Terms of use

Four things before anything else

These sit at the top rather than in the small print, because they are the things a reasonable person would want to know first, and because most of them are the sort of thing terms of use usually bury.

What still has to be filled in

This draft cannot answer the following, either because they are not written down anywhere in the product or because they are judgements nobody has made yet. Each one appears in the text below as a marked gap. Terms of use naming an invented company, address or country would be worse than no terms at all, so none has been invented here.

Contents

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are between you and [[TO CONFIRM: legal entity name]][[TO CONFIRM: company number]], of [[TO CONFIRM: registered or trading address]]. Where they say "we" or "us", that is who they mean. Where they say "you", that is the person using Gubbins.

They cover the Gubbins website, the app you get with an account, and the counter: the door your own AI assistants come to with a key you granted, to read from your bank and to propose to it.

You can reach us about anything on this page at [[TO CONFIRM: contact email address]].

How you agree to these terms

When you create an account there is a tick box, and the account cannot be created without it. What you tick says that you have read and agree to these terms and the privacy policy, and that both are early drafts and will change. Both documents are linked from beside the box so they can be read before it is ticked.

What is recorded, on our server rather than in your browser, is one record for each of the two documents: that you accepted it, which version you accepted, and when. The version recorded is a label rather than a number, and today it reads 2026-07-30-draft, because that is what these are. Both records are in your data export, and nothing running in a browser, including ours, can write or alter them.

One honest detail, because it is the sort of thing that matters only when somebody asks. If that record fails to save, the account is still created and the failure is logged for a person to look at, rather than the sign-up being thrown away. You did tick the box on the form either way; what could be missing is our evidence of it, not your agreement.

[[TO CONFIRM: what accepting a draft version is worth]] Being clear about what that acceptance is and is not. It is a record that you agreed to this text, not a statement that this text is settled. These terms have not been through legal review. If a reviewer changes something material, then everybody who ticked the box agreed to a document that no longer exists, and the version label is precisely how we can tell who has to be asked again. Whether accepting an unreviewed draft binds you to anything, and what has to happen when a reviewed version replaces it, are for that review to settle.

Reading the website accepts nothing. There is no longer any way to use Gubbins without an account: the conversation that once ran at the front door retired on 27 August 2026. So the only person who has accepted these terms is somebody who ticked the box when creating an account, which keeps what a person accepted, and when, unambiguous.

2. What Gubbins is, and what it is not

Gubbins is a context bank. It holds what your AI assistants have learned about your world, in one place that belongs to you rather than to any of them, and it lends that context back to whichever assistant you have given a key to. Assistants borrow. Only you deposit.

It is for people running their own affairs, a small business, or both, and it does not assume which.

What it does:

• Holds your memories: facts, events, plans, ideas and notes. Each one is filed into a cluster, shows where it came from, and is yours to correct or delete.
• Holds a record of your files: what a file is and where it lives. What it does not hold is the more important half, and section 7 says it plainly.
• Lends context to your own assistants through a key you grant. A key reaches the clusters you chose, at the grade you allowed, and nothing else. You can take it back.
• Receipts every read. Anything that reaches your Memory leaves a line saying who read it, when, and under which grant.
• Holds proposals back for you. What an assistant wants to deposit waits in a review pile until you accept it. Nothing arrives in your Memory because a machine decided it should.

What it does not do, and this is not a soft "not yet":

• It does not talk to you. Gubbins used to hold a conversation and it stopped on 27 August 2026. There is no chat, no conversation at the front door, and no assistant inside Gubbins to ask. Your own assistants do the talking, wherever you already use them, and Gubbins is what they remember with.
• It does not act on your behalf. There is nothing connected to Gubbins that it can write to, post to, or send from. It never contacts anybody for you: no emails, no messages, no bookings, no payments, no filings.
• It holds no file bytes at all. Your documents stay in your own store, and Gubbins keeps only a description and an address. Section 7 says what that means and what it costs you in return.
• It is not a bank, an accountant, a solicitor, a doctor or an adviser of any kind. See section 8.

If a future version of Gubbins can act for you, that will arrive with its own controls and its own explanation, and these terms will be updated before it does.

3. This is an early beta

This section is deliberately near the top and deliberately not softened by anything after it. If you read only one part of this document, read this one.

What the beta asks of you, and what it gives back

You are helping test Gubbins, rather than buying it cheaply. It is not a discounted product and not a trial with a price attached at the end. It is free while the beta runs and we pay for the model calls, and in exchange we ask for two things. Both are stated here and on screen before you start, rather than buried where nobody would look for them.

One. Usage information is collected so the product can be priced accurately. How many memories, how many calls to a model, and what those calls cost us. We cannot price this product honestly without knowing what a person actually costs, and nobody knows that yet, because the hosted version is new and there is no history to read.

Two. You may be asked questions and for feedback. Not often, and you can always say no.

We measure how much, never what. Volumes and costs, and never the content of a memory. Nothing that counts your usage reads a memory, a title or a sentence, and the query that answers what a person cost us selects no column that could hold one.

Gubbins will cost money one day: it is a paid product with a free beta, not a free product. The price is not set yet, because what a person actually costs us is one of the things this beta is measuring. It will be published before anybody is charged, and you will be told well before it starts. Nothing is charged while the beta runs.

4. Who can use Gubbins

Accounts are for adults, 18 or over. When you sign up you confirm that you are 18 or over, in the same tick box that accepts these terms, and you are refused if you do not. That check happens on our server rather than only in your browser, so it cannot be skipped by editing the page. You are not asked for your date of birth, and none is stored: the only thing kept is that an adult declaration was made.

By creating an account you confirm that you are 18 or over, and that what you tell us at sign-up is true.

Gubbins is offered in the United Kingdom and written for it. It is not aimed at people elsewhere, and nothing has been checked against the law of any other country.

Sign-up is invite only. Invite-only sign-up opened on 30 July 2026: accounts can now be created, but only with an email address we have invited. That check happens on our server, against a list your browser can neither read nor add itself to, and it runs before anything is done with the confirmation you gave, so somebody who has not been invited is turned away without it being looked at. If that check cannot be made at all, sign-up is refused rather than let through.

5. Your account

• One account belongs to one person. Please keep your password to yourself and do not let anybody else use your account.
• Tell us promptly if you think somebody else has got into your account.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account, unless it happens because of something we did wrong.
• There is no two factor authentication yet. It is on the list, and until it exists your password is the only thing protecting your account.
• A key is not an account. When you grant a key to an assistant, that key acts on your bank under your name and within the scope you set. Treat a key the way you would treat your password: give one only to an assistant you actually use, and revoke it when you stop.

6. What you may not do

The short version is: use Gubbins for your own work or life admin, and do not use it as a way to get at the machinery behind it. In more detail, please do not:

• Use a key beyond what it was granted. A key reaches the clusters you scoped it to, at the grade you allowed. Trying to reach past that, from an assistant or by calling the counter directly, is refused and receipted, and repeated attempts are treated as an attack on the service.
• Grant a key to an assistant on somebody else's behalf without telling them. A key is a standing permission to read a person's private life, and it should be theirs to give.
• Use Gubbins as a general purpose AI model, or as a way to reach one. Gubbins is for you and your world. The one place it asks a model is described in section 2, and using that as a route to a model we pay for spends an allowance that real customers draw from.
• Try to get round the limits in section 10.
• Break into, probe or interfere with the service, other people's accounts, or the systems it runs on.
• Put things into Gubbins that you have no right to put anywhere: material that is unlawful, that infringes somebody else's rights, or that you were not entitled to share.
• Use Gubbins to do anything unlawful, to harass anybody, or to produce material that would harm somebody.
• Resell Gubbins, or present its output as a professional service you are qualified to give when you are not.

We may refuse a request, refuse a key, or suspend an account where we reasonably believe any of this is happening. Some of that happens automatically, in the moment, and is described in section 10.

7. Your content, your files, and who owns it

What you put into Gubbins stays yours. Every memory in your bank, every file record, every receipt and every cluster belongs to you. We do not claim ownership of any of it.

To run the service we need permission to handle it: to store it, to show it back to you, and to serve it to a key you have granted. That permission lasts as long as you use Gubbins and ends when you delete your account, except for the things named in the privacy policy that survive with your identity removed.

We do not train AI models. Nothing in your bank is used by us to train a model, because we do not build models. The one place Gubbins asks a model, described in section 2, sends what it needs to answer and nothing more. [[TO CONFIRM: Anthropic data terms]] What that supplier may do with what is sent is governed by our agreement with them, and settling that is part of the legal review.

Your files stay in your own store, and Gubbins holds none of them

What this buys you, said plainly. If you stop using Gubbins, your documents were never here to get back. If somebody broke into Gubbins tomorrow, there is no document store to take. And you can change your mind about a file without asking us, because it is in your folder rather than ours.

What it costs you, said just as plainly. If you rename a folder or disconnect an account, a file record can point at nothing. When that happens the record still stands, saying so in the store's own words, with the description and the memories kept beside it. We would rather keep what was learned than lose it because a folder moved.

What we lend an agent, and what a receipt can and cannot tell you

When an agent you have granted a key to needs to reach a document, Gubbins lends it a scoped, short-lived reach into one folder. Three things about that, and all three are enforced rather than promised:

• Never the credential. The sign-in you gave your store stays in the vault. What the agent gets is a reach that only works for the folder named, and only for the acts named.
• Fifteen minutes at the most. The ceiling is set by the database rather than by our code, so a bug that asked for a day would be refused by the database itself.
• Every lend is receipted. Who was lent a reach, into which folder, for which acts, and when.

Older conversations. Gubbins used to hold a conversation, and until 27 August 2026 a copy of those conversations was kept so the team could judge how it was answering. Each of those copies is deleted 90 days after it was made, and since none has been made since that date, the store empties itself. The privacy policy explains them in full, along with the generalised examples that are kept for longer. Nothing new is being written to either.

One thing we cannot undo for you: a conversation held at the front door without an account has nothing linking it to you, so we cannot find it in order to delete it when you delete your account. It goes when its 90 days are up.

Feedback you send us. [[TO CONFIRM: who owns feedback and suggestions]] Reports sent through the feedback button are read and used to fix and improve the product. Nothing currently says what rights we have in an idea somebody sends in, and a solicitor should say so plainly one way or the other.

Gubbins itself stays ours. The software, the name, the mark and the design are ours, and using Gubbins does not give you any right in them.

8. Checking what your assistants read

Three specific things worth knowing, because they are how being wrong actually shows up here:

• A memory can be wrong. Every memory shows where it came from and is yours to correct or delete. The review pile exists so that nothing enters your bank without you seeing it first, and that only works if you actually read what is in it.
• A memory can be stale. Gubbins records when it learned something and does not go back and check. A fact that was true in March can sit in your bank being confidently served in December. Nothing here promises that what your bank holds is current.
• A description of a file is not the file. What Gubbins holds about a document is a short description somebody or something wrote about it. The document itself may have changed since, in your own store, without Gubbins knowing.

Where Gubbins does not know something, it is meant to say so rather than fill the gap. That is followed well and it is not a guarantee.

9. Nothing is charged, and nothing is for sale

Until 27 August 2026 you might have been shown a price list and asked which one you would pick, labelled on the screen as research. That question has been withdrawn and nothing asks it now. Answers given at the time are still your data: they are in your download, and deleting your account deletes them with everything else.

What you are entitled to today is everything, free, for everybody in the beta. Only we can change that, and only on the server: the database refuses any attempt to change an entitlement from a browser, including ours.

What will happen if charging ever begins. Every customer will be asked, properly, at that time: shown the price then in force, asked to agree to terms then in force, and asked to give a payment authorisation then. Nothing recorded during the beta will be treated as consent to that charge. If you do not agree at that point, you will not be charged, and Gubbins will simply stop being available to you on that basis.

[[TO CONFIRM: what happens if charging begins]] A payment provider has been chosen on paper and has deliberately not been connected. How charging would work, who the merchant would be, and how VAT would be handled are all decisions for that day.

There are no billing, renewal, cancellation or refund terms in this document, and that is not an oversight. There is nothing to bill, nothing to renew, nothing to cancel and nothing to refund. Adding those clauses now would imply a payment relationship that does not exist.

10. Limits on how much you can use

There are limits, and they are described here rather than hidden, because they are a genuine limit on what you get.

What costs us money, and is therefore metered. The one place Gubbins asks an AI model, described in section 2, is priced per call and counted against two ceilings over a rolling 24 hours: a figure attached to your plan, and a figure for the whole of Gubbins together. When either is reached, Gubbins says so plainly and stops until the window rolls forward.

[[TO CONFIRM: the exact daily limits]] The figures live in a database row so they can be changed without a release, and they have been changed more than once. This draft therefore describes the mechanism rather than quoting a number that would be out of date by the time anybody read it.

If you reach your own ceiling you can ask for more. During the beta that is granted automatically, within bounds enforced on our server: it moves you to the next ceiling up and never to unlimited, there is a small maximum number of grants, and no more than one a day. The ceiling for everybody together is untouched by any grant.

What protects the service, rather than the bill. These apply whether or not a model is involved:

• Changes to your vault are capped per hour. A burst of changes to your keys and secrets is refused with a plain sentence saying nothing has changed and to try again shortly, rather than being half applied.
• A secret can be used only as often as you allowed. You set that when you store it, and the counter refuses past it.
• A reach lent into one of your folders lasts fifteen minutes at the most, and that ceiling is set by the database rather than by our code.
• Feedback reports are capped per day.

Being refused is not being accused. Hitting a ceiling means you are using Gubbins, which is the point of it. A refusal says what was reached and what to do next, and section 6 is the separate matter of doing something you should not.

One honest note. The daily ceilings are summed per request, so two requests arriving at exactly the same moment can both be allowed through at the edge of a limit. The overshoot is bounded by a single request.

11. Availability, and changes to the product

There is no service level and no uptime commitment. Gubbins runs on hosted services and depends on an AI supplier we do not control. Any of them can be unavailable, and when the AI supplier is having problems Gubbins cannot answer at all. There is no second supplier to fall back to today, and that is written down as a known single point of failure rather than discovered by you.

We may change, suspend, restrict or withdraw Gubbins, or any part of it, at any time and without notice. During a beta that is not a threat, it is the ordinary week: screens get rebuilt and features get replaced.

We will try to give notice of anything that would lose your work, and we cannot promise it. Please keep your own copy of anything that matters.

Maintenance may happen at any time. There is no maintenance window, because there is no scale at which one would mean anything yet.

12. Ending it, from either side

You can leave at any time

• Deleting your account is immediate. There is no grace period and no undo. That is deliberate: a window where we still hold your data after you asked for it to be gone is the opposite of what the button promises.
• You confirm by typing your email address, and that is checked again on our server, so it cannot be done to you by accident or by somebody calling the endpoint directly.
• Download everything first if you want it. The button is right next to it and produces a single file containing your clusters, your memories, your file records, the connections between memories, the evidence behind them, your receipts and your keys, plus the record of what you agreed to at sign-up. The privacy policy has the full list, including what is deliberately left out and why, so that there is only one copy of it to keep true.
• Your files are not in the download, and they were never ours to put there. They are in your own store, where they have been all along. What comes out is the record of what each one was and where it lives.
• What goes with the account, and what survives with your identity removed, is set out in the privacy policy. In short: your own material goes, and operational records about the running of Gubbins survive without you attached to them.
• After you delete, we will not contact you. There is no route back and no follow up, deliberately.

A bank that stops being paid for goes cold, not dark

How long a cold bank stays cold, and whether it is ever deleted, is not settled. [[TO CONFIRM: the retention period for a cold bank]] This is deliberately blank rather than filled with a plausible figure. Data protection law requires a period that is justified, written down and actually followed, and an unjustified "we keep it for ever" is itself a failure. A solicitor has to see it before it becomes a number.

What is true today, and is a fact rather than a promise about the future: nothing anywhere in Gubbins deletes a cold bank. The setting that would say how long exists and is empty, and no code reads it. When a period is set, everybody affected will be told well before anything happens, and the notice will name the date.

We can end it too

We may suspend or close your account, or refuse service, if you break section 6, if we are required to, or if continuing would put the service or other people at risk. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to put it right. Where somebody is doing real harm, we may act first.

Suspending is deliberately not the same as deleting. A suspended account keeps everything in it. You can still sign in, read your Memory, and press "Download everything". What stops is your keys being served. It exists as a separate thing precisely so that stopping somebody does not have to mean destroying their work, which until 30 July 2026 was the only way we had of stopping anybody.

We may also close accounts because we are stopping, changing or withdrawing Gubbins, which during a beta is a genuine possibility rather than a formality. In that case we will give what notice we reasonably can, and you should still keep your own copy of anything that matters.

13. Your information

Everything about personal information lives in the privacy policy: what Gubbins collects, why, how long it keeps it, who else sees it, where it is processed, and the rights you have. These terms deliberately do not repeat any of it, so that there is only ever one document to keep true.

Three things there are worth a link, because people ask about them here:

• What a receipt records, and the honest limit on what it can record about a file.
• Your rights, and the buttons in the product that answer most of them.
• What security is in place, and what is not built yet.

14. Liability

[[TO CONFIRM: how liability should be limited]] [[TO CONFIRM: whether users are consumers, businesses, or both]] This section states the shape rather than the words. It is the part of this draft most in need of a solicitor, and the second gap changes the answer, because consumer law limits what may be excluded and business terms are treated differently.

What is true about the product, and what any limitation has to be built on:

• Gubbins is provided free, in an early beta, with no service level and no promise that it works.
• What it holds was written by AI models and can be wrong or out of date. Section 8 asks you to check anything you rely on.
• It cannot act, so it cannot send the wrong thing to somebody. The harm it can realistically do is serving your assistant something incorrect that you then act on, or losing something you put into it.
• It holds no file bytes, so it cannot lose your documents. It can lose the record of what a document was and where it lived.
• What a lent reach can do inside your store is bounded by the folder and the acts you scoped it to, and by fifteen minutes. What an agent does with that reach is between you and the agent.
• There is no payment, so there is no fee to measure a cap against.

On that basis, and subject to the review:

• Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited. That includes death or personal injury caused by negligence, and fraud. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights stand whatever this document says.
• Gubbins is provided as it is, without warranties, and we do not promise that it will be available, accurate, uninterrupted or fit for any particular purpose.
• We are not responsible for a decision you took because of something Gubbins produced without you checking it.
• We are not responsible for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of an opportunity, or losses that were not reasonably foreseeable.
• We are not responsible for the AI supplier, the hosting providers, or your own internet connection being unavailable, though we will say plainly when that is what has happened.

15. Governing law

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them, are governed by [[TO CONFIRM: governing law and courts]], and the courts of that place have jurisdiction.

England and Wales is the obvious answer and it is not written here as fact, because it follows from where the legal entity sits and that has not been settled. If you are a consumer, you may also have the right to bring a claim where you live, which is one of the things the review should confirm.

16. Changes to these terms

Gubbins is being built quickly, so these will change. When they do, the date at the top changes with them.

Where a change materially affects you, we will tell you rather than quietly swapping the page. There is a precedent for that in this product: when conversation keeping began, the notice shown before typing was updated, the old promise was removed from the product and the website, and every person who had agreed to the old wording was asked again.

If you keep using Gubbins after a change, that is taken as accepting it. If you do not accept it, you can delete your account, immediately, from your profile.

This draft is dated 30 July 2026. [[TO CONFIRM: effective date and version history]]

Also here

Privacy policy · All legal pages · About Gubbins

These terms and the privacy policy are meant to be read as a pair. Anything about your personal information is in the privacy policy and is deliberately not repeated here.