Talking to Apocrypha

Apocrypha answers questions in your browser. No account is required to ask one.

Asking a question

Open apocky.com/apocrypha and type. Answers are generated on a machine Apocky runs, not a hosted API, so a reply takes longer than a commercial chat product — usually tens of seconds rather than an instant. The page shows that it is working while it waits.

What happens to what you type

Signed out, the visible thread lives in your own browser and will not follow you to another device. The question itself does reach the server: it is stored as a work item so the machine can pick it up and answer, and the reply is stored with it. Those records are deleted automatically after 30 days. No account is attached to them — a signed-out visitor is identified only by a random value in a cookie, and even that reaches the database only as a one-way hash.

Nothing you type is used to train a model. Each answer carries a receipt stating that, which the page checks before showing you anything — if a reply arrives without it, the reply is discarded rather than displayed.

Note

Signed out has limits, on purpose

One machine answers every question, so signed-out visitors share a short hourly budget and can have one question in flight at a time. If you hit it, the page says so and tells you when to try again. Signing in raises the limit and keeps your history.

What signing in changes

An account moves your conversation off the browser and onto the server, so it is the same conversation on your phone, your desktop, and the apps. It also raises the per-hour limit. It does not change who answers or how.

Memory

Apocrypha reads from a record of earlier work when a question touches it, and it is expected to name the record it relied on. If it has nothing relevant, the correct answer is that it does not know — not a guess. Signed-out conversations are answered from a separate partition that cannot reach Apocky’s own records.

The apps

The Windows and Android previews run the same conversation; current availability for each platform, iPhone included, is listed on the downloads page. See the app downloads. The apps talk to the same machine as the website; they are not a separate assistant.

Important

This is one machine, not a service

Apocrypha runs on hardware in one room. If that machine is off or busy, the website will tell you it could not take your message. That is the honest state of it rather than a queue that silently never returns.