OrbitsWell

Orbit Reflect guide

How to use Orbit Reflect

A practical guide to using Reflect as a private place for journaling, everyday feeling capture, goals, optional BYO-key AI, and sharing only what you choose.

Updated June 23, 2026 User guide Local-first app

Quick read

Orbit Reflect is a private journaling and personal signals app. It helps you record your own words, capture everyday feelings, connect notes to goals, and optionally use your own AI provider key when you want help organizing a reflection.

Reflect is local-first. OrbitsWell does not require an account, does not hold your journal on an OrbitsWell server, and does not receive your AI key. If you use optional AI, selected content goes directly from your phone to the provider you configure.

Problems Reflect solves

You want a private place to write

Use Reflect for full journal entries, quick notes, and short captures that do not belong in a public feed, productivity system, or shared chat.

You want to notice feelings without scoring yourself

Reflect's feeling capture is observational. It uses everyday language and avoids severity scores, diagnosis language, and clinical interpretation.

You want goals in your own words

Goals are personal commitments you can revisit, not performance badges. Link entries to goals when it helps you see what matters over time.

You want help turning messy notes into something usable

Optional BYO-key AI can help clean up or structure selected text, but you review, edit, save, or discard the result. It is never the default path.

Capture modes

Full entry

Best for deliberate writing: a day review, a situation you want to understand, or a longer reflection you may want to search later.

Quick note

Best when you need to park a thought before it disappears. Capture the sentence now and decide what it means later.

Log feeling

Best for fast check-ins. Start with valence, optionally add an emotion label, then add note text or tags only if useful.

Guided entry

Best when a blank page is too much. Use a conversational writing flow, then review the proposed entry before anything becomes a normal journal entry.

How to use Reflect

  1. Choose the lightest capture that fits. Use a feeling log for a moment, a quick note for a thought, and a full entry for something you want to unpack.
  2. Write in your own language. Reflect works best when you record what you noticed, not what you think an app wants to hear.
  3. Add labels only when they help. Emotion chips, tags, and goals should make the entry easier to find or understand later. Skip them when they add friction.
  4. Review before saving or sharing. Whether text came from you or optional AI, make the saved entry say what you actually mean.
  5. Revisit patterns gently. Look for repeated themes, goals, and feelings. Treat them as prompts for reflection, not as scores or proof.

AI and sharing

Reflect remains useful without AI. If you choose to configure optional AI, you bring your own provider key, store it on your device, and decide exactly when selected content is sent to that provider. OrbitsWell does not proxy the request, receive the key, or store the prompt or output on an OrbitsWell server.

Sharing is also deliberate. Use Reflect to prepare a note, edit what should leave the app, then choose the destination through the iOS share sheet. Do not treat sharing as backup; keep exports and device backups separate if you need durable preservation.

What Reflect cannot do

  • It cannot provide therapy, diagnosis, treatment, medical advice, or crisis response.
  • It cannot interpret your emotions as clinical facts or tell you what caused them.
  • It cannot promise that no third party ever processes content if you explicitly send selected text to your own AI provider or share it elsewhere.
  • It cannot recover a private cloud copy of entries that OrbitsWell never stored.

If there is immediate danger, call local emergency services. In the United States, call 911. If you are in suicidal crisis or emotional distress in the U.S., call or text 988 or use 988 chat.

Sources checked

These sources informed the privacy, AI, safety, and product-boundary language above. OrbitsWell is not affiliated with these organizations.

  1. Federal Trade Commission, "Mobile Health App Developers: FTC Best Practices". Used for privacy-by-design and clear user communication expectations.
  2. HealthIT.gov, "Model Privacy Notice". Used for the importance of transparent privacy disclosures in consumer-facing apps.
  3. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "General Wellness: Policy for Low Risk Devices". Used for the general-wellness boundary around non-diagnostic software.
  4. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, "Get Help". Used for U.S. crisis-support routing.