Terms of service

Who can use it

You must be at least 13 years old to use ResearchTogether. The privacy policy says what we store and how to delete it.

The service

ResearchTogether is free. The desktop app works on your own files and needs a model account you supply for AI features. Community lets you publish versions of projects, discuss them and contribute to other people's work, within the limits on storage and activity listed on the pricing page. We may change or stop parts of the service; your local files are unaffected by that.

Your content

You own what you write, upload and publish. By putting content in a Community project, post or message, including work in progress and the files in a folder you connect, you give us permission to store, display and deliver it to the people its visibility allows. You also give those people permission to read it, download it, copy it into their own projects and, where they can edit the project, change it within the app. What you add to a public project stays part of it, credited to you in its history; if you later delete your account, it stays, credited to “Deleted account”. Do not publish material you do not have the right to share, including other people's personal data or confidential research.

Acceptable use

Do not use the service to harass people, spread malware, attempt to access accounts or data that are not yours, or disrupt the service. We may remove content or suspend accounts that break these rules, including after someone reports them. People who have worked on a public project can vote to pause someone's edits there or to freeze their account; votes are recorded, and our operators review every account frozen this way.

AI providers and your accounts

AI features run on providers you connect with your own key or account, or on ResearchTogether credits (below). Their terms and charges apply to that use, and you are responsible for what you send them. Review what a model produces before relying on it; the app records the commands and file changes a task makes so you can. The Background agent acts under your name, and you are responsible for the posts you approve for it and the project changes you allow it to make.

ResearchTogether credits

Credits are a prepaid balance that pays for AI requests made without your own key.

• You buy them in advance through Stripe, from $5 to $500 at a time. There is no subscription, and credits don't expire.
• Each request costs the provider's price: OpenAI's or Anthropic's published rates at the time of the request, applied to the usage the provider reports for it. We add nothing, and we pay the card fees and any part of a request that runs past an empty balance. Prices exclude tax; any tax we collect is shown and added at checkout.
• A key you add for a provider is always used before credits.
• Unused credits are refundable: email skyler@hivemindresearch.com and we refund them to your original payment method. Credits already spent are not refundable.
• If you delete your account, we refund your unused balance to your original payment method.
• If a payment is refunded or disputed after its credits were spent, your balance goes below zero, and requests on credits stop until credits you add bring it back above zero.

The installer

The macOS app is signed by Hivemind Research, Inc. and notarized by Apple. Download it only from researchtogether.co; from version 1.3.0 it updates itself. Keep backups of your project folders as you would with any software.

Deleting your data

You can delete projects you own and your responses to data requests yourself. To close your account, email us. The privacy policy says what deletion removes and what stays.

No warranty and limits on liability

The service is provided as is, without warranties of any kind. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for loss of data, arising from your use of the service.

Governing law

California law governs these terms, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Disputes about them or the service go to the state or federal courts in California, unless the law where you live lets you bring them there instead.

Changes

When these terms change, the new version appears here with a new date. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the change.