Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By creating an account or using ScholarThread (the "Service") you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These Terms are entered into with MOYD LTD, a company registered in England and Wales ("we", "us").

2. The Service

ScholarThread is a research and study environment that lets you import documents, build concept links, and run viva-style chats against your own library. It is available as a web app and an iOS app for iPhone and iPad; an Android app is in development.

The Service is provided as-is during the current early-access phase and may change without notice. Features described on the marketing pages may be delivered progressively.

3. Your account

You must provide accurate information when creating your account and keep your authentication factors (password, SSO logins, second-factor devices) secure. You are responsible for activity under your account. Notify us at [email protected] if you believe your account has been compromised.

4. Age requirement

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account or use the Service. If you are under 16, please do not sign up. This requirement reflects the age of digital consent under GDPR (Article 8), the age thresholds imposed by our third-party single-sign-on providers, and the fact that some features (analytics, AI-powered features, and paid subscription) are not appropriate for children. Our Privacy Policy explains this in more detail.

5. Your content

You retain ownership of every document, note, highlight, and chat thread you put into ScholarThread. You grant us the minimum licence necessary to store, process, index, and display that content back to you across your devices, and to run the AI-assisted features you request against it.

We do not use your content to train our own models or any third-party models. AI features that transmit your content to a third-party language-model provider (for example, drafting candidate claims, finding supporting or refuting passages, suggesting counterclaims, or populating note sections) do so on a request-by-request basis, subject to that provider's own confidentiality terms; we do not grant those providers any right to retain or train on your data beyond what is strictly necessary to answer the request. Our Privacy Policy describes these features and their data flow in detail.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Upload content you do not have the right to use.
• Abuse, harass, or impersonate other users or third parties.
• Attempt to compromise the Service's security, extract data at scale via scraping or automation, or interfere with other users' use of the Service.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or clone the Service, except to the extent expressly permitted by law.
• Do anything illegal under the laws that apply to you.

7. Third-party services

ScholarThread depends on and integrates with third-party services. When you use those integrations you also enter into an agreement with the third party, subject to its own terms and privacy policy. The current set includes:

• Clerk — authentication and user profile management.
• Stripe — payment processing for Pro subscriptions purchased on the web or Android (via Clerk Billing).
• Apple — payment processing for Pro subscriptions and credit-pack purchases made through the ScholarThread app on the App Store (In-App Purchase). Apple is the merchant of record for those purchases, not us or Stripe.
• Amazon Web Services — cloud hosting, database, storage, encryption, and AI model inference (Amazon Bedrock).
• Google — analytics (Google Analytics 4).
• Sentry — error monitoring.
• PagerDuty — support-ticket intake.
• Zotero — optional library import and write-back.
• OpenAlex — optional paper metadata enrichment.

We are not responsible for outages, defects, or policy changes of any third-party service. If a third-party service becomes unavailable, features that depend on it will be temporarily reduced or removed until it is restored.

8. Subscription and payment

The Service is available in three tiers: Anon (no signup, local-only), Free (with an account, cloud sync and lower usage limits), and Pro (paid, higher usage limits). We serve no advertising on any tier. Feature and quota details are on the Pricing page.

Pro is offered as a recurring subscription (monthly or annual, depending on the option you choose). If you start a Pro subscription on the web or through our Android app, payment is processed by Stripe on our behalf, and by starting that subscription you authorise Stripe to charge your payment method on the recurring schedule until you cancel.

If you start or manage a Pro subscription through the ScholarThread app on the Apple App Store, your purchase is instead processed by Apple, not Stripe. Apple is the merchant of record for that subscription: your payment method is charged by Apple, your receipt comes from Apple, and the subscription renews according to Apple's own auto-renewable subscription terms. To view, change, or cancel an App Store subscription, use your Apple ID account settings (on iOS: Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions, or the Subscriptions section of the App Store app) rather than ScholarThread's own account settings.

You can cancel a Pro subscription billed by Stripe at any time from your account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep Pro features until then. If your subscription was purchased through the Apple App Store, cancel it through your Apple ID account settings instead, as described above. We do not provide partial refunds for unused time in the current billing period, except where mandatory consumer-protection law requires it; for a subscription billed by Apple, refund requests are handled by Apple under its own policies, not by us.

If you are a consumer resident in the UK or EU, you have a statutory 14-day right to cancel a Pro subscription for a full refund. This right is lost once you begin actively using Pro-only features, because Pro is a digital service supplied during the cancellation period; by upgrading to Pro and using those features you consent to that loss of right, as permitted under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and equivalent EU legislation. For a subscription purchased through the Apple App Store, you exercise this right through Apple's own refund request process, since Apple is the merchant of record for that purchase.

We may change subscription prices from time to time. We will notify you by email at least 30 days before a price change takes effect on your next renewal, giving you the option to cancel before the new price applies.

If a scheduled payment fails, we may retry the charge, downgrade your account to the Free tier after a grace period, or suspend access until the balance is settled.

9. Intellectual property

The ScholarThread software, design, logos, and trademarks belong to MOYD LTD. These Terms do not transfer any of those rights to you. Feedback you send us about the Service may be used by us without restriction and without compensation, unless expressly marked confidential.

10. Disclaimers

ScholarThread is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, except those that cannot be excluded under applicable law.

The Service may produce inaccurate, out-of-date, or incomplete output — this is particularly true of AI-generated summaries, answers, and citation suggestions, which may misrepresent source material or fabricate references. AI-generated content is identified as such in the app. Treat all AI output as a starting point for your own critical evaluation, not as an authoritative citation. Do not rely on the Service for legal, medical, financial, or safety-critical decisions.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Service is capped at the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) £100.

We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or expected savings, arising from your use of the Service.

This clause does not limit or exclude liability where it cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law — for example, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, or death or personal injury caused by our negligence. Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

12. Termination

You can delete your account at any time from your settings page. Deleting your account cancels any active Pro subscription at the end of the current billing period and deletes your content per our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, normally with reasonable notice unless the violation is severe or ongoing. If we terminate your account for a material violation of these Terms, we may retain data as required to defend legal claims and, where permitted, do not refund unused subscription time.

13. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Disputes will be handled by the courts of England and Wales, unless mandatory consumer-protection law gives you the right to sue in your own country of residence, in which case that right is preserved.

14. Miscellaneous

If any clause of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remainder stays in force. We may assign these Terms to a successor entity as part of a corporate reorganisation, merger, or sale of assets, on notice to you. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. Our failure to enforce a clause is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later.

15. Changes

We'll update these Terms as the Service grows. Material changes will be announced by email to active users at least 30 days before they take effect; continued use of the Service after a change means you accept the updated Terms. Where a change materially reduces your rights and you do not accept it, you may cancel your account before the change takes effect.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms: [email protected]. General support: /support.