Are my screenshots stored? What happens to them in Flash Forge

Your screenshots are not stored. In Flash Forge, the images you pick are resized on your iPhone, sent for analysis, processed in memory and discarded as soon as the reading is done. AgentSoul keeps only what it made from them: your reading and your four agent files.

Because chat screenshots are personal, here is the full journey of an image, from the moment you tap it in the picker to the moment it disappears.

Step by step: the life of a screenshot

1. You choose. Flash Forge opens the native iOS photo picker. You select 3–10 screenshots of your own chats. The app receives only those images, not the rest of your library.
2. Your phone shrinks them. Each image is resized on the iPhone before it leaves, which keeps the upload small.
3. You have already agreed. The first time you forge, a consent screen explains that your screenshots will be sent to Google’s Gemini API. Nothing is sent before you tap “Agree and continue”.
4. The AI reads them in memory. The images go to the Gemini API for analysis. AgentSoul’s server handles them in memory only — they are never written to its database, file storage or logs.
5. The reading is saved, the images are dropped. Once the analysis finishes, the images are discarded. The app does not keep copies in its own storage on your phone either.

What AgentSoul does keep

After a Flash Forge reading, three kinds of information remain on AgentSoul’s servers, linked to your phone’s hashed device ID:

• The derived report: the signals the analysis found, a written synthesis, your soul’s archetype-style name, its voice, pushback and priority traits, and the four files — soul.md, identity.md, user.md and agents.md.
• The number of screenshots you used.
• A SHA-256 fingerprint of the upload set. It works like a seal: the same set of images always produces the same fingerprint, so duplicates can be spotted, but the fingerprint cannot be turned back into the pictures.

That is all. No thumbnail, no copy of the text in your screenshots, no list of the people who appear in them.

How the analysis treats what it reads

Chats always involve other people. The analysis is instructed to focus on your messages — how you phrase things, how you decide, what you care about — not on the people you are talking to. It is also instructed to paraphrase rather than quote screenshot text, so your report describes patterns instead of reproducing sentences.

Still, the safest screenshot is one that contains only what is needed. Before you pick, consider cropping out phone numbers, addresses or anything another person told you in confidence. Use only material you have the right to share. Chats where you write at some length — explaining, planning, deciding — tend to say more about you than one-word replies, so you rarely need anything sensitive to get a good reading.

Want to see it work without your own chats?

On the Flash Forge screen, “Try it with sample chats” loads built-in fictional chats so you can watch a reading being forged without choosing any screenshots of your own. The sample chats are still sent to the AI for analysis, so the consent screen applies to them too, but none of your personal content is involved.

If you change your mind later

Since the images are already gone, there is nothing image-related to delete. If you also want the reading removed, open Settings and choose “Delete my data”: every soul, report and device record linked to your phone is permanently deleted. You can also withdraw AI consent in Settings so that nothing more is sent.

“The ore goes into the fire and does not come back out. Only the blade remains.”