Frequently Asked Questions

synqology offers a comprehensive set of standard cognitive metrics, including:

• Focus
• Energy
• Cognition
• Mood
• Motivation
• Sleep quality
• Stress levels
• Exercise performance
• Gut function
• Libido

Additionally, anyone can create custom metrics to track anything specific to your goals, such as creativity, verbal fluency, or meditation quality. Custom metrics are free for all users.

synqology integrates with Apple HealthKit to provide a more comprehensive view of your health and cognitive performance. After granting permission, synqology can access and analyze various health metrics, including:

• Sleep duration and quality
• Heart rate and heart rate variability
• Physical activity and step count
• Active energy burned
• Mindfulness minutes

These health metrics are automatically synced with your trial data, allowing you to see correlations between your physical health and cognitive performance. For example, you might discover that your focus scores are significantly better on days when you get more deep sleep.

Apple Watch integration is built-in to synqology, and our scientific testing model is now fully launched and available. synqology offers tremendous value even without an Apple Watch - you can still manually track and analyze all cognitive metrics like energy, focus, mood, and any custom metrics you create. Our scientific trial methodology and AI insights work just as effectively with self-assessed data.

synqAI is an AI chat assistant that combines your personal health data with evidence from 12,000+ peer-reviewed studies. It analyzes:

• Your supplement trials and controlled experiment results with statistical validation
• Dose-response relationships and optimal timing for YOUR biology
• Apple Watch health metrics (HRV, sleep, heart rate) correlated with supplement effects
• Scientific research relevant to your specific supplements and practices
• Long-term trends and patterns in your data

Every recommendation is backed by published research with citations. Your health data (supplements, trials, assessments) is securely stored in encrypted Google Cloud Firestore. When you chat with synqAI, this data is analyzed by AI to generate insights—the AI processing is temporary and anonymized (no personal identifiers sent), but your underlying data remains safely stored for future analysis. The more data you track, the more personalized and accurate the insights become.

The Stack Builder feature is accessible by asking synqAI to build a supplement stack for you. synqAI can help you create and track custom combinations of nootropics, supplements, and practices. With synqAI's Stack Builder, you can:

• Get AI-powered recommendations for supplement combinations based on your goals
• Combine multiple individual components into a single stack
• Track the stack as a single entity for simplified logging
• Run trials on the entire stack to measure its overall effectiveness
• Compare the stack's performance to individual components
• Refine the stack based on your results and AI recommendations

Simply chat with synqAI and ask it to help you build a stack tailored to your specific needs.

Trials in synqology are based on scientific research methodology. Here's how they work:

1. Setup: You select a nootropic, practice, or stack to test, along with the metrics you want to track. You can track standard metrics (focus, energy, mood, etc.) or create custom metrics specific to your goals.
2. Trial Period: During this period, you take the supplement or perform the practice while tracking your selected metrics.
3. Control Period: During this period, you don't take the supplement or perform the practice, but continue tracking the same metrics to establish a baseline.
4. Assessment: You rate your selected metrics on a scale from -2 to +2, where 0 represents your baseline, -2 is significantly worse, and +2 is significantly better.
5. Analysis: synqology compares your metrics during the trial period to the control period to determine the actual effect of the intervention.

This methodology helps eliminate the placebo effect and provides more objective results than simple tracking. Users can create custom metrics to track anything specific to their goals.

The optimal trial length depends on what you're testing:

• Acute effects: For nootropics with immediate effects (like caffeine or L-theanine), trials can be as short as a few days to a week.
• Cumulative effects: For supplements that build up in your system (like Lion's Mane or Bacopa Monnieri), trials should last at least 2-4 weeks.
• Practices: For practices like meditation or exercise, 2-4 weeks is typically sufficient to see effects.

Control periods should generally match the length of the trial period for the most accurate comparison. synqology provides recommendations for trial length based on what you're testing, but you can customize the duration to fit your needs.

The optimal frequency for logging metrics depends on what you're tracking:

• Immediate effects: For metrics that change quickly (like focus or energy), logging shortly after taking a supplement and then again a few hours later can capture both immediate and sustained effects.
• Daily metrics: For metrics that are more stable throughout the day (like mood or sleep quality), once-daily logging is usually sufficient.
• Health data: HealthKit data is automatically synced based on your settings, typically ranging from hourly to daily.

synqology allows you to set up custom assessment schedules for each metric, with options for immediate, minutes, hours, or days after dosing. The app will send you reminders based on your schedule to ensure consistent tracking.

Yes, synqology allows you to export your data in CSV format, which can be opened in spreadsheet applications like Excel or Google Sheets. The export includes all your tracking data, including:

• Nootropics, practices, and stacks
• Doses and timestamps
• Metric assessments
• Health data (if HealthKit integration is enabled)
• Trial and control period information

This feature is available to all users and can be accessed from the Settings menu. The exported data is yours to keep, analyze further, or share with healthcare professionals.

The accuracy of insights and recommendations depends on several factors:

• Data quantity: More data generally leads to more accurate insights. Longer trials and more consistent tracking provide better results.
• Data quality: Honest and consistent assessments improve accuracy. The app's -2 to +2 scale helps standardize your ratings.
• Trial design: Well-designed trials with appropriate control periods yield more reliable results.
• Individual variation: Everyone's biology is unique, so insights are personalized to your data.

Each insight includes a confidence score that indicates the statistical reliability of the finding. The AI is designed to be conservative, prioritizing accuracy over quantity of insights. Remember that while synqology provides powerful analysis, it's not a substitute for medical advice from healthcare professionals.

Yes, your privacy is our top priority. synqology uses a hybrid storage model:

• Without synqAI chat: ALL data stays on your device - we collect nothing
• With synqAI chat: Supplements, practices, trials, and assessments are stored in Google Cloud Firestore to enable personalized AI analysis
• Apple HealthKit data: Uploaded to Firestore to enable AI analysis of correlations with supplements and practices

Privacy guarantee:

• We do not store any personal identifiers including your email address
• Firebase Authentication for secure access control
• Firestore data encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest
• No personal identifiers shared with AI services

You can export or delete your Firestore data at any time from within the app.

Your data storage depends on which features you use: Device Storage (Always):

• All app data is stored locally on your iOS device using SwiftData
• Protected by iOS's built-in security features and device encryption
• Apple HealthKit data uploaded to Firestore for analysis

Cloud Storage (Only when using synqAI chat):

• Google Cloud Firestore: Stores supplements, practices, stacks, trials, controls, dose logs, metric assessments, and custom metrics
• Purpose: Enables synqAI to analyze your experiments, provide personalized recommendations, and maintain conversation history
• Security: Encrypted in transit and at rest, protected by Firebase Authentication
• Note: HealthKit data (HRV, sleep, heart rate, steps, etc.) is uploaded to Firestore to enable AI-powered health insights

AI Processing:

• When you chat with synqAI, your Firestore data is sent to AI services (Google Gemini) for analysis
• AI processing is temporary - insights are generated in real-time and not retained by the AI provider for training purposes
• Your underlying health data remains securely stored in Firestore (encrypted at rest with AES-256)
• No personal identifiers (name, email) are shared with AI providers - only health data context

How we handle your HealthKit data:

• Uploaded to Firestore: Apple HealthKit data (HRV, sleep stages, heart rate, steps, active energy, etc.) is uploaded to Google Cloud Firestore
• Purpose: Enables AI to analyze correlations between your supplements/practices and objective health outcomes
• Security: Encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3), stored in HIPAA-compliant infrastructure
• Permission Control: HealthKit data is only accessed after you explicitly grant permission for specific data types
• Revocable: You can revoke HealthKit permissions at any time through iOS Settings
• Your Control: Delete all your data (including HealthKit) anytime by contacting us

What synqAI analyzes:

• Your manually-entered supplements, practices, trials, and self-assessments
• Your HealthKit metrics (HRV, sleep, heart rate, etc.) to identify correlations with supplements/practices
• Scientific research citations to provide evidence-based recommendations

Our use of HealthKit complies with Apple's guidelines and all data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Yes, you have complete control over your data. You can:

• Delete individual entries (doses, assessments, etc.)
• Delete specific trials or nootropics along with their associated data
• Export your data before deleting it if you want to keep a backup
• Perform a complete data reset from the Settings menu
• Delete your account entirely, which removes all your data from our systems

All deletion operations are permanent and cannot be undone, so we recommend exporting your data first if you think you might want it in the future.

synqology offers the following subscription options:

• Free Plan: $0 - All tracking features, unlimited trials & controls, advanced analytics, Apple Watch integration, 5 synqAI chat messages per month
• Pro Subscription: $2.99/month - All features + 75 synqAI chat messages per month
• Pro Max Subscription: $8.99/month - All features + 1000 synqAI chat messages per month

All tracking features are free. The only difference between plans is the number of synqAI chat messages. Subscriptions are billed monthly and can be canceled anytime.

The free plan includes all app features except unlimited AI chat:

• Unlimited trials and controls
• Custom metrics creation
• Full Apple Watch data integration
• Advanced analytics and visualizations
• Scientific trial methodology
• Data export
• iCloud sync
• 5 synqAI chat messages per month

All tracking features are free. Upgrade to Pro or Pro Max for more synqAI chat messages.

The Pro and Pro Max subscriptions provide more synqAI chat messages:

• Pro ($2.99/month): 75 synqAI chat messages per month - Perfect for regular users who want consistent AI insights
• Pro Max ($8.99/month): 1000 synqAI chat messages per month - Best value for power users who rely heavily on AI guidance

All other features are included in the free plan:

• Unlimited trials and controls
• Advanced Apple Watch data integration
• Advanced analytics and visualizations
• Scientific trial methodology
• Custom metrics

The only difference between plans is synqAI chat message limits.

You can cancel your subscription at any time through your Apple ID settings:

1. Open the Settings app on your iOS device
2. Tap your name at the top
3. Tap "Subscriptions"
4. Find synqology in the list and tap it
5. Tap "Cancel Subscription"

When you cancel, you'll continue to have access to Pro features until the end of your current billing period. After that, your account will revert to the free plan, but you'll keep all your data.

If you downgrade from Pro or Pro Max to the free plan:

• All your data is preserved
• You'll still be able to view all your historical data
• All tracking features remain available (trials, controls, analytics, Apple Watch integration, custom metrics)
• Your synqAI chat messages will be limited to 5 per month instead of 75 (Pro) or 1000 (Pro Max)

The only change is the reduction in synqAI chat message limit. All other features remain fully functional. You can export all your data anytime if you want a complete backup.