CardIntel Terms of Use
Effective date: [DATE]
Draft — needs review by a California attorney before publishing.
<!-- Placeholders to fill before publishing: [BUSINESS LEGAL NAME], [MAILING ADDRESS], [SUPPORT EMAIL], [DOMAIN], [DATE]. Every open choice is listed in DECISIONS.md. -->These Terms of Use ("Terms") are an agreement between you and [BUSINESS LEGAL NAME], a sole proprietorship based in Santa Barbara, California ("CardIntel", "we", "us"). They cover your use of the CardIntel web app at [DOMAIN] (currently cardintell.vercel.app) and the AI assistant inside it called "Ace" (together, the "Service").
By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
1. What CardIntel is
CardIntel is a bookkeeping and inventory tool for sports-card dealers. You enter your own cards, costs, sales, fees, expenses and contacts. The Service does the math (profit, margin, totals), shows "comps" (recent sold prices for similar cards gathered from public sold listings) and lets you ask Ace questions about your own data.
CardIntel is a tool. It is not an appraiser, broker, accountant, tax adviser, financial adviser or marketplace. We do not buy, sell, grade or hold cards.
2. Who can use it
- You must be at least 18 years old.
- You must be able to form a binding contract in your state.
- You must use the Service for your own business or personal collection, not for someone else without their permission.
- Right now the Service is free and invite-only. We may change this (see Section 9).
3. Your account
- Sign in with an email address and password, or with your Google account.
- Keep your password private. Anything done through your account is your responsibility until you tell us at [SUPPORT EMAIL] that it has been compromised.
- One person per account. Do not share logins.
- Give us accurate information and keep it current.
4. Your data belongs to you
- Everything you enter (card details, photos, prices, contacts, expenses, notes) is yours ("Your Content").
- You give us a limited licence to store, process, display and back up Your Content, only so we can run and improve the Service for you. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for backup copies that may persist up to 30 days (see Section 10).
- You promise that you have the right to upload Your Content, including photos and other people's contact details, and that doing so does not break any law or agreement.
- We may create and show aggregated, de-identified statistics (for example, "average margin across all users") that cannot reasonably be linked back to you or your business.
- We do not use Your Content to train AI models, and we do not allow our AI provider to do so (see Section 6).
5. Comps, profit figures and other information are not advice
- Comps are informational. They are drawn from public sold listings on third-party sites (for example, Fanatics Collect's public sales history). They can be wrong, late, incomplete or not comparable to your card.
- Profit, margin and other figures are calculated from numbers you enter. Garbage in, garbage out.
- Nothing in the Service is an appraisal, a valuation, a guarantee of what a card is worth, or financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Make your own decisions and check with your own professionals.
- We never guarantee that a card has, or will have, any particular value.
6. The AI assistant (Ace) and AI photo extraction
- When you ask Ace a question, we send your question plus the relevant rows of your own data to Anthropic's Claude API to generate an answer. When you use AI photo extraction, we send the slab photo to the same provider to read the card details.
- The AI provider processes that data under its own terms and privacy commitments. We do not use your data to train AI models.
- AI output can be wrong. Ace can misread a slab, miscalculate, or make things up. Always check AI-generated details and numbers before relying on them.
- Do not use Ace to get advice that only a licensed professional should give.
7. Rules of use
You agree not to:
- Break any law, or use the Service to help with fraud, money laundering, counterfeit cards or tax evasion.
- Upload anything you do not have the right to upload, or anything that is unlawful, abusive or infringing.
- Upload other people's personal information without a lawful reason to hold it.
- Scrape, copy, resell or redistribute comps or other data from the Service.
- Reverse-engineer, probe or overload the Service, or try to get around any limits or security.
- Use bots or automated tools to access the Service without our written permission.
- Impersonate anyone, or share or sell your account.
We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules.
8. Our stuff
The Service itself, including its code, design, name, logos and the way comps and reports are put together, belongs to us or our licensors. You may use it only as these Terms allow. "CardIntel" and "Ace" are our names and marks; do not use them without permission.
9. Fees and future subscriptions
- Today the Service is free and invite-only.
- We may introduce paid plans later. If we do, we will tell you in advance, show the price before you pay, and let you decide whether to subscribe. You will not be charged without agreeing to a price.
- Refund policy for any future paid plan: [REFUND POLICY — see DECISIONS.md].
- Taxes, if any apply, are added to the stated price.
10. Closing your account and deleting data
- You can delete your account at any time from inside the app. Deleting your account removes your profile, cards, sales, contacts, expenses and photos from the live database.
- Copies may remain in backups for up to 30 days, after which they are overwritten.
- We may close or suspend your account if you break these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if we shut down the Service. If we shut down, we will try to give you at least 30 days' notice and a way to export your data.
11. The Service is provided "as is"
To the fullest extent the law allows, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement and uninterrupted or error-free operation. We do not promise that comps, AI output or calculations are accurate or complete, or that your data will never be lost. Keep your own backups.
Some states do not allow all of these exclusions, so some may not apply to you.
12. Limit on our liability
To the fullest extent the law allows:
- We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost sales, lost data, or the value of any card, however caused.
- Our total liability to you for anything arising out of the Service or these Terms is capped at the greater of (a) the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) US $100.
This limit applies to everything: contract, tort, negligence, statute or any other theory. It does not limit liability that cannot be limited under California law.
13. You cover us for your breaches
If someone brings a claim against us because of Your Content, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms or the law, you agree to defend us and pay any resulting damages, costs and reasonable legal fees.
14. Disputes, governing law and venue
- These Terms are governed by California law, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.
- [OPTION A — ARBITRATION] Any dispute that we cannot settle informally within 30 days will be decided by binding arbitration in Santa Barbara County, California, under the rules of [ARBITRATION PROVIDER], on an individual basis only (no class actions). Either side may instead bring a qualifying claim in small-claims court. You may opt out of arbitration by emailing [SUPPORT EMAIL] within 30 days of first accepting these Terms.
- [OPTION B — COURT] Any dispute will be heard exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Santa Barbara County, California, and you consent to their jurisdiction. Class actions are waived to the extent permitted by law.
- Before filing anything, email [SUPPORT EMAIL] and give us 30 days to try to fix the problem.
(Choose A or B — see DECISIONS.md.)
15. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will post the new version at [DOMAIN] and either email you or show a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect. Using the Service after that date means you accept the new Terms.
16. Other things
- These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
- If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
- If we do not enforce a term right away, we can still enforce it later.
- You may not transfer your account or these Terms to anyone else. We may transfer them to a successor business.
- Nothing here creates a partnership, agency or employment relationship.
- Notices to you go to the email on your account. Notices to us go to [SUPPORT EMAIL] or [MAILING ADDRESS].
17. Contact
[BUSINESS LEGAL NAME] [MAILING ADDRESS] Santa Barbara, California, USA [SUPPORT EMAIL]