How this tool works

Where your writing lives

Everything you type is saved in your browser's localStorage, a small storage space on your own device. There are no accounts, no logins, no database, no analytics, and no cookies beyond what the framework itself requires. Your professor cannot see your entries. The app's creator cannot see your entries. Nobody can, unless you print, export, or show them yourself.

Because storage is per-device and per-browser, your work will not follow you from your laptop to your phone. Use the JSON export on your Motivational Map if you want to move or back up your work.

What the AI sees and does

When you press “Ask for one question,” the app sends three things to a language model (hosted by Groq): the name of the phase you're in, the prompt you were answering, and the single answer you just wrote. That's all. It never receives your name, your other answers, or your saved history. The request is not stored on our side, and the model is instructed to respond with exactly one short question.

The AI is deliberately not allowed to write, rewrite, summarize, interpret, or code anything for you. Dr. Thomas's framework reclaims A.I. as Authentic Intelligence: insight excavated from your own memory, not generated for you. If you ask it to do your work, it will warmly turn the request back into a question.

If you never press the button, nothing you write leaves your device at all.

What this app will never have

No gradebook, no instructor dashboard, no data collection, no social feed, and no points, streaks, or badges. Extrinsic rewards would contradict the Self-Determination Theory foundation of the whole framework, so they are left out on purpose.

If the digging gets heavy

Memory mining can surface hard memories. You always choose what to dig into and what to leave in the ground. If something heavy comes up, AU's Counseling Center is free and confidential: american.edu/counseling.

The symbols and colors in this tool

The marks you see throughout are Adinkra symbols, a visual system of proverbs and values from the Akan peoples of Ghana (Asante and wider Akan traditions), most famously stamped on adinkra cloth. Ghanaian scholars encourage their use in teaching, with one condition this page exists to honor: a symbol should always travel with its name and meaning, never as anonymous decoration. Meanings are living and context-dependent; the readings below are traditional associations, not the only ones.

• Akoben: the war horn; a call to readiness and action. Anchor of the Akoben Declaration.

• Nsaa: a fine hand-woven cloth; genuineness known by its texture. Anchor of the Nsaa Excavation.

• Wawa Aba: the seed of the wawa tree; toughness and perseverance. Anchor of Identification.

• Nkyinkyin: twisting; adaptability along a winding path. Anchor of Contextualization.

• Sankofa: the bird reaching back for its egg; retrieving what is valuable from the past. Anchor of the Reflections and of the whole protocol.

• Nyansapo: the wisdom knot, untied only by the wise. It marks the one-question elicitor. Ghana's KNUST university carries it in its own emblem.

• Ananse Ntontan: the web of Ananse the storyteller spider; wisdom, creativity, and life's complexity. It marks the Pop Culture Excavator.

• Mate Masie: “what I hear, I keep”; wisdom held through deep listening. It marks the Glossary Time Machine.

• Aya: the fern, which grows where little else can; endurance and resourcefulness. It sits beside the note about heavy memories.

• Nea Onnim No Sua A, Ohu: “he who does not know can know from learning”; lifelong education. It marks this page.

The color bands are drawn from kente, Ghana's royal woven cloth. In the mapping recorded by Ghana's National Commission on Culture: gold carries royalty, wealth, and spiritual purity; red, sacrifice and struggle; green, renewal and growth; blue, peace and harmony; black, maturity and the strength of the ancestors. Each phase of The Dig wears one of these. This app deliberately keeps a bright, festive palette on a light ground: in Asante tradition, dark red-and-black cloth belongs to mourning, and that is not what this tool is for.

Attribution

Sankofian Memory Mining for Motivational Awareness, created by William N. Thomas IV, Ed.D. The framework, its phase names, its Adinkra anchors, and its sequence are Dr. Thomas's intellectual property. This app is a delivery scaffold for his protocol, built for EDU 205 (Schools and Society) at American University.