Agreement

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern use of the Etch hosted services operated by Informal Content Agency, a Nevada C corporation (“Informal”, “we”) — including the sync service at sync.etchstudios.ai, this website, accounts, workspaces, real-time collaboration, billing, and related APIs (the “Service”).

The Etch desktop application is additionally governed by its End User License Agreement (EULA). By creating an account, clicking to accept, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you act for an organization, you represent that you can bind it, and “you” includes it.

Accounts

You may sign up with Google sign-in or an email address and password. Email accounts must be verified before full use. Passwords are stored only as salted Argon2 hashes, and sessions use short-lived access tokens with rotating refresh tokens.

The public website accepts account creation. A workspace admin may start self-serve checkout for that workspace. Members cannot change workspace billing. Visiting the website does not itself create a paid entitlement. We may throttle or suspend registrations to protect the Service from abuse.

You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for activity under your account; notify us promptly of unauthorized use. You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of legal majority where you live, if higher) and able to form a binding contract. You represent that every person you permit to use hosted generation through your account is 18 or over.

Workspaces

Workspaces are administered by their owners and admins, who control invites, invite links, member roles, and removal. Workspace admins may access workspace content contributed by members and the workspace audit trail. Joining a workspace makes your profile (name, email, avatar) and in-workspace activity visible to its members.

If a workspace is administered by your employer or another organization, that organization controls the workspace and its content, including after you leave it.

Trial & billing

The Service offers Free, Pro, Studio, Studio+, and Enterprise plans. Free supports up to five seats without a paid subscription. Each workspace is attached to a billing account with a plan and a seat limit; growing past the seat limit requires an upgrade. Current pricing appears on the pricing page and at checkout. Enterprise plans are sold under separate written terms.

Paid-plan trials. Checkout availability is derived by the server at request time and only workspace admins may configure billing. When an eligible workspace admin starts Checkout for Pro, Studio, or Studio+, that paid plan begins with a 10-day trial. A valid payment method is required; Stripe hosts checkout and collects the card. Unless cancelled before the trial ends, that subscription converts on day 10 and the card is charged the full selected prepaid amount (monthly, quarterly, or 6-month) at the then-current price. Cancel during the trial from the billing portal and you pay nothing. If no valid payment method is on file at trial end, the subscription is cancelled rather than converted. Enterprise is sold under separate written terms and has no self-serve trial.

Prepaid intervals. Self-serve paid plans may be billed monthly, quarterly (10% off three monthly prices), or every six months (15% off six monthly prices). There is no yearly self-serve price. Checkout is hosted by Stripe. After the 10-day trial, the first charge is the full selected prepaid amount. Each paid plan's included managed-AI allowance is issued once per calendar month of the prepaid term. The Etch app shows the percentage remaining and the next reset date rather than exposing an underlying credit or per-model price ledger.

Automatic renewal. Paid subscriptions renew automatically each selected billing interval at the then-current prepaid price until you cancel, and you authorize those recurring charges. Price changes take effect at your next renewal with prior notice. Taxes may apply.

Failed payments. If a scheduled payment fails, Stripe retries it automatically and we email the billing contact for the workspace. The workspace keeps its paid features for seven days from the first failed payment. If no payment succeeds within those seven days, the workspace is downgraded to Free plan limits. A downgrade does not delete your content: existing members keep access to their work, though invitations beyond the Free seat limit are blocked until a paid plan is active again. You can start a paid plan again at any time.

Payments are processed by Stripe through Stripe-hosted Checkout and the Stripe-hosted billing portal. Your full card details are collected and stored by Stripe, not by Informal; we receive only plan, seat, invoice, and subscription metadata plus a Stripe customer id.

Hosted AI usage. Free uses BYOK only and does not include Etch-managed AI. Paid self-serve plans include a monthly managed-AI allowance. Members see the allowance as a percentage remaining with its next reset date, not per-call costs, model rates, credits, or internal billing records. Included allowance expires at the next calendar-month reset, does not roll over, and has no cash value. Personal BYOK, approved workspace BYOK, and local/on-device models do not use the managed allowance. See the managed AI usage and model availabilitypage.

Workspace billing controls. Only workspace admins may change the plan or payment method, review invoices, or set the workspace's monthly extra-spend limit for managed AI. The limit can be set to $0 to keep extra spend off, and additional managed-AI charges cannot exceed the admin-confirmed monthly limit. Members cannot configure workspace billing. Additional charges are governed by the amount confirmed in the authenticated billing flow and the Etch Refund Policy.

External-agent CLI and MCP requests. This separate meter applies only to external agents connecting through the official Etch CLI or Etch MCP. Ordinary Etch app activity, managed-AI usage, BYOK requests, and local/on-device work do not use it. Each workspace receives the external-agent request limit stated for its plan. Metered requests reset at 00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month and do not roll over. Etch may pause metered external-agent requests after the plan limit until the next reset, a plan upgrade, or a custom Enterprise adjustment. Counting begins after authentication, workspace membership, and workspace attribution succeed. Handler failures and attempts above the monthly quota count. Requests rejected by the separate per-minute rate limiter, non-member attempts, and local-only MCP calls do not. CLI and MCP limits are separate from the managed-AI allowance and monthly extra-spend limit. Enterprise includes unlimited external-agent CLI and MCP workspace requests by default, subject to any custom terms in the applicable order form.

Managed-provider work. A request that fails before billable provider work does not consume customer allowance or create extra spend. Completed provider work is generally not refundable solely because of creative preference. Billing errors, duplicate charges, service failures, and other refund rights are handled under the Etch Refund Policy.

Cancellation. Cancel any time in the Etch app (Settings → Billing → Manage), which opens the Stripe billing portal. Cancellation stops future renewals; your plan stays active until the end of the paid period. Cancel-at-period-end does not refund unused prepaid months unless required by law or the Etch Refund Policy. When you begin cancelling an eligible plan we may show an optional retention offer (currently a limited-time discount on Studio and Studio+); accepting it keeps the subscription active on the discounted terms shown, after which normal renewal resumes. Refund eligibility, including billing-error and service-failure requests, is governed by the Refund Policy shown at checkout. By starting a paid self-serve checkout you acknowledge that a 10-day trial converts automatically, the first charge is the selected prepaid period, and the subscription renews until cancelled, as disclosed above and at checkout.

Your content

You retain all rights to content you sync through the Service — projects, boards, planner entries, messages, media uploads, and canvas documents (“Your Content”). You grant Informal a limited license to host, store, reproduce, transmit, and display Your Content solely to operate, provide, secure, and support the Service, including backups and serving Your Content to your workspace members.

Informal does not use Your Content to train AI models, and we do not sell it. When you direct a hosted or BYOK AI request, Etch transmits the prompt and selected inputs to the disclosed processor so it can perform that request. Image and video generation is routed through fal — Features & Labels, Inc. (fal.ai); hosted text is routed through OpenRouter. Provider processing is governed by the applicable API terms and the Subprocessor list. Generated output is Your Content. Commercial rights in that output are subject to the licence of the route that produced it. Outputs produced through hosted generation are AI-generated and may carry Content Credentials or other provenance markings. You are responsible for Your Content and must have the rights needed to upload, generate, and share it. Feedback you send us may be used without restriction and is not Your Content.

Workspace-level provider API keys are stored encrypted at rest (AEAD) and decrypted only to serve authorized workspace requests. Personal bring-your-own-key credentials entered in the desktop app stay on your device and are never transmitted to Etch servers.

Fair use

You must not:

break the law or infringe others’ rights;
upload malware or attempt to breach, probe, or overload the Service (rate limits apply and are enforced);
resell or offer the Service to third parties as your own service;
attempt to access other tenants’ or workspaces’ data;
circumvent authentication, seat, plan, or metering enforcement;
use the Service to develop a competing product.

Generated content. Hosted image and video generation is also subject to fal’s Acceptable Use Policy and API Services Supplemental Terms. You must not use generation to: infringe intellectual-property, publicity, or privacy rights; produce defamatory, hateful, harassing, obscene, or pornographic material; generate, distribute, or facilitate child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, sexual violence, extreme gore, or sexually explicit content; or otherwise violate applicable law. Informal does not expose fal’s APIs directly to you. You are liable for generation performed through your workspace as if you had submitted it yourself.

We may investigate violations and remove content or suspend accounts as described under Termination.

Third parties

The Service uses Stripe for payments and Amplitude for product analytics (opt-out available in the desktop app). Crash reporting runs on a self-hosted GlitchTip instance and real-time multiplayer on a self-hosted y-sweet server, both operated by Informal — neither sends your data to a third-party vendor. The full sub-processor list is in the Privacy Policy.

By default, eligible AI requests may use Informal-managed credentials and the managed allowance available to the workspace. Before a managed request is submitted, Etch identifies the model route and verifies that the workspace has sufficient allowance or admin-approved extra spend without showing the underlying call or model cost. Hosted image and video generation is routed through fal — Features & Labels, Inc. (fal.ai). Hosted text is routed through OpenRouter. Your use of hosted generation, and the use of anyone you permit to generate through your workspace, must comply with fal’s API Services Supplemental Terms and the prohibited-use rules in fal’s Terms of Service. Providers have their own model behavior, safety systems, and availability; review generated output before relying on it. Hosted generation may be refused by Informal or the processor when a request violates these Terms, fal’s Acceptable Use Policy, or a model’s content-safety systems.

Personal or approved workspace BYOK remains optional. A BYOK request is billed by the provider under your provider account and does not consume the Etch-managed allowance. You are responsible for BYOK provider charges and account terms. Informal handles managed-provider billing within the workspace admin's configured controls under the hosted AI usage terms above.

Changes

The Service is provided without an uptime guarantee unless your order form includes an SLA. Features identified as beta or early access may change or be removed without notice. We may change, suspend, or discontinue features with reasonable notice for material changes; if we discontinue the hosted Service entirely we will give at least 90 days’ notice and a data-export window.

You may export workspace data at any time via the app or API. When you delete your account, erasure runs 30 days later and you may cancel at any point in that window; we act on a verified deletion request within the same period. We then delete Your Content from live systems, except backups (which rotate on a fixed schedule), records we must keep by law, and workspaces other members are still using — there Your Content remains and your name is replaced. The Privacy Policy sets out the detail.

We may update these Terms; for material changes we will give notice in-app or by email at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance.

Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts or workspaces that materially breach these Terms or create security, legal, or operational risk — with notice where practicable and, where reasonable and lawful, an opportunity to export Your Content.

Your ownership of Your Content, the disclaimer and liability sections, and the dispute provisions survive termination.

Liability

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, INFORMAL DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. AI-GENERATED OUTPUT PRODUCED VIA THIRD-PARTY PROVIDERS MAY BE INACCURATE; REVIEW IT BEFORE RELYING ON IT.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, INFORMAL WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR LOSS OF DATA, PROFITS, OR REVENUE, AND INFORMAL’S TOTAL LIABILITY WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM (OR USD $50 IF YOU PAID NOTHING). THESE LIMITS DO NOT APPLY WHERE THEY CANNOT LAWFULLY BE LIMITED. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN DISCLAIMERS OR LIMITS, SO PARTS OF THIS SECTION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, that organization will indemnify Informal against third-party claims arising from Your Content or your breach of these Terms.

Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Nevada, USA, excluding conflict-of-law rules.

Binding arbitration. Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its applicable rules, including its Consumer Arbitration Rules where they apply, rather than in court. The arbitration will be conducted by a single arbitrator in Clark County, Nevada, and judgment on the award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction. As a carve-out, either party may bring an individual claim in the small-claims court of Clark County, Nevada, if the claim qualifies and remains in that court.

Class-action waiver. Disputes must be brought only in your individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate another person’s claims with yours or preside over any form of representative or class proceeding.

30-day opt-out. You may opt out of the arbitration and class-action-waiver provisions by emailing contact@weareinformal.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, with the subject line “Arbitration opt-out” and the email address on your account. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms. If you do not opt out, disputes not resolved in arbitration or small-claims court will be heard exclusively in the state and federal courts located in Clark County, Nevada.

Nothing in this section limits rights that cannot lawfully be waived. You may not use the Service in violation of U.S. export-control or sanctions laws. Copyright complaints under the DMCA may be sent to the contact below with the information required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3); we may remove content and may terminate repeat infringers’ accounts in appropriate circumstances.

Notices

We may provide notices in-app or to the email address on your account, and you consent to receiving contractual notices electronically. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. These Terms, the EULA, the Privacy Policy, the Refund Policy, and any order form are the entire agreement about the Service.

Contact: contact@weareinformal.com. Postal address: Informal Content Agency, 3945 W Reno Ave, Unit C, Las Vegas, NV 89118, USA.