Terms of Service

Accepting these terms

By creating an account or using taleseal, you agree to these terms and to our Acceptable Use Policy, which is part of this agreement. If you don’t agree, don’t use the service.

To use taleseal you must be at least 18 years old and capable of entering into a binding contract. If you’re using taleseal on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you have authority to bind it, and “you” means that organisation too.

Some sections give extra protection to consumers. You’re a consumer if you’re an individual using taleseal wholly or mainly outside your trade, business, craft or profession.

You agree to give us accurate account information and keep it up to date.

What taleseal is

taleseal publishes tales: pages composed for you, usually by an AI tool (a write-up, a report, an answer, a piece of work explained). A tale may contain text, tables, charts, diagrams, code, images and whatever else you put in it. Tales can carry your brand (section 11) and can be revised: the reader keeps one stable link while you publish new versions behind it. We call tales your content in these terms.

You sign up with an email address and a password (or an emailed sign-in link), create API keys (usually by approving a CLI login in your browser, or from your dashboard) and publish through our CLI, SDK or HTTP API. Publishing always requires an API key.

You choose what to publish. The CLI shows you a preview before anything leaves your machine, and you should redact secrets and anything sensitive before publishing.

We’re actively developing taleseal, so the service will change over time: features may be added, altered or removed. If we ever decide to discontinue the service, we’ll give you reasonable notice so you can retrieve or retract your content.

Your account and API keys

You’re responsible for keeping your password and API keys secret and for everything published with them. If a key is compromised, revoke it straight away and tell us. We store API keys hashed (SHA-256) and show them to you only once, at creation. We can’t recover a lost key, only replace it.

We may suspend or restrict your account or keys if we reasonably believe they’re being used abusively, in breach of these terms, or in a way that threatens the service or other users.

Your content

You own your content. Publishing on taleseal doesn’t transfer any ownership to us.

So that we can run the service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display and distribute your content and any brand assets you give us, but only as needed to operate taleseal and only as directed by you (for example: serving a page to anyone who has its URL, honouring its expiry, applying your brand to your tales, and destroying it when you retract it). The licence ends when the content is removed, except for copies in routine backups for a short period and the tombstone record described in section 7.

When you publish, you warrant that:

• you have all the rights needed to publish it;
• it contains nothing unlawful;
• it contains no third-party confidential information or personal data you’re not permitted to share; and
• any logo, name, colours or other brand assets you upload or apply are yours to use, or you have permission from whoever owns them.

How sharing works: read this bit

Tales are unlisted, not private. Every page gets an unguessable URL. There is no public listing or index, and the pages send noindex headers to discourage search engines. But:

• anyone who has the URL can view the page, no login required;
• once you (or anyone you’ve shared it with) pass the link on, we can’t control where it goes; and
• we are not liable for anyone viewing a page via a link that you or your recipients shared.

Expiry

You can set an expiry (expiresAt) when you publish. After expiry the page is no longer served, and the record is deleted.

Retraction: permanent, by design

You can retract at any time. Retraction permanently destroys the body and leaves a tombstone in its place: the URL returns HTTP 410 (“Gone”) so that the address never pretends the page didn’t exist. Retraction destroys every version, not just the current one. Retraction is irreversible. We cannot restore retracted content, and we won’t try.

One honest caveat: retraction removes the content from taleseal, but copies cached, archived or saved elsewhere (browsers, archives, screenshots, third-party crawlers) are outside our control.

Reports and takedowns

If you believe something published on taleseal infringes your copyright or other rights, impersonates you or your brand, contains your confidential information or personal data without consent, or is otherwise unlawful, email us at [email protected] with the URL, what the problem is, and enough detail for us to assess it.

We operate a notice-and-takedown process consistent with UK law (and we’ll honour properly substantiated copyright notices from any jurisdiction, in the spirit of the DMCA). We may remove or disable access to any content that we reasonably believe breaches these terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, or the law, with or without notice, though we’ll notify the publisher where we reasonably can.

Acceptable use

Our Acceptable Use Policy is part of these terms. In short: no unlawful content, no malware or phishing, no other people’s secrets or personal data, no pretending to be a brand or person you aren’t, no abuse of the platform. Breaching it is a breach of these terms.

Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect and how we handle it under UK GDPR. In brief: we run on Fly.io with a Neon Postgres database, passwords are hashed with scrypt, API keys are stored only as SHA-256 hashes, and card details go to Stripe and never to us.

What it costs

Tales are free: unlimited tales, unlimited readers, the CLI and the SDK, all at no charge.

One thing is paid: putting your brand on your tales. That’s $5 a month per account, VAT included, charged in US dollars. (Brands saved before 17 July 2026 keep working without a subscription: that was the deal when they were saved.)

• How ordering works. You subscribe through a Stripe checkout page, which shows the price and lets you review and correct your details before you confirm payment. Confirming creates the contract, and we email you a confirmation with these terms and your cancellation rights. We contract in English. We don’t file the contract separately, so keep that email.
• Stripe handles payment. Your card details go to Stripe and never to us. We hold a customer reference and whether your subscription is active.
• It renews monthly until you cancel. The price is the one shown when you subscribe; if we ever change it, we’ll tell you at least 30 days before it applies to you, and you can cancel before it takes effect.
• Cancel any time from the billing portal in your dashboard. Branding is yours while your subscription is active, and until the end of any period you’ve already paid for. We don’t refund part-months on ordinary cancellation.
• Fourteen-day money-back. If it isn’t for you and you’re within 14 days of your first payment, email [email protected] and we’ll refund it in full. No questions, no forms.
• If a payment fails, Stripe retries and emails you for about two weeks. If it still fails, the subscription ends. Nothing you’ve published is deleted, and your tales stay up.

No warranty

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, with no service level agreement and no uptime guarantee. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all warranties, conditions and other terms that might otherwise be implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, satisfactory quality and non-infringement. We don’t promise the service will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, or that data will never be lost. Keep your own copies of anything you can’t afford to lose.

If you use taleseal as a consumer: we will provide the service with reasonable care and skill, and nothing in this section takes away any right the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you. The exclusions above apply to you only so far as the law allows.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profits, loss of business, loss of data, or loss of goodwill arising from your use of (or inability to use) the service; and
• our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to these terms or the service is capped at £100 or the amounts you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim, whichever is greater.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law of England and Wales, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and, if you are a consumer, your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

If you are a consumer, none of this excludes our liability for loss caused by our failure to provide the service with reasonable care and skill, and the exclusion of loss of data applies to you only so far as the law allows.

Indemnity

You’ll indemnify us against losses, liabilities and reasonable costs (including legal fees) arising from third-party claims caused by (a) content you publish, or (b) your breach of these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy. We’ll tell you promptly about any such claim and won’t settle it without giving you a reasonable opportunity to be heard. This section does not apply if you are a consumer.

Termination

By you: you can stop using taleseal and delete your account at any time. If you’re paying, cancel first (or deleting the account cancels it), and see section 11 for what happens to branding.

By us, for cause: we may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, if we’re required to by law, or if your use puts the service or others at risk. For severe abuse we may act immediately; otherwise we’ll try to warn you first.

By us, without cause: we may also terminate this agreement for any other reason on at least 30 days’ notice. If we do that while you’re paying, we’ll refund a pro-rata share of your current billing period, calculated by days remaining.

Effect on your content: when your account is terminated, your tales stop being served. Retracted content keeps its tombstone (that’s the point of it). Sections that by their nature should survive, including 4 (your warranties), 12–14, 17 and 19, survive termination.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time, and only for good reason: for example, changes to the service, changes to the law, or changes to how we’re required to operate. When we do, we’ll post the new version on the site and update the “Last updated” date at the top. If a change is material, we’ll flag it prominently (for example, a notice on the site or an email to account holders) with reasonable notice before it takes effect. Continuing to use taleseal after a change takes effect means you accept it; if you don’t, stop using the service and delete your account. If you’re paying and a change materially disadvantages you, you can cancel and we’ll refund a pro-rata share of your current billing period, calculated by days remaining.

Governing law

These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from the service, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you’re a consumer, this doesn’t take away protections you’re entitled to under the mandatory laws of the country you live in, or your right to bring a claim in your local courts.

If your content contains personal data: how we process it for you

For personal data inside the content you publish, you are the controller and we are your processor: we store and serve it only on your instructions, as set out in these terms. This section is our data processing agreement for that data, as UK GDPR Article 28 requires.

• Subject matter and duration: hosting and serving your tales (and the run data they draw on) for as long as they exist on the service.
• Nature and purpose: storage, display and distribution to people holding the URL, exactly as sections 4–7 describe. We never use content for our own purposes.
• Sub-processors: the providers listed in the Privacy Policy (section 6), which you authorise. If we add one, we’ll update that list; object by closing your account.
• Confidentiality and security: the controls at /security, and our people access content only to operate the service or handle a report.
• Deletion: retraction destroys content immediately; account deletion removes everything (Privacy Policy, sections 7–8). We tell you here, once, that backups age out within days; that’s the Article 28 notice.
• Assistance: if someone exercises data-subject rights against you about content you published, we’ll pass on anything we receive and help where we reasonably can. Usually the help you need is retraction, which you can do yourself, instantly.

The boring-but-necessary bits

• Entire agreement. These terms (with the Acceptable Use Policy and Privacy Policy) are the whole agreement between us about the service, and replace any earlier understandings.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we don’t enforce a right straight away, we haven’t given it up.
• Assignment. You may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to a successor of the service or our business, and we’ll tell you if we do.

Annex: model cancellation form

To use your statutory right to cancel (section 11), you can (but don’t have to) copy this into an email:

To: Nikic Company (UK) Limited, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, [email protected]

I hereby give notice that I cancel my contract for the supply of the following service: taleseal branded-tales subscription.

Ordered on: [date]
Name of consumer: [name]
Address of consumer: [address]
Date: [date]