI reports but are still included in your personal dashboard and follow-up schedule.

Yes. You can export your data at any time from your account settings, then request full deletion. Deleted account data is purged from live systems within 30 days. Anonymised aggregate statistics derived from your data (e.g., category-level regret averages) may be retained as they cannot be linked back to you.

No. Your submitted decisions are used to populate the archive and generate reports for you and other users, but they are not used to fine-tune or train any external AI model. We use the OpenAI and Cloudflare APIs with standard data processing agreements.

Never. Your email is used only for account authentication, follow-up notifications, and optional weekly digests. It is never displayed on the platform and is never shared.

Free accounts can browse the full archive, use semantic search, submit decisions, participate in follow-ups, leave comments, save and upvote decisions, and receive 3 AI Insight Reports per week. There is no credit card required to start.

Pro ($9/month) unlocks unlimited AI Insight Reports, an Expert badge on your profile (if you have verified domain expertise), and priority access to new features. Pro is ideal for frequent users, coaches, and anyone actively navigating complex decisions.

The Researcher plan is a B2B offering for academics, HR firms, therapists, insurers, and data science teams. It provides API access to anonymised aggregate decision data, custom export capabilities, and dedicated support. Contact us to discuss Researcher plan pricing and data access terms.

Credit packs are one-time purchases for users who want extra AI reports without a monthly subscription. 10 reports cost $5, and 50 reports cost $19. Credits never expire and roll over month to month.

You can cancel anytime from Account Settings → Billing. Your Pro access continues until the end of the billing period. No questions asked, no cancellation fee.

You can register with an email and password, or sign in with Google, GitHub, or LinkedIn OAuth. All methods produce a single unified account - you cannot have duplicate accounts for the same email across providers.

After registration, a verification email is sent to your address. Click the link or enter the 6-digit code on the verification page. If you don't receive it within 5 minutes, check your spam folder or request a resend from the verification screen.

Usernames can be changed once every 30 days from Account Settings → Profile. Note that your old username URL (/user/old-username) will stop working, so update any links you've shared.

Your Wisdom Score reflects the collective value of your contributions - upvotes received on your decisions and advice, comment helpfulness ratings, and consistency of follow-up responses. It's not a vanity metric; high Wisdom Scores surface your posts higher in relevant searches.

From Account Settings → Notifications you can independently toggle: follow-up reminders, weekly digest emails, comment notifications, new follower alerts, and activity on decisions you've saved. All notifications are opt-out - you can disable any or all of them.

Go to Account Settings → Privacy → Export My Data. You'll receive a JSON file containing all your decisions, comments, reports, and account metadata within 24 hours.

All submissions go through an AI-assisted moderation pass before being published. Our AI flags content that appears fabricated, harmful, or off-topic. Flagged posts are reviewed by the admin team. Additionally, community members can flag posts they believe are inaccurate or harmful, which triggers a secondary review.

We do not permit fabricated decisions presented as real, content designed to harass or identify specific individuals, graphic descriptions of self-harm or violence, spam or commercial promotion, and decisions that are clearly fictional or hypothetical presented as genuine experience.

Yes. Following a user means their new submissions appear in your feed. You can manage follows from any user's public profile page or from your dashboard.

'Same Situation' is a signal you can send to a decision author indicating that you're currently facing the same decision they faced. It's not a comment - it's a quiet acknowledgment that helps the author know their story is relevant and helps the system surface high-stakes, relateable decisions.

Clusters are curated groups of thematically related decisions - for example, 'leaving a stable job to freelance' or 'moving abroad for a relationship'. They're editorial collections that surface patterns within a specific life scenario, going deeper than category tags alone.

Yes. We have a Researcher plan designed for academic and institutional use. It provides access to anonymised aggregate datasets, decision-level metadata (without PII), and regret arc statistics over time. Published research using our data should cite The Regret Index in its methodology.

Yes. We expose an MCP-compatible API at /api/ai-mcp/v1/ for AI agent integrations, and we publish AI-readable endpoints at /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt. Full API access for programmatic data retrieval is part of the Researcher plan. Contact us for API documentation and authentication.

Each decision record contains: the original regret score, up to three follow-up scores at 1yr/3yr/5yr intervals, demographic context (age range, country, income bracket, industry), outcome text, and category tags. Regret arc analysis across the full dataset reveals which decision types have the highest regret decay, which remain stable, and which worsen - data unavailable anywhere else.

Yes, for HR firms, therapists, insurers, and employee wellbeing platforms. Commercial data licensing is negotiated on a case-by-case basis depending on the intended use, data scope, and duration. Reach out via the Researchers page or contact form.