Terms of Service

Version 1.0 — draft prepared for legal review. This document has not yet been signed off by a Czech-qualified lawyer. It is published because BriefGate is a live service and customers need terms to accept at sign-up, not because the drafting is finished. The clause that specifically needs a lawyer's review before this stops being a draft:

• Liability limits (§9) — the caps and the three carve-outs are a business judgment, not a legal one; a lawyer needs to check they are enforceable under Czech law and against a consumer.

Until a lawyer has reviewed it, treat this as the best-effort statement of how BriefGate actually operates, not as a fully vetted legal instrument.

1. Who these terms are with

BriefGate is operated by Radim Sekera, a Czech sole trader (OSVČ) trading as "BriefGate" (IČO: 04217764, registered address: Kostelní 2022/18, 741 01 Nový Jičín, Czech Republic). These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a contract between Radim Sekera ("BriefGate", "we", "us") and the person or organization that creates a BriefGate account ("Customer", "you").

BriefGate is a SaaS product for requesting, chasing, and structurally collecting project material ("intakes") from a Customer's own clients, used mainly by developers and agencies together with an AI agent over MCP or the REST API. See briefgate.dev and the docs hub for what the product does.

BriefGate is open to both business customers and consumers (an individual acting outside their trade, business, or profession). Section 11 of these Terms applies only to consumers and gives you rights that a business customer does not have under Czech law.

2. Order of precedence

Three documents govern the relationship, in this order when they conflict:

1. The Data Processing Agreement ("DPA"), for anything touching the processing of personal data on your instructions.
2. These Terms of Service, for everything else commercial.
3. The Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP"), which these Terms incorporate by reference and which fills in the detail of what you may and may not do with the service.

A provision in the AUP that a court read as conflicting with these Terms is read subject to these Terms; a provision in these Terms that conflicts with the DPA on a data-processing matter is read subject to the DPA.

3. The Data Processing Agreement and roles

For your clients' personal data submitted through an intake, BriefGate processes it solely on your documented instructions and you are the controller; BriefGate is the processor. That relationship, the sub-processors, the security measures, and your rights and obligations as controller are set out in full in the DPA and are incorporated into these Terms by reference — this document does not restate them, and where it touches the same ground the DPA's wording controls (§2).

For your own account data — the information you give us to create and run your account, described in the Privacy Notice — BriefGate is itself the controller, not your processor. The Privacy Notice, not the DPA, governs that data.

4. Accounts

You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep your login credentials confidential. You are responsible for activity under your account and API keys, including activity by team members you invite onto an Agency seat. Tell us promptly if you believe an API key or account has been compromised; BriefGate is not liable for loss arising from a key or password you failed to keep confidential.

You must be able to form a binding contract to create an account: 18 or over, or otherwise the relevant Czech age of legal capacity.

5. The service

BriefGate lets you define an "intake" (a set of items — text, files, images, colors, structured data, credentials, etc.), send it to your client through a hosted portal, chase them automatically by email and (on plans that include it) SMS, and retrieve the structured results via the REST API or MCP. The current feature set, item types, and plan-gated capabilities are described in the docs hub; this section is not an exhaustive functional spec and the docs, not these Terms, are the place that changes as the product does.

6. Plans, pricing, and payment

Current plans, prices (monthly and yearly), and what each plan includes are published at briefgate.dev/pricing and via the machine-readable GET /pricing.json endpoint, and are not repeated here — those pages are the source of truth and these Terms would only go stale if they duplicated the numbers. What follows are the terms of sale that apply to whatever price is shown there at the time you buy.

• Prices are quoted in US dollars.
• Both monthly and yearly billing intervals are offered; yearly is charged as a single upfront payment. Subscriptions auto-renew for a further term of the same length unless cancelled before the renewal date.
• Add-ons (extra storage, extra Agency seats, SMS credit packs) are billed as described on the pricing page and in the billing docs.
• Price changes. BriefGate may change plan prices or what a plan includes for future terms. If we do, the price you are currently paying is locked for the remainder of your current paid term — a change never applies retroactively to a period you have already paid for. We will give you reasonable notice (at least 30 days) before a price or limit change takes effect on your next renewal, so you can cancel before it does.
• Taxes. BriefGate is operated by a Czech sole trader who is not registered for VAT. The prices shown are therefore final — no VAT is added at checkout. If that changes, it will be reflected in the prices shown and communicated the same way as any other change to these Terms (§12).

7. Cancellation, non-payment, and termination

Cancellation by you. Cancel any time from the billing portal (POST /v1/billing/portal). Access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for; there are no partial refunds for the unused portion of a period. At the end of that period your account reverts to the Free plan — nothing is deleted (see the next paragraph).

Non-payment. If a renewal payment fails, Stripe marks the subscription past-due and BriefGate gives you a 14-day grace period during which your plan, limits, and features stay exactly as they were — nothing is downgraded or restricted while we wait for you to fix your payment method. If payment still has not succeeded when the grace period ends, Free-plan limits then apply to creating new intakes (you cannot start a new active intake beyond what Free allows). This is the full extent of what non-payment does: existing intakes keep running exactly as before, and nothing is deleted. Paying successfully at any point — during the grace period or after — restores your paid plan's limits immediately.

Termination by BriefGate. We may suspend or terminate your account for material breach of these Terms or the AUP, including the grounds for suspension set out in the AUP. Where the breach is capable of being fixed and does not involve active harm to third parties (spam, abuse, illegal content), we will give you notice and a reasonable opportunity to fix it first. Where it does involve active harm — in particular the grounds a Resend or Twilio compliance flag can trigger — we may suspend the affected intake, sending capability, or account immediately and notify you afterward.

Effect of termination. Sections 8, 9, and 10 survive termination. Data handling on termination (deletion vs. return, and the timeline) is governed by the DPA (§5) and the GDPR page, not restated here.

8. Intellectual property

Yours. You own the content you put into BriefGate: your intake definitions, item schemas, chase message templates and copy, your logo and branding, and the data your clients submit through your intakes. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of any of that to BriefGate.

Ours. BriefGate owns the BriefGate software, API, portal, documentation, and the BriefGate name and marks. Your subscription grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the service for your own business during the term — not a license to the underlying software.

9. Liability

Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited under Czech law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation.

Subject to that, BriefGate's total liability to you arising out of or in connection with these Terms is limited to the amount you paid BriefGate in the 12 months before the claim arose, and BriefGate is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss, or loss of profit, revenue, or data, except as follows — three situations get their own, separate treatment because a single blanket cap would either under- or over-protect depending on whose fault the loss actually was:

(a) A security failure affecting the secrets vault. If plaintext of a secret-type item is exposed because of a failure in BriefGate's own vault implementation (the sealed-box encryption, key handling, or the one-time reveal logic described in the secrets docs) rather than because of how you configured or used it, BriefGate's liability for that specific incident is not capped by the general limit above and instead follows the breach-notification and remedy provisions of the DPA. This carve-out does not extend to a secret you retrieved and then mishandled yourself, or to a key compromised through your own account.

(b) Harm arising from your own chase content or your own recipients. BriefGate is a delivery mechanism you configure. We are not liable for the content of the chase emails or SMS you write, for whether you had a lawful basis to contact a given recipient (that is squarely your obligation under the AUP), or for any claim a recipient brings against you arising from a message you chose to send them. This includes complaints, regulatory action, or third-party claims arising from your own use of the sending capability.

(c) Data lost through your own retention settings or a DELETE your own API key issued. Retention (retention_days, retention.mode on an intake) and DELETE /v1/intakes/:id are configuration and API calls that only your account or an API key you issued can make, and each is documented as irreversible where it says so. BriefGate is not liable for data lost because a retention setting expired as configured, or because an API key you issued — whether used by you, your agent, or someone who obtained the key through your own failure to keep it secret — called a delete or purge endpoint. If you believe BriefGate deleted something outside of what you configured or requested, that is not within this carve-out and is treated as an ordinary claim under the general limit above.

10. Service levels and delivery

No uptime guarantee. BriefGate does not currently offer a service level agreement with uptime commitments or service credits. Support response times are stated per plan on the pricing page and in the billing docs as target first-response times, not guarantees — they describe what we aim for, not a commitment backed by a remedy, and missing one does not entitle you to a credit or refund.

Reminder delivery is best-effort. Chase emails and SMS are sent through third-party providers (currently Resend for email, Twilio for SMS) and their delivery, speed, and inbox placement depend on those providers, on spam filtering at the recipient's end, and on factors outside BriefGate's control. We do not guarantee that a reminder is delivered, read, or delivered within any particular time, and BriefGate is not liable for a project delay caused by a reminder that did not arrive.

11. Consumer rights (Czech Republic)

This section applies only if you are a consumer — a natural person entering this contract outside your trade, business, or profession — under Czech Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code ("NOZ"). If you are acting for a business (including as a sole trader, freelancer, or agency), this section does not apply to you and the ordinary commercial terms above govern instead.

Pre-contractual information (§ 1811 and § 1820 NOZ). Before you complete a purchase, BriefGate provides — through this document, the pricing page, and the checkout flow — its identity and contact details (§1 above), the main characteristics of the service (§5), the total price including how it is billed (§6), the duration of the contract and how to terminate it (§7), and the information required by § 1820 NOZ on withdrawal, complaints handling, and out-of-court dispute resolution (below). If any required item is missing from this set, contact us before purchasing and we will provide it.

14-day right of withdrawal. As a consumer you may withdraw from the contract without giving a reason within 14 days of concluding it. The easiest way is the "Withdraw from the contract" button on the Billing page of your dashboard, which records your withdrawal, cancels your subscription immediately, and sends you a written acknowledgement; a clear statement by email is equally valid. You never have to give a reason, and the reason field on that form is optional. Where you have not invoked the immediate-access waiver below, withdrawing entitles you to a refund of amounts paid, without undue delay and using the same payment method you used, within 14 days of us being notified.

The 14 days run from the day your paid subscription starts, which is the day your payment completes. The dashboard shows that date and the resulting deadline, and it keeps showing them after the deadline has passed. A withdrawal sent after the deadline is still recorded and we will come back to you on what can be refunded — the button does not stop working.

Waiver for immediate access to digital content (§ 1837 písm. l) NOZ, implementing Article 16(m) of Directive 2011/83/EU). BriefGate is a digital service delivered immediately on payment — your account is upgraded and usable the moment checkout completes, not after 14 days.

Before you can start a paid checkout from the dashboard you are asked to say whether you are buying for your business or as a private individual. Nothing is pre-selected and the upgrade button does not work until you choose.

• Choosing "for my business" records this declaration: "I am buying BriefGate in the course of my business, trade or profession, and not as a consumer." This section then does not apply to you.
• Choosing "as a private individual" offers a separate, unticked checkbox, which is the waiver. Ticking it records this consent: "I expressly ask BriefGate to start providing the paid plan immediately, before the 14-day withdrawal period ends, and I acknowledge that I lose my right to withdraw from the contract once the service has been fully performed."

The waiver is never bundled into accepting these Terms, is never pre-ticked, and can be left untouched: leaving it unticked does not block the purchase. What it changes is when the plan begins. Tick it and the plan starts as soon as your payment clears. Leave it unticked and the plan starts, and the first payment is taken, only after the 14 days have passed — until then you keep the free plan, you are charged nothing, and you can withdraw at no cost at all. That is the honest consequence of not asking us to begin: we do not begin. Ticking the box as a business declaration has no effect — a business has no withdrawal right to waive.

What you get back if you withdraw. Where the plan started immediately at your request and you then withdraw, you pay for the days you had it and we refund the rest (§ 1834 NOZ). A day begun counts as a day used. Unused SMS credits are refunded at the current pack price; credits already spent are not. Where the plan had not started yet, nothing has been charged and there is nothing to refund. The dashboard shows you the figure before you confirm, and the refund goes back to the card you paid with.

We store the exact sentence you agreed to, along with the date and the checkout it belongs to, and the dashboard shows that sentence back to you on the Billing page. A purchase made through the REST API or MCP, where there is no form to declare on, is recorded as undeclared and treated as a consumer purchase without a waiver — the full 14 days apply.

Complaints and out-of-court dispute resolution. For a complaint about the service, contact us first (see §1). If a dispute is not resolved directly, a consumer resident in the Czech Republic may bring it to the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (Česká obchodní inspekce, ČOI), ústřední inspektorát, Štěpánská 567/15, 120 00 Praha 2, www.coi.cz, the competent body for out-of-court consumer dispute resolution under Czech law. BriefGate does not use the EU Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform — the European Commission permanently discontinued it on 20 July 2025 — and does not reference it as an option.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect changes in the service, the law, or how we operate. For a change that materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email to your account's registered address before it takes effect; continuing to use BriefGate after that date constitutes acceptance. Other changes (clarifications, typo fixes, matching a DPA update) take effect on posting.

13. General

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the law of the Czech Republic, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer-protection provisions of the country where a consumer Customer is habitually resident.

Severability. If a provision is found unenforceable, the rest of these Terms remain in effect and the unenforceable provision is read as narrowly as needed to make it enforceable.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of the BriefGate business, on notice to you.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

Entire agreement. These Terms, the DPA, and the AUP are the entire agreement between you and BriefGate regarding the service and supersede prior discussions on the same subject.

Contact. Questions about these Terms: [email protected] for data-protection matters (see the Privacy Notice), or through your account's support channel for everything else.