Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are an agreement between you and SecondBrainWare LLC, a Washington limited liability company ("SecondBrainWare", "we", "us" or "our"). They cover your use of IdeaM on the web, on Mac, and on iPhone and iPad, together with our websites and related services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, ticking the box that says you agree, or using the Service, you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle personal information. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

If you use the Service on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these Terms for it, and "you" includes that organisation.

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are under the age at which you can enter a binding contract where you live, you may use the Service only with the permission of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms for you.

You may not use the Service where the law prohibits it, or if we have previously ended your access for breaking these Terms.

Some features need an account. Please give accurate information when you sign up and keep it current. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details secure and for activity under your account. If you believe someone else has used your account, tell us promptly at support@2ndbrainware.com.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings in the app. Deleting your account removes your sign-in account and the records linked to it on our servers, apart from those we need to keep, such as a record of your agreement to these Terms. Outlines stored on your device stay on your device until you remove them.

IdeaM is currently in an invite-only beta. We review applications and decide who receives access. During the beta, and afterwards, we regularly improve the Service: features may be added, changed, limited or removed, and some may be marked as early or experimental. Beta software can contain errors, so please keep your own backups (see section 6).

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve the Service without any obligation to you.

You own your content. Everything you create, write, import or upload — outlines, notes, documents, recordings and the results you generate from them (your "Content") — remains yours. We claim no ownership of it.

Your outlines are stored locally on your own device by default. Some features send Content off your device, and only when you use them — for example an AI request, a transcription, or publishing a share link.

You give us a limited permission to handle your Content only as needed to operate the features you choose to use: to store, process, transmit and display it for you, and to pass it to the service providers that carry out your request (see sections 7 and 9). This permission ends when the Content is no longer needed for that purpose, except for copies kept briefly in routine backups or where the law requires us to keep them.

You are responsible for your Content, and you confirm that you have the rights needed to use it with the Service.

Because your outlines live on your device, you control them — and you are responsible for keeping them backed up. We recommend keeping your IdeaM files in a location that is backed up automatically, such as iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or Time Machine.

IdeaM keeps local snapshots as a safety net. Snapshots live on the same device, so they are not a substitute for an independent backup and do not protect against loss, theft or failure of the device.

If you use IdeaM in a web browser, your outlines are stored inside that browser on that device. Clearing the browser's site data, using a private window, or the browser reclaiming storage can erase them. Export your work regularly (see section 13).

IdeaM includes optional AI features, such as drafting, summarising, restructuring, answering questions about your outlines, transcription and audio generation. When you use one, the Content needed for that request is sent to an AI provider to produce the result. Our Privacy Policy names the providers we use.

AI output can be wrong. It can be inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or inappropriate for your purpose, even when it reads confidently. Treat it as a draft: review and check it before you rely on it, publish it, or send it to anyone. You are responsible for how you use AI output. It is not professional advice — legal, medical, financial, tax or otherwise.

AI features depend on outside providers and may change, slow down, be limited or become unavailable. Some AI features have usage limits, which we show in the app.

You can connect your own account with an AI provider by adding your own key. When you do, requests made with that key go to your provider under your account with them. Your provider bills you directly for that use, at their rates, and you are responsible for those charges. Your use of that provider is also governed by your agreement with them; we are not a party to it.

Large requests — for example, long documents or premium models — can cost more. Your provider's own dashboard shows your usage, and most providers let you set a spending limit, which we recommend.

The Service relies on other companies — for example for sign-in, hosting, email, AI and crash reporting — and can connect to services you choose, such as your own email or AI accounts. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for services we do not control, and a change or outage at one of them can affect the features that depend on it.

When you use the Service, please do not:

• break the law, or infringe anyone's intellectual property, privacy or other rights;
• create or share material that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, defamatory or exploits anyone;
• use AI features to deceive people, or to produce spam or malware;
• try to get into accounts, data or systems that are not yours;
• interfere with the Service, overload it, or get around its usage limits, security or access controls;
• copy, resell or reverse-engineer the Service, except where the law allows it; or
• use the Service to build a competing product or to train an AI model.

If we reasonably believe these rules have been broken, we may limit or suspend access while we look into it, and we will tell you where we can.

The Service itself — the software, design, text and branding — belongs to SecondBrainWare and its licensors. While you follow these Terms, we give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use it for your own personal or internal business purposes. This licence covers our software only; it gives us no rights in your Content beyond those in section 5.

Access during the beta is by invitation. We plan to offer paid plans later. When we do, the price, what the plan includes, how billing and renewal work, and how to cancel will be shown to you before you pay, and you will choose whether to sign up. Those details will form part of these Terms for anyone on a paid plan.

Charges from your own AI provider when you use your own key are separate and are covered in section 8.

You can export your data at any time. IdeaM saves your outlines in an open, readable format and can export them to common formats; Settings → Privacy & Data saves a complete copy of your outlines and settings in one file. Your right to export does not end if your account is suspended, ends, or you decline updated Terms.

You can stop using the Service at any time, and you can delete your account from Settings.

We may suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these Terms, if the law requires it, or if continuing would create a real risk for other users or for us. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you first and give you time to export your data. We may also discontinue the Service or a feature; if we discontinue the Service, we will give reasonable notice.

Sections that by their nature should continue after the agreement ends — including sections 5, 13 and 15 to 20 — continue to apply.

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure, that data will never be lost, or that AI output will be accurate or suitable for your purpose.

Some places do not allow certain warranties to be excluded, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

To the fullest extent the law allows, SecondBrainWare and its members, managers, employees and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising from or related to the Service or these Terms, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims arising from or related to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for the Service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars (US$50).

These limits apply whatever the legal theory of the claim. They do not limit liability that the law does not allow to be limited, such as liability for fraud, or for gross negligence or wilful misconduct where the law requires.

To the extent the law allows, you agree to defend and compensate SecondBrainWare and its members, managers and employees for claims, losses and reasonable costs (including legal fees) brought by someone else that arise from your Content, your misuse of the Service, or your breach of these Terms or of anyone's rights.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising from or related to these Terms or the Service will be heard only in the state or federal courts located in King County, Washington, and you and we agree to the jurisdiction of those courts. If you are a consumer, this does not take away any protection you have under the mandatory laws of the place you live.

Before starting a formal dispute, please write to us at support@2ndbrainware.com so we can try to resolve it informally.

We may update these Terms as the Service and the law change. When we do, we post the new version on this page with a new version number and effective date. When the changes affect you, the app will show you a short summary of what changed and ask you to accept the new Terms to continue using your account.

If you do not want to accept updated Terms, you can stop using the Service. You can still export your data and sign out; your outlines on your device remain yours.

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any terms shown to you for a paid plan, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up. You may not transfer these Terms to someone else without our agreement; we may transfer them as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of our business, and we will tell you if we do. Neither of us is responsible for delays caused by events beyond reasonable control.

Questions about these Terms can be sent to support@2ndbrainware.com or by post to: