Terms & Conditions

What these terms cover

These terms apply to this website and to the hosted demo instance you can sign in to. They do not govern your use of the AskDocs software itself — that is covered by its licence, and the difference matters, so it is the next section rather than a footnote.

By using this website or the demo, you accept these terms. If you do not, please do not use them; you can still download and run the software under its own licence.

Licence — the software and this website are different things

The AskDocs application is open source under the MIT licence. You may run it, read it, modify it, redistribute it and use it commercially. You do not need our permission, you do not owe us a fee, and you do not have to tell us you are doing it. Nothing on this page narrows that licence — where these terms and the MIT licence disagree about the software, the MIT licence wins.

This website's content is not MIT-licensed. The copy, the design system, the typography choices, the diagrams and the photography belong to the AskDocs team. Cloning the site is not covered by the software's licence. Quoting from it with attribution is fine.

The AskDocs name and logo are ours. The licence lets you fork the code; it does not let you present your fork as the official AskDocs project.

The hosted demo instance

The demo exists so you can try AskDocs without installing it. It is provided as a demonstration, not a service:

It carries no uptime commitment, no SLA and no support obligation.
Data on it may be reset or deleted without notice.
Do not upload confidential, personal or regulated documents to it. If your documents are sensitive, self-host — that is what the software is for.

When using the demo, do not attempt to breach its security or access another account's data; do not upload unlawful material, malware, or content you have no right to upload; do not use it to store or process data you are contractually or legally required to keep on your own infrastructure; and do not use automated means to place unreasonable load on it.

We may suspend or remove demo accounts that do any of the above.

Running your own instance

When you self-host AskDocs, you operate it. You are responsible for the infrastructure, for securing it, for backups, for the lawfulness of the documents you put into it, and for your obligations to the people whose data those documents contain.

Two limits are worth stating explicitly because they affect how you should deploy it:

AskDocs does not provide encryption at rest. If you need it, supply it at the disk or database layer.
Workspace isolation is logical, not cryptographic — workspaces are separated by enforced query boundaries within one database, not by separate encrypted stores.

Answers are generated, and must be checked

AskDocs retrieves passages from your documents and has a language model write an answer from them, with citations. It is a retrieval tool, and its output can be incomplete or wrong.

The citations exist so you can check the answer. Please check the answer. AskDocs' job is to point you at the right source, not to replace reading it.

Do not rely on generated output as legal, medical, financial or other professional advice, and do not wire it into automated actions that take effect without a person reviewing them.

No certifications

AskDocs holds no formal security or compliance certifications and has not been independently audited. We say so here rather than letting the absence be discovered later. If a certification is a requirement for you, AskDocs does not currently meet it.

Disclaimer of warranties

This website and the demo instance are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site or the demo will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure.

The software carries the MIT licence's own warranty disclaimer, which is part of the licence text distributed with it.

Limitation of liability

TODO — needs legal review The clause below limits what we are responsible for. It was drafted in-house and has not been reviewed by a lawyer. Whether these exclusions hold depends on jurisdiction. Not final.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the AskDocs team is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue or goodwill, arising from your use of this website, the demo instance, or the software — whether or not we were advised such damages were possible.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Third-party services

If you configure your instance to use a hosted language model, your relationship with that provider is governed by their terms, not ours. What is sent to them is described in the privacy policy.

Governing law and disputes

TODO — needs legal review The governing law is India. Still to be decided by a lawyer: which city's courts are named, and whether disputes go to arbitration before they can go to court. Not final.

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts of India have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we do, the date at the top of this page changes. Continuing to use the website or the demo after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to info@idefender.io, or through the contact form.