Epictetus' oldest claim: an event doesn't reach you directly. Between what happened and what you feel sits a judgment you added — and that judgment, unlike the event, is yours to revise. Assent walks a hot reaction back through the Stoic sequence so you can see what you added, and choose what to keep.
"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the opinions about things." Two people meet the same event and feel opposite things — because they judged it differently.
A raw appearance hits automatically — "he disrespected me," "this is a disaster." You didn't choose it.
Before agreeing it's true, examine it: what's the bare fact, what did I add, is it even up to me?
Sign only for the judgment that survives — a defensible reappraisal, then one act that's yours.
"She didn't reply" is the observation. "She's angry at me" is the inference you added. "This is unbearable" is the judgment you stamped on it. Only the first is the event.
The dichotomy of control — split the situation into what's up to you (your judgment, your next action, your effort) and what isn't (outcomes, other people, the past). Withdraw your peace from the second; pour your energy into the first.
Cognitive distortions — the reasoning check, aimed at emotion. A distortion is a fallacy committed against yourself: catastrophising, mind-reading, fortune-telling, all-or-nothing, emotional reasoning ("I feel it, so it's true"), and rigid should/must demands. This is the Stoic root of CBT — Ellis and Beck both credited Epictetus.
A cleared judgment isn't the goal — acting well is. The reframe ends by naming which virtue the moment asks of you, and the one next step that's entirely yours.
Assent is a reflection tool, not therapy or crisis support. Reframing means demoting a distorted judgment — never denying a real harm. Genuine injustice and grief are real and can survive the check. If you're in crisis or facing abuse, please reach a trusted person, a professional, or a crisis line (in the US, call or text 988) — that's the wise next act, not a reframe.
Every reframe is prompted from a knowledge base distilled from these sources — the Stoics themselves and the modern teachers and therapists who carry the practice forward — so the guidance stays faithful to them. The full distilled notes live in /kb alongside this file.
Assent runs its interview and reframe through an AI model. In hosted mode it uses this site's own backend, so you need no key. Or bring your own — the key is stored only in this browser (localStorage) and sent directly to the provider, never to any server of ours. Without a key you can still use the manual worksheet.
Hosted — the default. Calls a Gemini backend on this site's server, so visitors need no key. (Works only when served, not opened as a bare file.)
Gemini (your key) — free key at aistudio.google.com/apikey. Default model gemini-2.5-flash. Works even offline / as a standalone file.
Claude (your key) — key at console.anthropic.com. Default model claude-sonnet-4-5. (Direct browser access.)