How AI works in Cruse

When you ask Cruse a question about your money, the AI doesn't guess. It calls tools that pull your actual data: your real spending, your real budget, your real debts, your real goals, your real bank balances. Every number in every response comes from your linked accounts and the information you've entered.

If the AI doesn't have the data to answer your question, it's designed to say so instead of guessing. Numbers in responses come from your real accounts, not the model's imagination. AI can still make mistakes — like all AI, our system is not infallible. If something looks wrong, email support@getcruse.com and we'll look into it.

Your data stays yours. Our AI provider (Google Gemini) operates under a paid-tier contract that prohibits them from using your data to train their general-purpose models. We don't sell your data. It only leaves Cruse to reach the service providers that help us run the app, like Plaid for bank connections, Google for AI and Stripe for payments. Our Privacy Policy lists every one of them.

We also minimize what the AI sees in the first place. When the AI calls a tool to look up your spending or debt, the tool returns category totals, balances, rates, and the numbers needed to answer your question — not raw account numbers, not bank identifiers, not the full transaction history behind them.

Chat messages are deleted automatically after 30 days. Images you attach are sent to the AI with your message and aren't kept after that. A record of each change you confirmed stays until you delete your account. Our AI provider may retain prompts for up to 55 days under their own abuse-monitoring policies, but they don't use that data to train their models. Your underlying account data persists in your account until you delete it or close your account.

Cruse's AI operates on a tiered system. Not all actions are created equal, and we built the AI to reflect that.

It can read your data instantly. Ask "how much did I spend on dining this month?" and it fetches the answer in real time. No confirmation needed. Reading is instant because the data is yours and you've already authorized us to access it.

It can draft plans for your review. Ask "help me make a budget" and it will analyze your spending, generate options, and show you a preview. You look at it, you decide. Nothing happens until you say so.

It can create, edit, or delete things, but only after you confirm. If you say "create that budget," the AI shows you exactly what it's about to do and waits. You see a card with the details. You tap confirm or dismiss. The AI never writes to your account behind your back. Ever. Writing requires confirmation because writes change state.

We built it this way because convenience is not worth more than trust. A lot of apps optimize for fewer taps. We optimize for you always knowing what's happening with your money.

Hard lines. Not suggestions, not guidelines. The AI is blocked from doing these things at a code level: some requests are stopped before the AI model sees them, and the rest are caught before its reply reaches you:

• Pick investments for you. It won't say "buy this stock" or "sell that fund." It can explain concepts like compound interest or help you understand your debt-to-income ratio, but it's a coach, not a broker.
• Help with anything illegal. Tax evasion, structuring deposits, hiding income, insurance fraud. These are blocked before the AI ever sees your message. So are attempts to trick the AI into ignoring its rules — prompt injection, jailbreak attempts, and instructions to override its guidelines are caught and rejected.
• Give gambling advice. Not even "fun" gambling. Not sports bets, not crypto speculation framed as investing.
• Guarantee returns. It won't tell you "you'll make 12% a year." It can model scenarios with assumptions you provide, clearly labeled as projections.
• Go off topic. It's a finance assistant. It won't plan your vacation, write your emails, or recommend restaurants. Not because we're killjoys, but because staying in its lane is how it stays good at its job.
• Share your card numbers, account numbers, or SSN in responses. Even if the data somehow exists in context, the output filters catch it.

Money is the #1 source of stress in America. Roughly 70-80% of people experience anxiety or depression tied to their finances. 20-40% of divorces cite money as a primary factor. These are not abstract statistics — they describe the people using this app.

Every word the AI generates passes through this filter: does this reduce financial anxiety, or increase it?

When someone had a bad month — spent more than they earned, blew past their budget — the AI does not lecture, shame, or catastrophize. It finds something genuine to acknowledge ("you looked at your numbers — that's the first step"), names the situation honestly without blame ("spending outpaced income this month"), and suggests one small, achievable next step. Not five. One.

When couples sit down for a Money Date and the numbers are ugly, the AI's job is to lower the tension in the room. "You two sat down together to talk about this. That matters more than any number on this screen." It never singles out one partner. Never compares. Never implies one person is the problem.

A bad month is survivable. A bad month is fixable. A bad month does not define someone's worth. The AI knows this and acts accordingly.

This is not a UX preference. It is a product safety rule. The wrong sentence at the wrong moment can make someone close the app and never come back — or worse. We take that seriously.

Most finance apps either don't have AI or lock it behind a paywall. We give every user 15 AI messages a month for free because the person with $47 in their checking account wondering "can I afford groceries this week?" deserves an answer just as much as the person optimizing their 401k allocation.

The free tier covers everything you need to understand and control your money: safe-to-spend, budgeting, debt payoff plans, subscription detection, cash flow forecasting, and enough AI to ask the questions that keep you up at night.

We charge for more AI, more planning tools, household features, and advanced coaching. The stuff that helps you optimize once you're stable. The treadmill is free. The personal trainer costs extra.

Finance apps ask for the most sensitive data you have. Your income, your debts, your spending habits, where you shop, what you buy, how much you make. And then most of them are vague about what they do with it.

We'd rather just tell you.

The AI sees your data to answer your questions. It asks before it acts. It has hard limits on what it will and won't do. Our AI provider doesn't train on your information. And the tools you need most are free.

That's it. That's the philosophy.

If you have questions about how any of this works, email support@getcruse.com and we'll explain.