Terms of Service

Draft version 0.1. Last updated July 18, 2026.

These draft Terms govern access to and use of Yappiely, including the owner dashboard, embedded comment widget, public comment endpoints, and related services.

The legal operator, governing law, court, contact channels, and several paid-service rules are not finalized. These Terms are therefore not yet effective.

1. Agreement and authority

When these Terms become effective, creating an owner account, adding a site, embedding Yappiely, submitting a comment, or otherwise using the service will constitute agreement to them.

A person using Yappiely for an organization must have authority to bind that organization.

2. Definitions

• Customer: a person or organization that creates an owner account or configures a site.
• Publisher: the person or organization responsible for a website embedding Yappiely.
• Commenter: a person who views, submits, or replies through a Yappiely widget.
• Customer Content: site configuration, discussion descriptions, comments, replies, moderation reasons, and other material submitted through the service.
• Plan: a free, one-time, subscription, enterprise, or other package offered through an order page or written agreement.

3. Eligibility

Owner accounts are intended for people at least 18 years old or the age of legal majority where they live.

The commenting experience is not directed to children under 13. Publishers operating child-directed services must not embed Yappiely without a lawful parental-notice and consent process and any approval required by Yappiely.

4. Owner accounts

Owners currently sign in through GitHub or Google. Owners must provide accurate information, secure the connected provider account, keep contact information current, and report suspected unauthorized access.

Yappiely currently provides a self-only owner account. Team roles and collaborator invitations are not shipped.

5. The service

Yappiely currently lets owners:

• create domain-scoped sites;
• generate a script tag for a page-aware comment widget;
• choose publish-first or approval-first moderation;
• optionally enable AI-assisted automoderation;
• review sites, discussions, visitors, comments, and moderation actions;
• configure one to ten reaction labels per discussion and view reaction totals;
• view token-deduplicated discussion totals;
• reply using a verified Owner identity; and
• show, hide, review, edit, tombstone, or delete comments through the dashboard.

Commenters can view discussion totals, choose one reaction option, remove it, and submit a display name, comment, or reply without creating an account. The widget supports Markdown, one-level visual threads, page-aware discussions, light and dark mode, lazy loading, and automatic resizing.

Yappiely may change, suspend, or discontinue features. Reasonable notice should be provided when a change materially reduces paid functionality, unless immediate action is needed for security, legal compliance, abuse prevention, or a third-party failure.

6. Publisher responsibilities

Publishers are responsible for:

• websites and domains where Yappiely is embedded;
• using Yappiely only on domains they own or control;
• providing legally required privacy notices;
• obtaining consent where required;
• selecting publishing and moderation settings;
• reviewing moderation queues and responding to reports;
• choosing lawful, appropriate reaction labels and understanding that a label locks after its first reaction;
• deciding whether content is lawful and appropriate;
• handling privacy requests related to their use of Yappiely; and
• complying with privacy, consumer-protection, accessibility, child-safety, and content laws.

Publishers must not misrepresent Yappiely as guaranteeing legal compliance, identity verification, or perfect moderation.

7. Commenter responsibilities

Commenters may use pseudonymous display names but may not impersonate another person or falsely claim authority or affiliation.

Commenters must not submit content that:

• is illegal, fraudulent, threatening, harassing, or intentionally abusive;
• infringes intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, confidentiality, or other rights;
• contains malware, credential theft, malicious links, or system-compromise instructions;
• exposes passwords, access tokens, financial details, government identifiers, health information, or other highly sensitive information;
• exploits or endangers children;
• promotes prohibited illegal activity;
• consists of spam, unsolicited advertising, or manipulated engagement;
• attempts to manufacture views or reactions or defeat token deduplication;
• attempts to evade rate limits, moderation, quotas, or security controls; or
• is submitted through unauthorized automation.

Commenters do not currently receive an account, portable identity, or self-service ability to edit or delete comments.

8. Content ownership and licenses

Users retain any rights they have in submitted content.

To operate the service, a user grants Yappiely a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, process, technically format, transmit, display, and moderate submitted content as reasonably necessary to:

• provide and secure Yappiely;
• display discussions on the publisher’s site;
• perform selected moderation;
• prevent abuse and enforce these Terms; and
• comply with law.

Commenters also grant the relevant publisher a non-exclusive license to display and moderate their submissions on that publisher’s site.

Users must have the rights necessary to submit content and grant these licenses. Yappiely does not claim ownership of user content.

Yappiely and publishers may hide, edit, review, tombstone, or delete content to operate the service, enforce rules, comply with law, protect safety, or preserve thread structure.

9. Moderation

Publishers choose whether comments publish immediately or remain hidden for approval. Optional automoderation may use deterministic checks and an AI model.

Automoderation is assistive and can be wrong. Depending on configuration:

• clear spam may be hidden automatically;
• suspicious or unavailable results may enter a review queue;
• a visible comment may remain visible while awaiting review; and
• publishers may override decisions.

Yappiely does not promise that all harmful content will be detected or that legitimate content will never be restricted. Publishers remain responsible for moderation decisions and community obligations.

10. Acceptable use

Users must not:

• probe or test service vulnerabilities without authorization;
• bypass authentication, quotas, rate limits, domain checks, or access controls;
• interfere with service availability;
• reverse engineer the service except where law expressly permits;
• treat the public site identifier as a private credential;
• build advertising, surveillance, or cross-site profiling datasets from Yappiely;
• resell the service without authorization;
• violate sanctions, export controls, or other applicable laws; or
• help another person do any of the above.

11. Privacy

The Privacy Policy explains Yappiely’s data practices.

Publishers must disclose their use of Yappiely, including collection of commenter IP address, a global pseudonymous visitor identifier, cross-site comment and reaction continuity, submission history, comment content, discussion-view token digests, moderation data, and browser local storage. Publishers must obtain consent before loading or using the widget where required.

Customers must not use Yappiely for highly sensitive data unless Yappiely expressly agrees and appropriate safeguards are in place.

A data-processing addendum will be made available if required before launch.

12. Third-party services

Yappiely depends on third parties, including GitHub, Google, hosting and network providers, optional AI providers, and future payment processors. Third-party services have their own terms and may change or discontinue functionality.

13. Prelaunch status

Yappiely is currently prelaunch. Billing, checkout, plan entitlements, AI tiers, and planned packages are not implemented or purchasable.

During prelaunch:

• access may be experimental, limited, changed, or withdrawn;
• operational quotas are not public plan promises;
• data structures and features may change;
• support is provided on a reasonable-efforts basis; and
• no service-level agreement applies.

These Terms must be updated before paid checkout launches.

14. Paid plans and billing

This section will apply only after checkout launches and an order page or written agreement identifies a purchasable Plan.

Orders

The order must identify price, currency, production sites, test domains, comment allowance, AI tier, support scope, billing period, and other entitlements. An order form will control over conflicting general language for that order.

One-time plans and comment packs

A one-time fee will purchase only the stated Plan entitlements and capacity. It will not purchase Yappiely software, transfer intellectual-property ownership, guarantee perpetual hosting, or create a lifetime-service obligation.

Before launch, the order page must define:

• what consumes comment allowance;
• whether hidden, deleted, imported, owner, or rejected comments count;
• whether unused allowances or packs expire or roll over;
• whether allowance belongs to an account, site, or time period; and
• what happens when allowance is exhausted.

Subscription plans

A subscription Plan may renew until canceled. Renewal notice, cancellation deadline, effective cancellation date, and treatment of partial billing periods must be finalized before launch.

Payment, taxes, and refunds

The payment processor, tax treatment, failed-payment process, refund policy, and mandatory cooling-off rights must be identified before paid checkout launches.

Nothing in the final Terms may remove a consumer right that applicable law does not allow Yappiely to exclude.

15. Enterprise services

Planned Enterprise support includes:

• priority email support during published business hours;
• a one-business-day initial response target;
• faster triage for production-blocking incidents;
• onboarding and deployment guidance;
• reasonable migration assistance; and
• procurement and security-questionnaire assistance.

Enterprise does not include 24/7 on-call support, custom feature development, or a contractual uptime SLA unless separately agreed in writing.

Response targets are goals, not guarantees, unless a signed service-level agreement says otherwise.

16. Intellectual property

Yappiely and its licensors own the service, software, designs, documentation, trademarks, and other materials they provide, excluding user content.

Users may not remove proprietary notices or use Yappiely branding in a way that implies sponsorship or endorsement without permission.

Feedback may be used without restriction or compensation, provided Yappiely does not publicly identify the source without permission.

17. Availability and product boundaries

Yappiely does not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free availability. Maintenance, security incidents, traffic spikes, third-party failures, internet conditions, and events outside reasonable control may affect the service.

Unless a signed agreement says otherwise:

• no uptime commitment applies;
• support response times are targets;
• features may change; and
• backups are not a substitute for a customer’s own records.

Yappiely does not currently provide generic customer-facing export or migration tooling.

Discussion view totals are opaque, token-deduplicated engagement counts. They are not general traffic analytics and do not represent visits, unique people, sessions, referrals, or site-wide page views.

18. Suspension and termination

Owners may stop using Yappiely and delete their accounts through the dashboard.

Yappiely may suspend or terminate access for material or repeated violations, security or legal risks, unpaid fees after applicable notice, valid legal requirements, serious abuse, third-party dependency failure, or discontinuation of the service.

Where reasonable, Yappiely should provide notice and an opportunity to cure. Immediate action may be taken to prevent harm, protect security, or comply with law.

On termination, widgets may stop functioning and content may be deleted according to the final Privacy Policy and applicable order. A post-termination data-access period has not been finalized. Customers should not use Yappiely as the sole archive of important information.

19. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the final Terms will provide Yappiely “as is” and “as available” and disclaim implied warranties that may lawfully be disclaimed.

Yappiely does not warrant that:

• the service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free;
• comments will be preserved indefinitely;
• moderation will detect all harmful content or avoid all false positives;
• submitted content is accurate or lawful;
• Yappiely satisfies every legal, regulatory, accessibility, retention, or compliance requirement; or
• third-party services will remain available.

Mandatory consumer rights will not be excluded.

20. Liability and indemnity

The final Terms will include a legally reviewed limitation of liability and a monetary liability floor. Those figures are not yet finalized.

The intended framework excludes indirect and consequential damages where law permits and caps aggregate liability based on fees paid during the preceding 12 months or a stated minimum amount.

Customers may be required to indemnify Yappiely against third-party claims arising from their websites, content, moderation decisions, legal violations, rights infringements, or failure to provide required notice and consent. The final clause will exclude claims caused by Yappiely’s own breach, negligence, or unlawful conduct.

21. Governing law and disputes

Governing law, exclusive court, mandatory consumer protections, and the pre-litigation dispute process must be reviewed and published before these Terms become effective.

22. Changes

When these Terms become effective, Yappiely may update them. Material changes will receive reasonable advance notice unless immediate changes are required for security, legal compliance, or abuse prevention.

23. General terms

The final Terms will include provisions covering notices, assignment, force majeure, severability, waiver, relationship of the parties, the entire agreement, and controlling language.

24. Contact

The legal operator name, postal address, support email, security email, and legal-notice email will be added before these Terms become effective.