Terms of Service

Ember — desktop, iOS, web, the sync and planning service, and the courses.

1. The agreement

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and the operator of Ember ("Ember", "we", "us"), currently the developer, reachable at hello@getember.space. They govern your use of the Ember desktop app, the Ember iOS app, the Ember web app at https://getember.space, the sync and planning service behind them, the courses served under the same domain, and anything else we make available under the Ember name (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, clicking to accept these Terms, or using the Service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. Our Privacy Policy explains what we store and why; it is part of these Terms.

The desktop and iOS apps work without an account. If you never sign in, the sections about accounts, sync, the planner and payment do not apply to you, but the rest still does.

2. Who may use Ember

• You must be at least 16 years old. If you are under 16, you may not create an account or use the Service, and we will delete any account we learn belongs to someone under 16.
• You must be able to form a binding contract where you live.
• You must not have been previously removed from the Service for breaking these Terms.
• If you use the Service on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you have the authority to bind it, and "you" means both you and it.

3. Your account

• Your account is yours alone. Keep your password private and do not share the account.
• You are responsible for everything that happens under your account until you tell us it has been compromised. If you suspect that, reset your password from any app: that signs out every other device.
• Give us a working email address. It is the only way to recover the account and the only way we can reach you about the Service.
• You may delete your account at any time from the app. That erases it and everything in it, immediately and permanently. We keep nothing to restore.

4. Your content

Everything you write in Ember — threads, notes, checklists, daily pages, goals, focus sessions, plans and conversations with the planner — is your content. You own it. We claim no rights in it beyond what is in this section.

So that the Service can work, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, copy, transmit and process your content only as needed to provide the Service to you: to sync it between your devices, to back it up, to hand it to the AI model when you ask for a plan, and to give it back to you as an export. This licence ends when you delete the content or the account, subject to the short deletion window described in the Privacy Policy. We do not use your content to advertise, to train models, or for any purpose you did not ask for.

You are responsible for your content. You confirm that you have the right to put it in Ember and that doing so breaks no law and no one else's rights.

5. What you may not do

You agree not to, and not to help anyone else to:

• Use the Service for anything unlawful, or to store content that is unlawful, that infringes someone's rights, or that you have no right to hold.
• Probe, scan, overload, disrupt or attack the Service, its servers, or the network they run on, or bypass any rate limit, quota, gate or security measure.
• Access the Service by any means other than the apps and the documented API, or scrape it, or build a product that resells or substantially replicates it.
• Reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the apps except where the law expressly allows it regardless of this clause.
• Use another person's account, or misrepresent who you are.
• Use the AI features to generate content that is harmful, deceptive, or that violates the usage policies of the model provider named in the Privacy Policy.
• Share, sublicense, rent or sell access to the Service or to the courses.

We may suspend or end your access without notice if we reasonably believe you have broken this section. Where the breach is minor and fixable, we will tell you first.

6. The planner and other AI features

Some features send your content to a third-party large language model and show you what it returns: the week planner, the day planner, the rescue tool, the coach, the goal and day conversations, and any similar feature we add. This section applies to all of them.

• It is a draft, not a decision. The model produces a suggested schedule or answer from the records you gave it. It can be wrong, incomplete, out of date, or simply a bad idea for you. You decide what to accept. Nothing it produces is advice of any kind: not medical, psychological, legal, financial or professional.
• It is not a person. Text produced by these features is generated by software. Where a feature talks to you conversationally, you are talking to a model.
• Review before you rely. A plan the model wrote may move, split or drop the things you told it about. Check it against your own commitments before you act on it.
• Usage is metered. Each planner run costs us money, so runs are limited by a trial quota and, in future, by a paid plan (section 8). We may change the model, the provider, the limits, or the availability of any AI feature at any time.
• The provider's own terms apply to their processing; which provider, and what is sent, is set out in the Privacy Policy.

7. Not medical care

Ember is a productivity tool. It is not a medical device, a therapy, a treatment, or a substitute for any of them.

Ember does not diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent ADHD or any other condition, and it has not been clinically validated. Its design is informed by behavioural research about attention and planning; that is not the same as a medical claim, and we make none. Nothing in the Service, in the courses, in a plan the model wrote, or in anything we publish is medical or psychological advice, and you should not treat it as such or delay seeking care because of it. If you are struggling, talk to a qualified professional. If you are in danger, contact your local emergency services.

You do not need a diagnosis to use Ember and we never ask for one. Using Ember says nothing about your health, and we infer nothing about it.

8. Trial, pricing and payment

Today, the apps and the sync service are free, and the AI planner is free up to a trial quota, which the app shows you. Beyond it, the app tells you how to ask for more.

We intend to charge for some parts of the Service in future. When we do:

• Prices, what they include, and any recurring billing period will be shown clearly before you pay, and again on any receipt.
• Purchases made inside the iOS app go through Apple, under Apple's terms and Apple's refund rules. Purchases made on the web go through the payment provider named at checkout, who will handle your card details; we never see them.
• A subscription renews automatically at the end of each period until cancelled. You can cancel at any time, and the cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. We will not raise the price of an existing subscription without telling you first and giving you the chance to cancel.
• Taxes may be added where the law requires it.
• Features that were free may move behind a paid plan. Your content is never held hostage: the export and delete controls always work, paid or not.

9. The courses

Study courses served under the Ember domain are part of the Service and are licensed to you, not sold. They are for your personal, non-commercial use. You may not copy, republish, share or resell their content, and the licence ends with your account. Course content is educational and carries the same "not advice" caveat as everything else here.

10. Our intellectual property

The Service — the apps, the code, the design, the text, the Ember name and marks, and the courses — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. These Terms give you a limited, personal, revocable, non-transferable licence to use the apps and the Service as they are meant to be used, and nothing more. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. Where an app or a library inside it is offered under an open-source licence, that licence governs that component.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, you agree we may use them without any obligation to you. Feedback is welcome and is not confidential.

11. Third-party services

The Service relies on providers we do not control: the hosting provider for the servers, the email provider that delivers sign-in codes, the AI model provider, Apple for the iOS app, and payment providers when we start charging. The Privacy Policy names them. Their outages are outside our control, and your use of Apple's services is also governed by Apple's terms.

12. Availability and changes to the Service

The apps are built to keep working without a network, and we work to keep the sync service up, but we do not promise it will be available at any particular time or without interruption. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the Service. If we discontinue the sync service entirely we will give at least thirty days' notice by email so you can export your data.

13. Ending the agreement

You may end it at any time by deleting your account, or simply by stopping. We may end it, or suspend your access, if you break these Terms, if the law requires it, or if we discontinue the Service. If we end it for a reason other than your breach, we will give you a reasonable opportunity to export your data first. Sections 4 (licence for content already processed), 7, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 survive the end of the agreement.

14. No warranty

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", with all faults and without warranty of any kind.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim every warranty, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that any plan, answer or other output will be accurate, complete or useful. This is a project maintained by a small team; it is offered on that understanding. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these disclaimers, in which case they apply only as far as that law permits.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue, goodwill or opportunity, arising out of or connected with the Service or these Terms, however caused and on any theory of liability, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability to you for all claims together, in any twelve-month period, will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us for the Service in that period and fifty dollars (USD 50).

In particular, we are not liable for a missed appointment, deadline, obligation or opportunity because of anything a plan or the app said or failed to say, for decisions you make in reliance on AI-generated output, or for content lost on a device we cannot reach. Keep your own backups of anything that matters: the export is one click.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for gross negligence where the applicable law does not permit its exclusion. Where the law where you live grants you consumer rights that these Terms cannot override, those rights apply.

16. Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, loss, liability, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your content, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or of anyone's rights. This does not apply where the claim results from our own breach or wrongdoing.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute that we cannot resolve informally will be brought exclusively in the courts of Ontario, Canada, and you and we each submit to their jurisdiction, except that either of us may seek an injunction or other urgent relief in any court that has jurisdiction. If you are a consumer whose local law gives you the right to bring proceedings where you live, or to have your local consumer law apply, nothing here takes that right away.

Before starting any formal proceeding, write to hello@getember.space and give us thirty days to try to sort it out with you. Most problems are a bug, and a bug is faster to fix than to litigate.

18. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service and replace any earlier one.
• Severability. If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest stays in force and the unenforceable part is read as narrowly as needed to make it enforceable.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not transfer these Terms or your account to anyone else. We may assign them to a successor that takes over the Service, and will tell you if we do.
• No third-party rights. Except as stated in section 19, no one other than you and us has any right under these Terms.
• Export control. You confirm you are not in a country, or on a list, that would make providing you the Service unlawful under applicable export and sanctions laws.
• Notices. We give notice by email to the address on your account or by a message in the app. You give notice by email to hello@getember.space.
• Language. These Terms are written in English. A translation, if we ever provide one, is for convenience; the English version controls.

19. Additional terms for the iOS app

If you use Ember on iOS, these additional terms apply, because Apple requires them. They apply between you and us, not between you and Apple:

• These Terms are between you and us, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content, and has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for it.
• Your licence to the iOS app is limited to a non-transferable licence to use it on Apple devices you own or control, as permitted by the usage rules in Apple's Media Services Terms and Conditions.
• If the app fails to conform to any warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app, if any, to you. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the app, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and consumer protection or similar claims.
• If a third party claims the app infringes their intellectual property rights, we, not Apple, are responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of that claim.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms with respect to the iOS app and may enforce them against you.
• You must comply with any applicable third-party terms when using the app.

20. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms. When we change their substance, the effective date below changes, the previous version stays in the project's public history, and the app asks you to accept the new version before you continue. Continuing to use the Service after accepting is agreement to the changed Terms; if you do not agree, delete your account or stop using the Service. Wording fixes that do not change the substance may be made without asking again.