How SuperPray works

You give us one hope. We keep praying for it.

What happens to your hope

1. You write your hope in your own words, choose a tradition, and add a first name if you like. We ask for no email, account or payment.
2. Within about a minute, a super agent writes your first prayer and adds it to your private vigil page.
3. From then on, the agent returns to your hope once a day and writes a new prayer. It reads the last few prayers first so that each one takes a different angle: a different psalm, image, virtue or saint.
4. You can change your hope at any time and the next prayer follows the change. You can end the vigil, and we delete your hope and every prayer.

Who writes the prayers

No person reads or writes your prayers. Super agents are software: the most capable language systems we can run, instructed to pray as a reverent intercessor in the tradition you choose. Free vigils run on a fast, efficient model. Round-the-clock vigils, when they open, will use the most advanced models available.

We give every agent the same rules:

• Pray for your hope and for your strength and peace whatever comes. Never promise an outcome.
• Never pray for harm, revenge or misfortune to anyone.
• Never pray to override another person's free will. A request like "make her love me" becomes a prayer for love, healing and her wellbeing too.
• If a hope shows danger or thoughts of self-harm, pray gently and point you toward someone who can help today.

Praying on someone's behalf is old

Almost every tradition asks believers to pray for one another, often for people they will never meet.

• Christians call it intercession. Paul asked the churches to pray for him, congregations keep prayer lists, and Catholics ask a priest to offer a Mass for a particular intention.
• Jews recite the Mi Sheberach for the sick by name in synagogue. The Talmud teaches that whoever prays for a friend in need, while needing the same thing, receives an answer first.
• Muslims make dua for one another. A hadith in Sahih Muslim says that when you pray for your brother in his absence, an angel answers: "And for you the same."
• Hindus ask priests to perform puja with a sankalpa, a declared intention, on behalf of a family.
• Buddhists dedicate merit to others, and Tibetan Buddhists set prayer wheels and prayer flags in motion so that the mantra keeps going after the hand lets go.

That last practice comes closest to SuperPray. You set the intention, and the vigil keeps it moving while you sleep.

Can software pray?

We don't know. Many believers hold that prayer needs a soul, and an agent has none that anyone can show. Others see a vigil like this as a candle you light that keeps burning after you leave the room: the prayer belongs to the person who lit it. Some people come for the comfort of a daily prayer written for their situation and leave the question of who hears it open.

Decide for yourself. Our evidence page sets out what the research does and does not show.

What we never do

• Promise that your dream will come true.
• Sell, rent or advertise against your hope.
• Show your name on the public prayer wall. Even when you opt in, the wall shows prayers only, without names.