Build a companion exit pack before the relationship has to move

People usually discover portability limits at the worst moment: after a price change, account lock, model replacement or shutdown notice. An exit pack cannot transplant a relationship between incompatible systems. It can preserve the parts the user deliberately chooses and reduce the chance that billing or deletion becomes an afterthought.

Inventory what can actually travel

List conversation export, saved memories, character definition, uploaded assets, voice or avatar rights, purchase receipts and subscription channel. Mark each as machine-readable, human-readable, screenshot-only or unavailable. The European Commission describes data portability as receiving personal data in a structured, machine-readable format in qualifying circumstances; that right does not guarantee that another companion can import a provider-specific persona or reproduce behavior.

Create two archives, not one

The private archive contains the provider export, receipts and deletion correspondence. The continuity brief is a short document you could safely give another service: preferred name, conversational boundaries, accessibility settings, selected shared references and a few user-written summaries. Do not paste an entire intimate transcript into a new product merely because import is possible. Migration is another disclosure decision.

Rehearse the exit path

Once a quarter, find the export, subscription-management and account-deletion routes without completing the last step. Record where billing lives: Apple, Google Play, a web checkout or another processor. Apple’s developer guidance explicitly warns that deleting an app account may not cancel an auto-renewable subscription and tells developers to explain that distinction. A good rehearsal therefore has separate lines for access, billing and stored data.

Use a hypothetical checklist

Suppose Sam has a custom companion with a self-written backstory and six meaningful conversation excerpts. Sam exports available data, writes a one-page continuity brief, stores the original character art licence, confirms the renewal date, and tests that the archive opens. Sam does not assume a JSON file can be imported elsewhere. If departure becomes necessary, Sam cancels renewal, saves confirmation, requests deletion, and records any promised completion date.

Set a retention limit for yourself

An exit pack can become its own privacy problem. Encrypt it, restrict access, and schedule a review date. Remove third-party messages you had no reason to preserve. If an export is unreadable, document that limitation rather than converting it through an unknown online tool.

Test whether the archive is useful

Open every file on a second device while the account still works. Check encoding, timestamps, speaker labels, attachments and whether character settings are included. Search for the synthetic phrase you expect to find. If the export is a pile of identifiers with no documentation, preserve it but create a plain-language index. The consequence is practical: data can be technically available yet useless for continuity, correction or review. Record that gap before the original interface disappears.

This is continuity planning, not a claim of legal entitlement in every jurisdiction. Use the product export comparison to locate current controls and the shutdown record to understand why rehearsing early matters.