⚠️ UNREVIEWED DRAFT (NOT LEGAL ADVICE). This document was generated as a starting point for the founder of byline.fyi. It has not been reviewed by a qualified lawyer and must not be published, linked, or relied upon until a solicitor (and, for the US sections, US counsel) has reviewed and adapted it for your jurisdiction and business. Every item in SQUARE BRACKETS is a placeholder a human must fill in before this goes live (legal entity name, governing-law jurisdiction, contact email, effective date, arbitration body, and similar). Inaccurate terms create their own liability, so verify each clause against how the product actually behaves at the time you publish.
byline.fyi Terms of Service
Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE] Last updated: [LAST UPDATED DATE]
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], a company registered in [COUNTRY OF INCORPORATION] under number [COMPANY NUMBER], with its registered office at [REGISTERED ADDRESS] ("byline", "we", "us", or "our"). They govern your access to and use of the byline.fyi website, web dashboard, application programming interfaces, the Model Context Protocol ("MCP") server, and all related software and services (together, the "Service").
By creating an account, clicking to accept these Terms, connecting a source, or otherwise accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
1. The Service in plain terms
byline is a brand-memory tool for creators. With your authorisation, it ingests content you have published and private notes or drafts you supply, together with audience signal such as comments and engagement metrics from connected platforms. It processes that material using third-party artificial-intelligence models to produce derived data, including text embeddings, summaries, a distilled "creator profile" (covering voice, themes, audience, and formats), a working memory, and nightly insights. It then exposes that content and derived data to the AI tools you choose to connect over the MCP server.
A fuller description of how the Service works, what data it processes, and which third parties receive that data is in our Privacy Policy.
2. Eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old and have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract to use the Service. The Service is not intended for, and may not be used by, anyone under 18. By using the Service you represent and warrant that you meet these requirements.
If you use the Service on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity to these Terms, and "you" refers to both you individually and that entity.
3. Accounts and organisations
3.1 Sign-in. Accounts are created using a one-time passcode sent to your email address or through a supported third-party sign-in provider (for example, Google). You are responsible for maintaining control of the email account and any third-party identity you use to sign in.
3.2 Organisations. The Service is organised around organisations (also called workspaces or "orgs"). Content and derived data are owned at the organisation level, not by individual members. A solo user is a single-member organisation. If you invite others to your organisation, you are responsible for their use of the Service, and you authorise each member to act within the permissions their role allows, including connecting sources, ingesting content, and accessing the organisation's data.
3.3 Your responsibility. You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account and within your organisation. You must keep your sign-in credentials and any connected access tokens confidential, and you must notify us promptly at [SECURITY CONTACT EMAIL] if you suspect unauthorised access.
3.4 Accuracy. You agree to provide accurate account information and to keep it up to date.
4. Plans, free trial, billing, and renewals
4.1 Free trial. New organisations receive a time-limited free trial with the limits described in our pricing materials, without a payment card. When the trial period ends, the organisation is locked and cost-bearing processing stops until you subscribe to a paid plan. We may change the length or terms of the trial at any time for future trials.
4.2 Paid plans. Paid plans (for example, the plans currently marketed as "Pro" and "Studio") are billed in advance on a recurring basis at the prices and usage limits shown at the point of purchase. Prices are stated exclusive of taxes unless otherwise indicated; you are responsible for any applicable taxes.
4.3 Payment processor. Payments are processed by Stripe. By subscribing you also agree to Stripe's applicable terms. We do not store full payment-card numbers; card handling occurs within Stripe's systems. See the Privacy Policy for what payment-related data we receive.
4.4 Automatic renewal. Paid subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price, until cancelled. You authorise us and Stripe to charge your payment method for each renewal. You may cancel at any time through the dashboard or by contacting us; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
4.5 Refunds. Except where required by applicable law, all fees are non-refundable and there are no refunds or credits for partial billing periods, unused capacity, or unused features. [CONFIRM REFUND POSITION WITH COUNSEL, including any statutory cancellation / cooling-off rights for consumers in the UK, EU, and other jurisdictions, which may override this clause.]
4.6 Usage limits and metering. The Service meters cost-bearing work (for example, the volume of content ingested and video minutes analysed) against your plan's limits. We may decline, defer, queue, or refuse processing that exceeds your plan limits, your organisation's caps, or our overall system safeguards (including a global daily cost circuit-breaker described in clause 8.3).
4.7 Changes to pricing. We may change prices, plans, or limits. For existing paid subscriptions, we will give reasonable advance notice of a price increase, and the change will take effect at your next renewal. Continued use after the change takes effect constitutes acceptance.
5. Acceptable use
You agree not to, and not to permit anyone else to:
(a) use the Service in violation of any applicable law or regulation, or to infringe or misappropriate any third party's intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or other rights;
(b) ingest, upload, connect, or process any content that you do not own or otherwise have the necessary rights, consents, and permissions to provide to us and to have processed as described in these Terms and the Privacy Policy, including any audience comments, personal data, or third-party material;
(c) scrape, harvest, or collect data from any platform or person unlawfully or in breach of that platform's terms, robots directives, or applicable data-protection law;
(d) upload or transmit malware, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to, probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service or any connected system, or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measure;
(e) abuse, overload, or attempt to evade the Service's usage limits, metering, rate limits, or cost controls, including by creating multiple accounts or organisations to obtain additional free-trial capacity, by automating sign-ups, or by deliberately driving disproportionate model-processing cost ("COGS abuse");
(f) use the Service to generate or disseminate content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, hateful, sexually exploitative (including any content involving minors), or that promotes violence or illegal activity;
(g) resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as a standalone service, or reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of the Service, except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
(h) misrepresent your identity or your authority to connect a source or to provide content; or
(i) interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Service or the data of any other customer.
We may investigate suspected violations and cooperate with law-enforcement authorities. Violation of this clause may result in suspension or termination under clause 8.
6. Your content and intellectual property
6.1 You keep ownership. As between you and byline, you retain all ownership and intellectual-property rights in the content you ingest, connect, or otherwise provide to the Service (your "User Content"), including your published work, private notes, and drafts. We do not claim ownership of your User Content.
6.2 Licence you grant to us. To operate and provide the Service, you grant byline a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, reproduce, reformat, analyse, index, and create derived data from your User Content, and to disclose it to the sub-processors listed in our Privacy Policy for these purposes. "Derived data" includes, without limitation, text chunks, vector embeddings, transcripts, summaries, the creator profile, working memory, and insights generated from your User Content and connected audience signal. This licence exists solely to provide, secure, maintain, and improve the Service for you, and to expose your content and derived data to the AI tools you choose to connect. The licence ends when the relevant User Content is deleted from the Service, except (i) for backups or residual copies that are deleted in the ordinary course, and (ii) for de-identified or aggregated data that no longer identifies you or any individual.
6.3 Your warranties. You represent and warrant that you have all rights, consents, licences, and permissions necessary to provide your User Content to us and to grant the licence in clause 6.2, and that your User Content and our processing of it as instructed by you will not violate any law or infringe any third party's rights. Where your User Content includes personal data of third parties (for example, audience comments and commenter identities), you are responsible for having a lawful basis to provide it, and you act as the controller for that data while we act as your processor, as further described in the Privacy Policy and any applicable data-processing terms.
6.4 Our intellectual property. The Service, including all software, models integration, designs, text, and trademarks (including "byline" and "byline.fyi"), and all derived know-how, is and remains the property of byline and its licensors. Except for the limited right to use the Service under these Terms, no rights are granted to you.
6.5 Feedback. If you send us suggestions, ideas, or other feedback about the Service, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use and exploit that feedback for any purpose without obligation or compensation to you.
7. Third-party platforms, connectors, and AI output
7.1 Connected platforms. The Service lets you connect external platforms and sources, which may include Instagram (via the Meta platform), YouTube (via Google), your website, and inbound email. Your use of each connected platform remains subject to that platform's own terms and policies, and you are responsible for complying with them, including any limits on automated access and any data-protection requirements. You authorise byline to access those platforms on your behalf using the credentials and tokens you provide.
7.2 No control over platforms. Connected platforms are operated by third parties we do not control. They may change, restrict, suspend, deprecate, or remove their interfaces, data, or access at any time. byline is not liable for any loss of functionality, data, or access resulting from a change to, or suspension or termination of, any third-party platform or interface, or from that platform's enforcement of its own terms against you.
7.3 AI-generated output is not guaranteed. The Service uses third-party AI models to produce summaries, profiles, insights, and other output. AI output can be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, outdated, or otherwise wrong, and may misstate your voice, your audience, or facts. Output is provided for your assistance only. You are solely responsible for reviewing, verifying, and deciding whether to use or publish any output, and for the consequences of doing so. The Service does not provide professional, legal, financial, medical, or other regulated advice. You must not rely on AI output as a substitute for your own judgement.
7.4 Untrusted input. Content ingested from external sources (web pages, emails, captions, and especially audience comments) is third-party material that may contain inaccurate, manipulative, or malicious content. While we take measures to handle such input safely, the derived data the Service produces may reflect it, and you remain responsible for your use of that derived data.
8. Suspension, termination, and abuse controls
8.1 Termination by you. You may stop using the Service and close your account or organisation at any time through the dashboard or by contacting us.
8.2 Suspension or termination by us. We may suspend or terminate your access to all or part of the Service, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe that: (a) you have breached these Terms (including the acceptable-use policy in clause 5); (b) your use poses a security, legal, or reputational risk to us, our other customers, or third parties; (c) your use is generating abusive or disproportionate processing cost (COGS abuse); (d) we are required to do so by law or by a third-party platform; or (e) you fail to pay fees when due.
8.3 Cost controls. You acknowledge that the Service applies usage metering, per-organisation caps, rate limits, and a global daily cost circuit-breaker, and that these controls may delay, defer, queue, or refuse processing. We operate these controls at our discretion to protect the Service and are not liable for any resulting delay or non-processing.
8.4 Effect of termination. On termination, your right to access the Service ends. Clauses that by their nature should survive (including clauses 4.5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) survive termination.
8.5 Data on termination. On account or organisation closure, we will delete or de-identify the organisation's content and derived data within a commercially reasonable period, subject to the retention described in the Privacy Policy and to clause 8.6. You are responsible for exporting any content you wish to keep before closure. [CONFIRM A SPECIFIC POST-TERMINATION DATA-RETENTION / DELETION WINDOW WITH COUNSEL, e.g. 30 days, and reflect it consistently in the Privacy Policy.]
8.6 Records we retain. We may retain limited records after termination where necessary to comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, prevent abuse, and maintain security and audit trails. Such records are kept to the minimum reasonably necessary and handled as described in the Privacy Policy.
9. Disclaimers
9.1 "As is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Service and all output are provided "as is" and "as available", with all faults and without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. byline expressly disclaims all implied warranties, including warranties of merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, title, accuracy, and non-infringement.
9.2 No uptime or results guarantee. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, that results or output will be accurate or reliable, or that the Service will meet your requirements or be compatible with any third-party tool or platform.
9.3 Statutory rights. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or of implied terms (including statutory consumer guarantees). To the extent the law prohibits exclusion, the excluded warranties are limited to the minimum permitted by law, and nothing in these Terms removes statutory rights that cannot be excluded. [REVIEW CONSUMER-LAW CARVE-OUTS WITH COUNSEL for the UK, EU, and any other applicable jurisdiction.]
10. Limitation of liability
10.1 Exclusion of indirect loss. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, byline and its officers, employees, and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, data, content, or anticipated savings, however caused and on any theory of liability, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.
10.2 Liability cap. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, byline's total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the total fees you actually paid to byline for the Service in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the liability, or (b) [one hundred pounds sterling (GBP £100)]. [CONFIRM CAP AMOUNT AND CURRENCY WITH COUNSEL.]
10.3 Carve-outs. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
10.4 Basis of the bargain. The disclaimers and limitations in clauses 9 and 10 reflect an agreed allocation of risk and form an essential basis of the bargain between you and byline.
11. Indemnification
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless byline and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, demands, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your User Content and our processing of it as instructed by you; (b) your breach of these Terms or the acceptable-use policy; (c) your violation of any law or of any third party's rights, including intellectual-property, privacy, and data-protection rights, and including any claim by a person whose comments, personal data, or other material you provided to the Service; (d) your breach of any connected platform's terms; and (e) your use of, or reliance on, any Service output. We may assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate with us.
12. Third-party services
The Service integrates and depends on third-party services, including AI model providers, an email provider, a payment processor, identity providers, hosting and infrastructure providers, and connected content platforms. These are identified in the Privacy Policy. Your use of those services may be subject to their own terms, and byline is not responsible or liable for the acts, omissions, availability, pricing, or content of any third-party service.
13. Governing law and dispute resolution
13.1 Governing law. These Terms and any dispute arising out of or in connection with them or the Service are governed by the laws of [GOVERNING LAW JURISDICTION, e.g. England and Wales], without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.
13.2 [ARBITRATION, REVIEW CAREFULLY WITH COUNSEL; enforceability and required wording vary by jurisdiction, and mandatory arbitration / class-action waivers are restricted or unenforceable for consumers in the UK and EU.] Except where prohibited by applicable law, you and byline agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that cannot be resolved informally will be resolved by final and binding arbitration administered by [ARBITRATION BODY] under its rules then in effect, seated in [SEAT OF ARBITRATION] and conducted in English. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.
13.3 Class-action waiver. [REVIEW WITH COUNSEL; may be unenforceable for consumers in some jurisdictions.] To the extent permitted by applicable law, you and byline agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, or representative proceeding.
13.4 Informal resolution first. Before commencing arbitration, you agree to contact us at [CONTACT EMAIL] and attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for at least thirty (30) days.
13.5 Courts. Where arbitration does not apply, or to seek injunctive or equitable relief for infringement or misuse of intellectual property or confidential information, the courts of [GOVERNING LAW JURISDICTION] have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to that jurisdiction and venue.
14. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide reasonable notice (for example, by email or an in-product notice) before they take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top shows when the Terms were last revised. Your continued use of the Service after the changes take effect constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using the Service.
15. General
15.1 Force majeure. byline is not liable for any delay or failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labour disputes, governmental action, internet or utility failures, cyber-attacks, and failures or changes of third-party platforms, infrastructure, or AI-model providers.
15.2 Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
15.3 No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
15.4 Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganisation, or sale of assets, or by operation of law.
15.5 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any order or plan terms you accept, constitute the entire agreement between you and byline regarding the Service and supersede all prior agreements and understandings on that subject.
15.6 Notices. We may give notice to you by email to the address associated with your account or by an in-product notice. You may give notice to us at [CONTACT EMAIL].
15.7 Relationship. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship between you and byline.
16. Contact
Questions about these Terms can be sent to [CONTACT EMAIL], or by post to [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [REGISTERED ADDRESS].