Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of CiteAsk (website, API, Discord/Telegram bots, and apps). By creating an account or binding a community, you agree to them.

1. The service

CiteAsk lets a creator connect a YouTube channel they control, index captions via YouTube API Services, bind Discord or Telegram communities, and let members ask questions that return caption excerpts with timestamp citations. Features and quotas depend on your plan (Free or Pro — see Pricing; Pro list price is $12/mo when Stripe is configured).

2. Eligibility & accounts

You must be legally able to enter a contract and old enough to use Google / Discord / Telegram in your region. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping OAuth access limited to channels you own or are authorized to manage.

3. YouTube & third-party platforms

• Use of YouTube features is also subject to the YouTube Terms of Service and Google API policies. We only process channels you authorize.
• Discord and Telegram remain governed by their own terms. You must have the right to add bots to the communities you bind (e.g. membership / paid groups you operate).
• We are not affiliated with YouTube, Google, Discord, or Telegram.

4. Acceptable use

• Do not connect channels you do not control or lack rights to process.
• Do not use CiteAsk to harass, spam, infringe IP, or break platform rules.
• Do not attempt to bypass quotas, security, or billing.
• Do not rely on Ask replies as legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice. Captions and retrieval can be incomplete or wrong.

5. Content & licenses

You retain rights in your videos and captions. You grant us a limited license to store, embed, and process that content solely to provide CiteAsk to you and your bound communities. Community members’ questions are processed to retrieve matching caption excerpts and deliver replies in those chats. Ask replies do not transfer ownership of your underlying content.

6. Plans, quotas, and billing

Free and Pro limits (daily asks, community caps, corpus scope) are described on the pricing page and may change with notice. Pro is offered at $12/month (yearly $120 when available) on the web via Stripe and, when available, via in-app purchase (e.g. RevenueCat / Apple / Google). Fees are non-refundable except where required by law or store policy. Entitlements are account-level and apply across web and app when both are available.

7. Availability & changes

We provide the service on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features, including embedding models and indexing pipelines. We are not liable for downtime, quota exhaustion, or third-party API outages (YouTube, Discord, Telegram, Cloudflare, payment providers).

8. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. ASK REPLIES ARE RETRIEVED EXCERPTS AND MAY BE INCOMPLETE OR INACCURATE; ANY OPTIONAL MODEL-ASSISTED OUTPUT IS PROBABILISTIC.

9. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, CITEASK AND ITS OPERATORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US FOR PRO IN THE THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM (OR USD $50 IF YOU ARE ON FREE).

10. Termination

You may disconnect YouTube, unbind communities, or delete your account in the dashboard at any time. Deleting your CiteAsk account removes our copy of your data as described in the Privacy Policy but does not by itself cancel Stripe or app-store subscriptions — cancel those separately. We may suspend or terminate access for violation of these Terms, abuse, non-payment, or risk to the service. Provisions that should survive (including IP, disclaimers, and liability limits) survive termination.

11. Governing law

Unless mandatory local law says otherwise, these Terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction where the CiteAsk operator is established, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Courts in that jurisdiction have exclusive venue, except that you may have consumer rights in your place of residence.

12. Contact

Legal notices: legal@citeask.com (or the support address published on citeask.com).

These Terms are a product draft for launch readiness. Have qualified counsel review before relying on them for App Store listing or paid customers in regulated markets.