Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of the Ephemerent website, Orrery software and subscriptions, and The Quiet Earth paid game beta, including previews, downloads, updates, and support (together, the "Service"). The Service is operated by Ephemerent and its operators ("Ephemerent," "we," "us"). By purchasing, installing, using, or subscribing to the Service, you agree to these terms and any applicable storefront terms.

Beta notice: Orrery and The Quiet Earth Beta 1 are pre-release software. They may be incomplete, unreliable, unavailable, changed, limited, or withdrawn. Do not rely on beta software for critical systems or irreplaceable data. Keep independent backups and review known issues before use.

The Quiet Earth paid beta

The Quiet Earth Beta 1 is sold through itch.io at a $9.99 minimum price for the listed Apple Silicon macOS and Windows x64 builds. itch.io is the sole payment, buyer-account, download, and update authority for this beta. A purchase grants access to the game builds and future updates we make available to that itch project, subject to these terms, itch.io’s terms, and continued availability; it does not guarantee a particular release schedule, platform port, online service, or final feature set.

Beta 1 is unsigned and is not notarized. Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper may warn or restrict direct downloads. We provide SHA-256 checksums and recommend installation through the itch app, but a checksum does not replace platform security review. Do not run a package whose checksum differs from the one published for that exact version.

Experimental LAN co-op is a beta feature for networks and peers you trust. It does not include public matchmaking, hosted servers, or a promise of internet-distance connectivity. You are responsible for the network addresses and access you share. Game saves, settings, and bounded crash reports are local. Support bundles are created locally and are sent to us only if you choose to share them; including a save requires a separate explicit action.

Beta 1 includes no bundled model weights or enabled native generative-dialogue runtime. AI tools assisted development, including code, testing, and visual iteration, under human direction and review.

The Quiet Earth technical-incompatibility review

If the listed game build cannot launch or operate on a supported system that meets the published requirements, contact hello@ephemerent.com within 14 days of purchase with the version, platform, and optional redacted support bundle. We will review the technical incompatibility and help troubleshoot. Any refund or payment remedy is processed through itch.io under its policies unless applicable law requires otherwise. This review does not limit non-waivable cancellation, refund, warranty, or other consumer rights in your jurisdiction.

No guarantees about AI output

Orrery coordinates AI models and local tools. AI output can be wrong, insecure, incomplete, biased, infringing, or harmful. Agents may suggest, write, modify, delete, or run code and commands when you direct them to do so. You are responsible for deciding what to run, what to accept, what to ship, and what to back up.

The Service does not provide legal, financial, medical, security, compliance, tax, or other professional advice. Do not treat any output as a substitute for qualified professional review.

Marketing claims and benchmarks

Website pages describe intended capabilities, current beta behavior, roadmap items, and internal research signals. They are not promises that every feature will be available, uninterrupted, compatible with your setup, or produce a particular result. Any benchmarks, projections, examples, demos, or comparisons are limited to their stated conditions and do not guarantee your results.

Accounts and access

Running real Orrery agents requires sign-in plus an active subscription. Preview setup can be inspected before subscribing, but unpaid local agent work and public trials are not offered. You are responsible for your account credentials and for activity that occurs under your account.

Subscriptions, tiers, and credits

Orrery does not sell permanent unlocks. Current paid tiers are monthly recurring subscriptions:

• Pro - $40/month: governed open-source model routes on your device, hosted DeepSeek API 200M credits/month, Doubleword 200M credits/month, Arbiter 100M credits/month, estimated list-rate API usage value about $2,400/month under prompt caching and token-efficient context, Nexus operations, and managed connector features.
• Max - $100/month: everything in Pro with DeepSeek API 600M credits/month, Doubleword 650M credits/month, Arbiter 400M credits/month, estimated API usage value about $7,500/month, and higher cloud-run capacity.
• Ultra - $200/month: everything in Max with DeepSeek API 1.5B credits/month, Doubleword 1.5B credits/month, Arbiter 1.2B credits/month, estimated API usage value about $18,000/month, research runs, and proof vault capacity.

Hosted-credit usage is metered and counts against your monthly quota. Credits reset at the start of each monthly billing period and do not roll over. Credits and estimated API usage values are marketing allotments for included capacity — not cash, stored value, guaranteed capacity, or a disclosure of our provider cost. Availability can depend on third-party providers, quotas, abuse controls, maintenance, and beta limits.

Organization plans

Business is offered at $500 per organization per month and includes up to 10 seats, 5 shared workspaces, one Slack workspace, 10 bound channels, 4 concurrent cloud runs, a shared pool of 5B credits per month (estimated list-rate API usage value about $25,000/month under prompt caching and token-efficient context), and 90-day metadata audit retention. Enterprise starts at $1,000 per organization per month and includes up to 25 seats, 25 shared workspaces, one Slack Enterprise Grid organization or up to five Slack workspaces, 100 bound channels, 10 concurrent cloud runs, a shared pool of 15B credits per month (estimated API usage value about $75,000/month), and 365-day metadata audit retention. Higher seat counts and different terms require a separate written agreement. Both plans may be purchased via Stripe or arranged with sales; setup help is available on request.

Organization limits are hard limits. Automatic overage is not enabled. Owners may purchase prepaid credit packs for the current billing period (+1B, +3B, or +8B credits). Unused organization credits expire at the end of the applicable billing period, do not roll over, have no cash value, and are not refundable except where required by law.

Organization owners and administrators are responsible for membership, workspace and channel bindings, policy, identity configuration, approvals, and activity under service accounts or keys they authorize. Enterprise identity, retention, support, security, data-processing, or regulated-industry commitments apply only when stated in a signed agreement.

Slack and managed connectors

Orrery processes Slack commands, mentions, shortcuts, interactive approvals, and user-selected message or thread context when an authorized organization installs and configures the connector. Orrery does not promise passive ingestion of broad channel history. Organization administrators must bind channels to approved Nexus workspaces and rooms and ensure they have authority to submit the selected content.

Slack is an external control surface, not the system of record for source, raw diffs, credentials, full paths, or complete proof. Consequential actions may require approval in Slack, Nexus, or both. Slack and other connector availability depends on third-party APIs, app approval, rate limits, permissions, and beta capacity.

Billing and auto-renewal

Payments are processed by Stripe. Paid tiers bill in advance and renew automatically each month at the then-current price for your tier until you cancel. By subscribing you authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method on each renewal. If a charge fails, we may retry and may suspend paid features until payment succeeds. Do not send payment information by email.

Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel at any time from your account/billing settings or by emailing hello@ephemerent.com. Canceling stops future renewals; it does not retroactively refund the current period. You keep paid access through the end of the period already paid for, unless access is suspended for breach or abuse.

We do not provide refunds or credits for partial months, unused quota, provider outages, feature changes, or time remaining after cancellation, except where required by law. During beta, if the Service was materially unusable for you, you may request a discretionary review within 14 days of a charge. Nothing in these terms limits non-waivable consumer rights.

Acceptable use

• Do not use the Service to break the law, infringe rights, generate malware, or cause harm.
• Do not disrupt, overload, bypass access controls, circumvent quotas or billing, resell access, scrape private systems, or attempt unauthorized access.
• Do not use hosted routes in violation of provider acceptable-use terms.
• Do not upload secrets, credentials, private keys, or sensitive third-party data unless you have the right to do so and understand the risk.
• Do not rely on beta output without your own review, tests, and backups.

Your content

You keep your rights to your code, repositories, prompts, files, and other content ("Your Content"). We claim no ownership of Your Content. You grant us the limited rights needed to provide the Service you request, such as transmitting prompts and selected context to a hosted provider through our relay. We do not use Your Content to train our own models.

Our intellectual property

Orrery, Ephemerent, the website, software, designs, and related materials are owned by Ephemerent, its operators, or its licensors. Orrery is not open source. We grant you only the limited right to use the Service under these terms and your subscription/access status.

Third-party services

The Service relies on third parties including Stripe, Supabase, Slack, hosted inference providers, OAuth and enterprise identity providers, local tools, operating systems, and model providers used by Orrery. Third-party services may change, fail, rate-limit, suspend, charge you, or produce incorrect output. We are not responsible for third-party availability, terms, output, pricing, or acts.

Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, reliability, availability, security, or error-free operation.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ephemerent and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages; lost profits; lost data; business interruption; security incidents; corrupted files; or damage caused by code, commands, models, providers, or tools used through or alongside the Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for the Service in the three months before the event giving rise to the claim or (b) USD $50. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate access, especially during beta, to protect the Service, comply with law, enforce these terms, address abuse, manage provider limits, or maintain infrastructure. You may stop using the Service at any time.

Ephemerent Research journal

Ephemerent Research is an open publication project operated by Ephemerent LLC. It accepts research authored with or by AI without requiring degrees, credentials, institutional affiliation, ORCID, or previous publication. A free Ephemerent account is required so an accountable submitter remains attached to each record; Orrery subscription status is not required.

Submitters keep their rights to their work and grant the journal the non-exclusive rights needed to screen, host, display, preserve, and link the submitted record. The default article license is CC BY 4.0 when selected for publication; code, data, model weights, and supplements retain their own licenses. Submitters represent that they have the right to share the work and have disclosed AI participation, conflicts, safety or ethics issues, and external publication constraints.

Journal screening is followed by disclosed peer review with AI. Reviews may be human, AI-assisted, or authored by an AI system, and published records are labeled “Peer-reviewed with AI · editorially accountable.” This is not a guarantee of truth, novelty, or acceptance by another publisher. Ephemerent may request changes, decline, withdraw, retract, or correct a record for rights, safety, abuse, integrity, publication-status, or policy reasons. Comments and peer reviews are moderated before publication and may be hidden or withdrawn.

Changes

We may update these terms as the product evolves and will revise the last-updated date. For material changes affecting paid accounts, we will give notice where practical. Continued use after changes take effect means you accept the updated terms.

Governing law

Disputes are governed by applicable law, except where mandatory local consumer law gives you other rights. Before a broad paid launch, Ephemerent may add more specific governing-law, venue, arbitration, or class-action terms after legal review.

Contact

Questions, cancellation, or refund requests: hello@ephemerent.com.