Terms of Service

Last updated September 19, 2026

These terms are an agreement between you and Ship Systems LLC ("we", "us"), which runs SeaCat at https://seacat.dev. They cover the hosted service: the website, the dashboard and the API. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data.

You accept these terms when you create an account or use the service. If you use it for a company or other organization, you accept them on its behalf and confirm that you have the authority to do so. "You" then means that organization.

1. Who can use the service
2. Your account and API keys
3. Early access
4. Acceptable use
5. Decisions about people
6. Your content
7. Outputs
8. Payments, credits and refunds
9. Third-party software and the model
10. Suspension and termination
11. Disclaimers
12. Limitation of liability
13. Indemnity
14. Changes to these terms
15. Governing law and disputes
16. General
17. Contact

1. Who can use the service

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher.

The service is for business, professional and development use, not for personal or household purposes.

You can't use the service if the laws that apply to you, including US sanctions and export laws, forbid you from receiving it.

2. Your account and API keys

You sign in with a link we email you, so anyone who can read your email can get into your account. Use an address you control, and keep that mailbox secure.

You are responsible for everything done with your API keys, including the charges. Keep keys secret: don't put them in web pages, mobile apps or public code. If a key may have leaked, revoke it on the dashboard straight away. Requests made with a key before you revoke it are yours.

Tell us at chris@shipsystems.ai if you think someone has misused your account.

3. Early access

SeaCat is in early access and runs on a small scale. That means:

• We may add, change or remove features, limits and models. We'll announce changes that affect how you use the service.
• The service may be slow, interrupted or unavailable at times, including during maintenance. Requests may be queued while capacity becomes available, which can take a couple of minutes.
• There is no service-level agreement, uptime commitment or guaranteed support response time. Don't depend on the service where a delay or outage would cause serious harm.
• While we run an access queue, we decide who gets access and when. Joining the waitlist doesn't guarantee access.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to do any of the following, or to help or let anyone else do them:

• use the service for anything illegal, or to defraud, harass, exploit or unlawfully discriminate against anyone;
• send content you don't have the right to send, such as personal data you have no legal basis to process, or material that infringes someone else's rights;
• disrupt, overload or damage the service, test its security without our written permission, or send it malicious code;
• get around usage limits, billing or the access queue, for example by opening extra accounts to skip the waitlist or to claim a sign-up credit more than once;
• get into another customer's account or data, or use someone else's API key without their permission;
• sell or hand out direct access to your account or keys. You may build products on the service and offer them to your own customers, but you are responsible for how they use it, and these rules apply to that use too;
• use the service in a safety-critical system, where a wrong answer could lead to death, injury or serious physical or environmental damage.

We may look into suspected breaches of these rules and act on them as described in section 10.

5. Decisions about people

The service returns probabilities from a language model. They are estimates, not facts. The model can be wrong, including when it looks certain. It can reflect biases, and text inside the content you send can sway its answers.

Don't use the outputs as the only basis for a decision that has legal or similarly significant effects on a person, such as decisions about credit, employment, housing, insurance, education, healthcare, or legal or immigration status, unless a person with the authority and knowledge to change the decision reviews it meaningfully first.

You are responsible for the decisions you make with the service's help. That includes testing that it is accurate and fair enough for your use, and following any law on automated decision-making that applies to you, such as giving people notice or a way to contest a decision.

6. Your content

"Your content" means what you send to the API, such as the state and your questions, and the answers you get back.

• You keep all the rights you have in your content. We don't claim ownership of it.
• You allow us to process your content only as needed to provide the service to you: to receive it, run the model on it and return the answers.
• We never use your content to train or fine-tune models, and we don't sell it. We don't keep it after answering the request. The Privacy Policy gives the details.
• You are responsible for your content, and for having every right, permission and legal basis needed to send it to us, including for any personal data about other people in it. If you need a data processing agreement, see the Privacy Policy.

7. Outputs

As between you and us, the answers and probabilities the service returns for your requests belong to you, and you may use them for any lawful purpose. We claim no rights in them.

Answers are always among the options you supply, so other customers who ask similar questions may get similar outputs. Your rights don't extend to their outputs.

8. Payments, credits and refunds

Prepaid credits

You pay in advance by buying credits on the dashboard. Payments are handled by Stripe, and its terms also apply to them. We never see your full card number.

What you're charged

Each successful request is charged for its input tokens, at the price per million input tokens shown on the site when the request is made (currently $0.20). The response to each request states its token count and cost.

• Requests that fail with an error aren't charged. A request that finishes on our side is charged even if your client stopped waiting for it.
• A request is accepted while your balance is above zero and charged when it finishes, so your balance can end slightly below zero. That shortfall comes out of your next purchase.
• We may change the price for future requests. We'll announce an increase on the site and by email at least 14 days before it applies. Credits you've already bought keep their dollar value.

Credits

Credits don't expire while the service is running. They can't be transferred to another account, and they have no cash value except as refunds under this section.

Refunds

• Within 30 days of a purchase, you can ask for a refund of the credits from that purchase that you haven't used. For this, credits count as used in the order you bought them.
• If we shut the service down, or close your account without cause (that is, not because you broke these terms), we refund your whole remaining balance.
• Refunds go back to the original payment method. Free or promotional credits aren't refundable.
• To ask for a refund, email chris@shipsystems.ai from your account's email address. Do this before you delete your account: deleting it cancels any credit left on it and removes your email address from our records.

This section doesn't limit any right to a refund that the law gives you.

Taxes

Prices don't include taxes unless we say so. You are responsible for any sales, use, value-added or similar taxes on your purchases, other than taxes on our income. Where we have to collect a tax, we add it at checkout.

Disputed charges

If you dispute a charge with your bank or card issuer, we may suspend your account until the dispute is resolved. Please contact us first; we would rather fix a problem directly.

9. Third-party software and the model

SeaCat is built with open-source components, each used under its own license. The model's weights are published by their developer under their own license.

The SeaCat software itself is proprietary. These terms give you the right to use the hosted service, not a license to its code.

10. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the service at any time, and you can delete your account on the dashboard whenever you like. Deletion takes effect straight away and can't be undone: your API keys stop working, and any credit left on the account is cancelled. If you're owed a refund under section 8, ask for it before you delete the account. The Privacy Policy explains what we delete and what we keep.

We may suspend or close your account, or disable particular API keys, if:

• you break these terms;
• your use creates a security, legal or operational risk for the service or for others;
• the law requires it; or
• a payment is reversed or appears to be fraudulent.

Where it's reasonable, we'll tell you first and give you a chance to fix the problem. In urgent cases we may act straight away.

We may also stop offering the service altogether. If we do, we'll give at least 30 days' notice by email where we can, and refund remaining balances as described in section 8.

Sections 5 to 8 and 11 to 16 continue to apply after your account closes, as do any amounts owed.

11. Disclaimers

We provide the service "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we give no warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory. That includes warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and any warranty that the service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free.

We don't warrant that any output is accurate, complete or suitable for your purpose. You are responsible for checking outputs before relying on them.

Some places don't allow some of these disclaimers. Where that's the case, they apply as far as the law allows.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity, arising out of or relating to the service or these terms, even if we were told such damages were possible; and
• our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the service or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us for the service in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim, and (b) US$100.

These limits apply whatever the legal theory, whether contract, tort (including negligence) or anything else, and even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose. They don't limit liability that the law doesn't allow to be limited, such as liability for fraud.

13. Indemnity

If a third party makes a claim against us, or against our owners, employees or contractors, that arises from your content, from your use of the service or its outputs (including decisions you make with them), or from your breach of these terms or of the law, you will defend us against it and pay the resulting damages, settlements, costs and reasonable legal fees.

We'll tell you about the claim promptly, let you control its defense, and cooperate reasonably at your expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that admits fault on our part or requires us to do anything without our written consent.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed. For a material change, we'll give notice by email to your account's address or on the site at least 14 days before it takes effect, unless the change has to happen sooner for legal or security reasons.

If you keep using the service after a change takes effect, you accept the updated terms. If you don't accept them, stop using the service before then. You may ask for a refund of your remaining balance at that point, even after the 30-day window in section 8.

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the service, are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA, have exclusive jurisdiction over such disputes, and you and we both agree to their jurisdiction.

Either of us may still ask any competent court for urgent relief, such as an injunction, to protect our rights. Nothing in this section takes away protections that the law where you live gives you and that can't be waived by contract.

If you have a problem with the service, please email us first. Most issues can be settled that way.

16. General

• These terms and the Privacy Policy, together with any data processing agreement we sign with you, are the whole agreement between you and us about the service. They replace any earlier understandings about it.
• If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, that part is enforced as far as possible and the rest stays in effect.
• If we don't enforce a right under these terms, that doesn't mean we've waived it.
• You may not transfer these terms or your account without our written consent. We may transfer them to anyone who takes over the service, and we'll tell you if we do.
• Neither of us is liable for a delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages at our infrastructure providers, except for obligations to pay.
• We send notices to the email address on your account. You send notices to chris@shipsystems.ai.
• These terms don't create a partnership, employment or agency relationship, and they give no rights to anyone other than you and us.
• Headings are for convenience only, and "including" means "including but not limited to".

17. Contact

SeaCat is operated by Ship Systems LLC. Send questions about these terms to chris@shipsystems.ai.