Terms of Service

1. The agreement

These terms are a contract between you and Project LDB Ltd ("Pilcrow", "we"), a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16997534) at 20 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7GU. They apply when you create an account or use the Pilcrow app or website. The Privacy Policy is part of them.

Who may use Pilcrow. You must be at least 13, or the age of digital consent where you live if that is higher, and able to enter a contract. If you use Pilcrow for an organisation, you confirm you may bind it to these terms.

Your account. You sign in with a Google or Apple account. One account is for one person. You are responsible for what happens under it, and for keeping your Google or Apple account secure. Tell us at help@writepilcrow.com if you think someone else has used it.

Free tier. Without a subscription you can use Pilcrow with the limits shown in the app and on our pricing page, currently 2 projects you own, 50 Lexicon entries per project and 1 plotline per project. We may change those limits with 30 days' notice. If a subscription ends while you have more than 2 projects, they become read-only until you choose 2 to keep writing in or subscribe again. We will never delete writing because of a plan change, and you can always read and export it.

2. Your writing is yours

You own everything you write, import or upload to Pilcrow, and every right in it. We claim nothing.

Our licence. So that the service can work, you give us a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, sync, back up, display to you and process your content, only for the purpose of providing Pilcrow to you. The licence ends when the content is deleted from our systems, except for backups, which expire within 30 days.

What we will not do. We do not read your writing except when you ask us to help with a specific problem, or when the law requires it. We do not use your writing to train machine-learning models, sell it, or share it with anyone for their own purposes. Pilcrow has no generative AI features.

Export. You can export any project at any time, in the formats your plan includes. DOCX export is available on every plan, so you can always take your writing with you. We will never hold your content hostage to a payment.

Your responsibility. You confirm you have the right to use what you put into Pilcrow, and that it does not break any law or anyone's rights.

3. Plans, payment and the subscription that ends

Standard. Standard is our one paid plan. It costs US$10 a month, US$80 a year, or US$160 once. Paddle shows the price in your local currency at checkout and adds any tax that applies.

Credit toward owning Pilcrow. Every subscription payment you make is recorded as credit, counted in months: a monthly payment adds 1 month and an annual payment adds 12. When your credit reaches 24 months, you own Standard: your subscription ends and you keep Standard for good. If a renewal would take you past 24 months, we charge only for the months you have left. You can also complete your purchase in the app at any time, and the months you have paid come off the one-time price. Credit:

• counts only payments actually received, less any refunds;
• cannot be withdrawn, transferred, or exchanged for cash;
• is not an account balance and earns no interest;
• may in future also come from referrals or promotions, on the terms we publish for them.

The one-time purchase. Completing the purchase gives you a personal, non-transferable licence to use the Standard features of the Pilcrow app for as long as we offer it, with no further payment. It covers the app and its sync service. It does not cover services we later offer at a separate price, such as collaboration, which will have their own terms and pricing. If we ever shut Pilcrow down, we will give you at least 90 days' notice and a way to export everything.

Subscriptions renew. A monthly or annual subscription renews automatically until you cancel. You can cancel in Settings at any time; you keep Standard until the end of the period you have paid for, and your credit stays on your account. Switching between monthly and annual takes effect immediately, and the difference is prorated.

Paddle. Our checkout is run by Paddle.com Market Ltd, the merchant of record. Your purchase is from Paddle, and Paddle's buyer terms apply to it alongside these. Paddle handles payment, tax and invoices.

Refunds. You can get a full refund within 14 days of any payment, including a renewal or a one-time purchase, for any reason. Ask at paddle.net or at help@writepilcrow.com. After 14 days, payments are refundable only where the law requires it. A refund removes the matching credit; if that takes your credit below 24 months, or refunds a one-time purchase, your account returns to the free tier. Nothing in this section limits rights you have under consumer law. Our refund policy says the same.

Price changes. We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice by email. A change applies from your next renewal. A one-time purchase already completed is never affected.

4. Acceptable use

Pilcrow is a writing tool, and what you write is your business. The few rules are about the service, not your prose. You may not:

• use Pilcrow to store or share material that is illegal where you or we are, or that infringes someone else's rights;
• attack, probe, overload or interfere with the service, or try to get access to accounts or data that are not yours;
• reverse-engineer, copy or resell the service, or build a competing product from our code or assets;
• automate access to the service beyond ordinary use of the app, without our written permission;
• share one account between several people, or sell, lend or transfer your account or your one-time licence.

If you break these rules we may suspend or close your account. Unless the law prevents it, we will tell you why and give you a chance to export your writing first.

5. A local-first service

Pilcrow keeps your writing on your device and syncs a copy to our servers. That shapes what we can promise.

• Offline works. You can write without a connection. Changes sync when you reconnect, and when the same text is changed on two devices while offline, the later change wins.
• We keep a synced copy, not an archive. Our servers hold the current state of your writing and the version history your plan includes. They are not a substitute for your own backups. Export important work regularly.
• Signing out wipes the device. When you sign out, the local copy on that device is deleted. Anything that had not synced yet is lost. Wait for the sync indicator to settle before signing out.
• Availability. We aim to keep the service running but do not promise uninterrupted service. We may take it down for maintenance, and we will give notice where we can.
• Changes to the app. We improve Pilcrow continuously and may add, change or remove features. We will not remove the ability to export your writing.

6. Ending things

By you. Stop using Pilcrow whenever you like. Cancel a subscription in Settings. To delete your account, use Settings, then Account, or email help@writepilcrow.com from the address on the account. Deleting cancels any subscription, then deletes your account, your writing and your settings; backups expire within 30 days, and we keep only the billing records the law makes us keep. Deleting your account forfeits any credit and ends a one-time licence.

By us. We may close your account if you break these terms, if the law requires it, or if the account has been inactive for [24 months] on the free tier after we have emailed you twice. Except where the law prevents it, we give at least 30 days' notice and keep export working during that time.

After closure. Your writing is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy. Sections 2 (ownership), 7 (liability and law) and anything else that by its nature should continue, do.

7. Liability, law and changes

What we promise and what we don't. We will provide Pilcrow with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows, the service is provided as it is, without other warranties. We do not promise it will be error-free, or that it will suit a particular purpose.

Limit on our liability. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for lost profits, lost data that you could have exported, or indirect losses, and our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to the amount you paid us in that period, or US$100 if you paid nothing. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or anything else that cannot be limited by law.

Indemnity. If someone brings a claim against us because of content you put into Pilcrow, or because you broke these terms, you will cover the losses and reasonable legal costs that result. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you take over its defence. This does not apply where consumer law does not allow it.

Consumer rights. If you are a consumer, you have rights under the law of your country that these terms do not take away.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes go to the courts of England and Wales, unless consumer law gives you the right to use your local courts.

Changes to these terms. We may update these terms. For changes that reduce your rights or add obligations, we will email you at least 30 days before they take effect, and you may close your account before then. Continuing to use Pilcrow after that date means you accept the new terms. The date at the top is the version in force.

Contact. Project LDB Ltd, 20 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7GU, help@writepilcrow.com.