Canopy

Canopy Terms of Service

Beta notice. Canopy is in beta. This document is in effect as written and will be refined as the product grows. Material changes will be shown in the app before they take effect. It has not yet been reviewed by legal counsel; that review is planned before general availability.

The in-app "content agreement" (zero-tolerance policy) accepted at signup is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

Effective date: August 31, 2026 Operator: Allen Padilla, sole proprietor ("Canopy," "we"). Contact: legal@joincanopy.app.

1. The service

Canopy is a private idea notebook with AI evaluation, and a public board (odd as it sounds, we call it "the canopy") where you can deliberately publish an idea for other people to score and discuss. It's available as an app for iOS and Android, with public leaf pages on joincanopy.app. Using Canopy means agreeing to these Terms, the content agreement shown at signup, and our Privacy Policy.

2. Who can use it

You must be at least 13 years old and able to enter this agreement. One account per person; keep your sign-in methods secure. What happens under your account is on you until you tell us it's been compromised.

You can try one AI evaluation before creating an account. That runs under a temporary anonymous session that is limited to the private notebook (nothing public), is subject to these Terms, and expires on the schedule in the Privacy Policy unless you convert it to an account.

3. Your ideas stay yours

You own everything you write in Canopy, private seeds and released content alike. We claim no ownership of your ideas, and we do not use your content to train AI models.

So that the service can function, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, process, display, and transmit your content: private content only as needed to provide the service to you (sync, the AI features you request, safety screening of things you post), and released content publicly within the service and any web view of it. This license ends for private content when you delete it, and survives for released content only in the tombstoned form described in Section 6.

4. Releasing an idea is publishing it

Read this one twice. When you release an idea to the canopy:

  • It becomes public. Anyone can read it, in the app or on the web at joincanopy.app, where each leaf gets its own page and preview image that can be shared and indexed like any web page.
  • No confidentiality attaches. Other users owe you no duty of secrecy and no NDA exists between you, them, or us. If protecting an idea legally matters to you (patents in particular can be affected by public disclosure), talk to an IP professional before releasing.
  • People may act on what they read. Ideas aren't protectable the way expression is, and someone building something similar to a released idea is not something Canopy can prevent or be responsible for. The board's own record (your release timestamp, your provenance, your track record) is the receipt Canopy gives you.
  • The released text is a frozen snapshot: it never changes after release. Post-release progress belongs in your growth log.
  • If you link a GitHub repository as proof for a leaf, you represent that you own it or have the right to present it as yours. A "verified" mark means our automated check found your GitHub account owns or has write access to that repository at the time of the check, nothing more.

5. The AI scorecard is an opinion, not advice

Evaluations, scores, rationales, Ring reports, Patterns summaries, and any other AI output in Canopy are automated opinions generated by a machine. They can be wrong, incomplete, out of date, or miscalibrated for your situation. Ring reports draw on public web sources found by automated search; those sources, and the report's summary of them, may be inaccurate, and any figures (market sizes, competitor claims) should be independently checked before you rely on them. None of it is business, financial, investment, legal, or professional advice, and no score, however high or low, is a promise about any outcome. Crowd scores are just other people's opinions. Decisions you make based on any of it are yours alone.

6. Content rules and moderation

The zero-tolerance content agreement you accept at signup is part of these Terms. Additionally you agree not to: circumvent moderation, rate limits, usage allowances, device attestation, or the scoring gate; access the service by automated means or scrape it; misrepresent authorship or manipulate scores, catches, likes, or view counts (including coordinated or multi-account activity); share or resell a Heartwood subscription; or interfere with the service's operation.

We screen released content, comments, and growth updates before they become visible, and we may refuse, remove, restrict, or ban at our discretion, with zero tolerance for the categories named in the content agreement. Reports you file are reviewed by a human; we aim to act on valid reports within 24 hours. That's a commitment we work to, not a warranty. Content that appears to be a personal crisis is not published and is met with support resources instead; that's a safety feature, not a moderation judgment.

If you delete your account, private seeds are erased and released content is tombstoned to "[deleted]" so other people's threads and scores survive; your given scores persist only in anonymous aggregates.

7. Fees

Canopy's core is free, permanently: the private notebook, sync across your devices, offline use, export of your own seeds, releasing, scoring, comments, the growth log, Your Tree (your public track record), a daily allowance of AI evaluations (currently 5 per day; re-scoring an unchanged seed doesn't count), and one Ring (deep-dive report) per account. Nothing on that list moves behind a paywall later.

Heartwood is our paid tier, sold as an auto-renewing monthly or annual subscription. It currently includes: evaluations on a more capable "careful" model tier (currently up to 30 per day), score history on every seed, 10 Rings (deep-dive reports) per month, 10 Patterns summaries per month, Catchers (who caught and viewed your leaves), disagreement alerts when the crowd diverges from the AI, and scorecard export as Markdown. Monthly allowances reset each billing month and don't roll over. We may adjust what Heartwood includes; anything on the free list above never becomes part of it.

Buying and billing. Heartwood is currently purchased in the iOS app through Apple's in-app purchase system, under the price and terms shown at purchase; prices may vary by region. Payment is charged to your Apple account at confirmation of purchase, and the subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel any time in your Apple ID settings; deleting the app or your Canopy account does not cancel a subscription. Refunds are handled by Apple under Apple's policies. Your Heartwood entitlement is tied to your Canopy account and applies on every device you sign into, including Android. Purchases aren't yet offered in the Android app; when they are, they'll go through Google Play's billing system under Google's terms, and we'll update this section. Any additional paid items we offer (for example, a single Ring) are sold under the terms presented at purchase.

Availability of AI features. AI features depend on third-party providers and on spending caps we set to keep the service sustainable. If a provider is unavailable or a daily cap is reached, AI features may pause until the next day. A paused or failed request is not charged against your allowance. Beyond that, we don't credit or refund for pauses, and the free line above keeps working throughout.

8. Termination

You can stop using Canopy or delete your account at any time. Anonymous sessions end automatically as described in the Privacy Policy. We can suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms (zero-tolerance categories: immediately and permanently). Sections 3–6 and 9–11 survive termination as applicable.

9. Disclaimers

Canopy is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied: merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty about accuracy of AI or crowd scores, availability, or that content on the board is true, lawful, or worth building. Beta and test builds (TestFlight, and Android test builds installed outside Google Play) are pre-release software and may contain bugs or change without notice; keep your own export of anything you can't afford to lose.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, including lost profits, lost opportunities, or the value of any idea, released or not. Our total liability for any claim is capped at the greater of CAD $100 or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Some jurisdictions don't allow these limits; where that's you, they apply to the fullest extent permitted.

11. Indemnity, disputes, boilerplate

You'll indemnify us against claims arising from your content or your breach of these Terms. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Manitoba and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, excluding conflicts rules, and disputes belong to the courts of Manitoba. (An arbitration clause is deliberately omitted pending counsel review.) If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands. These Terms plus the content agreement and Privacy Policy are the whole agreement. We may update these Terms; material changes will be shown in the app before they take effect, and continued use after that is acceptance.

12. App stores

The iOS app is distributed through Apple's App Store and the Android app through Google Play (and, for testers, as a direct install). Apple's and Google's standard terms apply to the download itself; neither Apple nor Google is responsible for the service, its content, or any support, maintenance, or warranty obligations relating to it, and neither is a party to these Terms. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms with the right to enforce them as to the iOS app. Subscriptions purchased through Apple are subject to Apple's payment and refund policies; any purchases offered through Google Play in the future will be subject to Google Play's.