What the magic beans do
Tap the orange + button (or a ✨ Magic beans button on a page), then type or paste into the box that opens, or attach a photo or file, and tap Send. Give beanies one thing — a photo, a file, a link, or some text you pasted. A party invitation, a flight itinerary, a hotel confirmation, the details from a class-group message. beanies works out what it is for you, pulls out the key details, and opens a pre-filled activity, trip or recipe to check and save, or, for a bank statement, a list of its transactions to check before anything is added. You never have to say which it is first. As you probably guessed, it's not actually magic: it's secure, private AI. It only ever runs on the one thing you pick, and nothing is sent until you tap Send.
Picked a PDF? beanies reads its first few pages — not just the first — so a return flight on page two or a second day's plan gets picked up too. Very long PDFs read the first several pages, and either way the full original document stays attached to whatever it creates, so nothing is lost. A photo is read as a single image.
One bean per thing you hand over
Every time beanies reads something for you, that counts as one magic bean — one photo, one document, one link, one piece of pasted text. Several photos of the same invitation are one thing, so they are one bean. (A bank statement is the exception: it is read page by page, one bean per page, see Bank statements below.) Finding duplicates in a shopping list is free: tapping ✨ Find Duplicates never uses a magic bean. It counts even when beanies cannot work out what it is: we still read it for you, and counting it is what keeps "paste it again and again until something sticks" from being free for everyone else.
If beanies decides your recipe is a trip, or your invitation is a recipe, tap Tell beanies what it is on the review screen and pick the right one. beanies reads it again, properly this time — and that second read is free, because the mistake was ours, not yours. One free correction per thing you hand over. (Re-reading something as a bank statement is not free: it costs one bean per page, and beanies says so before it starts. A read where beanies simply could not tell has no free retry — nothing was got wrong, so there is nothing to correct.)
If you bring your own AI provider (BYOK) or run a model on your own device, your reads go to your provider and are paid for by you, so they are not counted against a beanies allowance at all.
What we send
- Only the one photo, document or piece of text you chose for that action.
- Never the rest of your family's data — your accounts, activities, trips, members, and notes never leave your device for this.
- Nothing is sent until you confirm. You can decline and fill it in by hand.
Bank statements are one exception, and beanies asks you about it first. To suggest categories you already use, beanies sends the names of shops and payees your family has filed before, and the category each went under. It never sends amounts, dates, account numbers or anyone's name. A statement is read page by page, so each page is one bean, and the statement sheet tells you how many before anything is sent. (If you have switched off the privacy check in Settings, that sheet appears only for your first statement; after that the page count shows as each page is read.) The statement itself is not kept, by the AI service or by beanies.
Shopping lists are the other exception, and beanies asks you about it first too. When you tap ✨ Find Duplicates on a week's shopping list, beanies sends the ingredient lines on that list, exactly as they read, so the AI can spot the same item written two ways (like "500 g ground beef" and "250g lean ground beef"). It never sends recipe names, meal dates or who's eating. The AI only says which lines match; it never writes amounts. Every merged line is built on your device from your own lines, and you see it before anything is saved. (If you have switched off the privacy check in Settings, beanies still asks the first time.) Finding duplicates is free.
Where it goes
On the default setting, what you picked is encrypted in transit and sent to a private, secure AI service that processes it and keeps nothing. It passes through a beanies server on the way, which holds it only for the moment it takes to forward it, and stores nothing. If you bring your own AI provider (BYOK), it goes straight to that provider instead, using your key, and never touches a beanies server.
The AI service processes your document inside a secure, attested environment - hardware that the company running the servers cannot see into - and retains nothing after it answers. Your document is encrypted every time it crosses the network. We are working towards encrypting it so that only that secure hardware can open it, and not even our own server could read it in between.
How your data is kept secure
On the default setting, what you picked is read by a specialist AI model running inside attested confidential-compute hardware. It is a sealed environment, built on AMD SEV-SNP and Intel TDX chips, that the company operating the servers cannot see into. It is encrypted on the way there and back, read only to pull out the details, and then it is gone.
- Sealed processing: your document is decrypted and read only inside the attested enclave, not on an ordinary server someone could log into.
- Encrypted in transit: it is encrypted on the way to the enclave and on the way back.
- Nothing kept, nothing trained on: the AI service retains nothing once it has answered, and never uses your data to train its models.
- You can verify it: the enclave publishes a live attestation, a cryptographic proof of exactly what hardware and code are running, so the privacy promise is not just our word for it.
- Or skip it entirely: bring your own AI provider and key (BYOK) and your document goes straight to your provider, never through ours.
Today that secure hardware is provided by Tinfoil, a privacy-focused AI host whose enclaves both we and you can verify on every request. If we ever change providers, it will only be to one that meets the same verifiable standard. We try to be precise rather than boastful: the AI genuinely does read your document to pull out the details, but that only ever happens inside sealed, verifiable hardware, and nothing is kept.
What happens afterwards
The AI service does not retain any data or information. A photo or document you picked is saved only with your own family's data file, and attached to the activity, trip, or other item it created, so you can find it later. You can remove it before saving if you'd like. Text you shared is used to fill in the form and is not kept separately.
The “don’t ask again” choice
Ticking "don’t ask again" in the consent box turns off the AI consent prompt for your whole family, not just your device, because the setting is shared with your family data. You can turn the prompt back on any time in Settings → AI & Privacy.