Terms of Service

By creating an account or using What Deficit? (“the app,” “we”) you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the app.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. You confirm this at sign-up. What Deficit? is currently offered to users in the United States only; we block signup from non-US IP addresses.

2. The service

What Deficit? is an ADHD-first task and focus app with an AI companion. The AI companion is named “Penny” by default — you can rename her and customize her tone in settings.

3. Not a medical service

What Deficit? is not a medical device, therapy service, or substitute for professional advice. Penny is configured to refuse medical, psychiatric, and pharmaceutical advice. If you choose to discuss medications, diagnoses, or therapy with Penny, that content lives in your chat history (which you can delete at any time); it isn’t used to improve the app unless you’ve explicitly opted in (see Privacy Policy Section 6), and even then it’s scrubbed at the boundary. If you’re in crisis, contact a qualified professional or the resources on our Safety page (in the U.S., the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988).

4. Free tier & Plus subscription

• Free, forever. The full task app — the matrix, manual entry, the focus timer, recurring tasks, and the calendar — is free, with no usage limits. Penny is included free for everyday help when you come to her (turning a brain-dump into a sorted, scheduled plan), up to a daily number of conversations.
• Plus — $12 USD/month, or $96 USD/year. Unlimited conversations with Penny, plus proactive Penny (gentle check-ins, morning briefings, noticing what’s slipping) and deeper memory over time. Billed monthly or annually through Stripe; subscribing authorizes the recurring charge at your chosen interval until you cancel.
• A 7-day taste of Plus. New accounts get Plus features (including proactive Penny) free for 7 days, then revert to the free tier. You are not charged when the 7 days end — nothing converts automatically. If you want to keep Plus, you choose to subscribe.
• The free daily Penny limit can change. It’s a number we may adjust over time; we’ll keep the free tier genuinely useful.

5. Cancellation & refunds

• Cancel any time. Cancel from Settings or by emailing [email protected]. After cancellation you keep Plus through the end of the period you’ve already paid for, then revert to the free tier.
• No automatic refunds. Cancelling doesn’t refund the current billing period; the subscription simply doesn’t renew.
• Pro-rata refund on request. If you cancel mid-period and want a partial refund of unused days, email us within 14 days of cancellation. We’ll refund unused days less AI capacity already provided, case by case.
• The 7-day Plus taste is free. Nothing is billed during it, and nothing is billed when it ends unless you choose to subscribe.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the app for illegal activity or to harm others.
• Try to extract another user’s data, bypass authentication, or break Penny’s safety rules.
• Resell or redistribute the service without our written permission.
• Submit content that infringes someone else’s rights, is harassing, or contains malware.
• Upload, store, or share any image or file that is illegal to possess or distribute — including any sexual content involving a minor (CSAM) and any non-consensual intimate imagery.
• Use Penny to seek or provide medical, legal, or financial advice that you’ll act on.
• Inject prompts or content into chat with the intent of corrupting our product-improvement processes (Privacy Policy Sections 5–6) or escalating a suggestion into an automatic change.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules.

Illegal images. We don’t proactively scan the contents of files you upload. However, if we become aware that a user has stored or shared child sexual abuse material (CSAM), we will preserve the relevant records and report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) as required by U.S. federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2258A), and may suspend the account.

7. Your content

You own the content you put into the app — your tasks, notes, attachments, and chat messages. You grant us a limited license to process that content solely to operate the app for you (for example, to generate Penny’s replies, personalize her to you from your own history, and store your data for you to read later).

We also improve the app from structural, content-free usage signals (such as which suggestion you accepted or edited) — a standard product-improvement use described in Privacy Policy Section 5; this never uses the words of your conversations. Separately, only if you opt in (Privacy Policy Section 6), you grant us a limited license to use scrubbed, pseudonymized versions of your conversations to improve Penny and the product. You can revoke that opt-in anytime, which purges the scrubbed data. Washington residents are excluded from both improvement uses.

8. How we improve the app

We improve What Deficit? from three sources:

• Direct feedback. Messages you send through Settings → Feedback. Categorization is AI-assisted, but every reply you receive comes from a human on our team.
• Structural usage signals (everyone). Content-free signals about how features perform (Privacy Policy Section 5), combined across users. Never the words of your conversations or tasks.
• Scrubbed conversations (opt-in only). If you’ve opted in, the pipeline in Privacy Policy Section 6. None of these can change the app on their own — they produce suggestions a human reviews and ships through our normal release process; Penny’s personality, the security configuration, and the scrubber itself are off-limits to them.

9. AI provider

Depending on capacity, Penny may run on our own self-hosted AI model or on Anthropic’s Claude API. Neither is used to train on your conversations — Anthropic doesn’t train on API content and retains it up to 30 days for abuse-monitoring only, and our own model is fine-tuned only on opt-in data (see Privacy Policy Sections 4 & 6). AI replies can be wrong; treat them as suggestions, not authoritative advice.

10. Service availability

We aim for uptime but don’t guarantee it. We may take the app offline for maintenance or upgrades. If it’s unavailable for an extended period, contact us and we’ll work it out.

11. Account deletion

You can delete your account from Settings → Danger zone → Delete account. Deletion immediately removes your access and permanently erases your tasks, chat history, Penny’s memory of you, focus-timer data, attachments, account record, the usage records behind Privacy Policy Section 5, and any scrubbed conversation data from Section 6. Database records are erased within 30 days; payment-record retention is governed by Stripe and applicable law (see Privacy Policy Sections 7 & 9).

12. Disclaimers

The app is provided “as is.” To the maximum extent allowed by law, we disclaim all implied warranties (merchantability, fitness for purpose, non-infringement). We don’t guarantee the app will improve your productivity, focus, or any other outcome.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent allowed by law, our total liability for any claim arising from your use of the app is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or $50 USD, whichever is greater. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. This limitation does not apply to gross negligence, willful misconduct, or any liability that cannot be excluded under your local consumer-protection law.

14. Changes to the service or terms

We may change the app, its features, or these Terms. Material changes will be announced in-app or by email before they take effect. Continued use after the change means you accept it. If you don’t accept, you can delete your account.

15. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Disputes will be resolved in courts located in Texas, except as required by your local consumer-protection law.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms or your subscription: [email protected].