Terms of Service

1. The service

PacePen is a free tool that paces writing into Google Docs on a schedule (Pace), rewrites drafts and scores them for AI-detection likelihood (Polish), and turns uploads and recordings into study material (Study). We may add, change, rate-limit, or remove features at any time, since PacePen is provided free of charge on a best-effort basis.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use PacePen (or the minimum age of digital consent in your country, if higher — for example 16 in parts of the EEA). If you are under 18, you confirm you have a parent or guardian's permission to use the service. We enforce this at sign-up: creating an account requires you to check a box affirmatively confirming you meet this age requirement and agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy; the sign-up and Google sign-in buttons stay disabled until you do. Falsely confirming your age to create an account is itself a violation of these Terms.

3. Your Google account & content

• You're responsible for the Google Docs, text, files, and recordings you connect to or submit through PacePen, and for having the right to use and share them.
• You authorize PacePen to read and write only the specific document(s) you select through the Google file picker, as described in our Privacy Policy.
• Your use of Google services through PacePen is also subject to Google's own terms.

4. Your content & generated output

• You retain ownership of everything you submit ("Your Content"). You grant PacePen a limited, non-exclusive license to process Your Content solely to provide the feature you requested — to generate output and return it to you.
• You own the output PacePen generates for you and may use it for any lawful purpose, including commercially. Because it's AI-generated, it may not qualify for copyright protection in every jurisdiction, and you're responsible for verifying it before relying on or publishing it.
• We don't use Your Content to train our own AI models, and content sent to OpenAI's API is not used by OpenAI to train its models, per OpenAI's API terms.

5. AI-generated output disclaimer

Polish's rewrites and AI-detection scores, and Study's notes, flashcards, quizzes, and chat answers, are produced by probabilistic AI models and may contain errors, inaccuracies, or hallucinated content. Nothing PacePen produces is guaranteed to be accurate, undetectable, or fit for any particular purpose — PacePen is a writing and study aid, not a source of factual truth. Review all output yourself, and use it in line with any rules that apply to you (school, employer, publication, academic-integrity policy, etc.). You are solely responsible for how you use PacePen's output.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use PacePen to violate the law, or to infringe someone else's intellectual property, privacy, or other rights.
• Submit content you don't have the legal right to use or share (including content under an NDA or that belongs to someone else).
• Scrape, crawl, or automate access to PacePen beyond normal use, or attempt to bypass rate limits or security measures.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the underlying models or source code.
• Abuse or overload our infrastructure or Google's APIs, or attempt to access accounts or data that aren't yours.

We may investigate violations and suspend or terminate access for accounts that break these rules.

7. Third-party services

PacePen relies on Google (sign-in and Drive/Docs), OpenAI, and Hugging Face to process content and generate output, and on Supabase, Trigger.dev, and Vercel for storage, background jobs, and hosting (see our Privacy Policy for details). Your use of PacePen is also subject to those providers' own terms of service, and content you submit may be processed under their policies as well as ours.

8. Intellectual property

Aside from Your Content and the output generated for you, PacePen and its operator own all rights to the PacePen name, logo, website, source code, and product design. You may not copy, modify, or redistribute them without permission.

9. No warranty

PacePen is provided "as is" and "as available," free of charge, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don't guarantee the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or available at any particular time, or that AI-generated output will be accurate or appropriate.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, PacePen and its operator aren't liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the service, including lost data or lost work. Our total liability for any claim relating to PacePen is capped at USD $100, since the service is free. Some jurisdictions don't allow these exclusions or limitations, so they may not fully apply to you — in that case, our liability is limited to the maximum extent the law of your jurisdiction permits.

11. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold PacePen and its operator harmless from claims, damages, and reasonable legal expenses arising from Your Content, your use of PacePen's output, your violation of these Terms, or your violation of any law or third-party right.

12. Termination

You may stop using PacePen and disconnect your Google account at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for accounts that violate these terms. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (content license already granted, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, governing law) continue to apply.

13. Governing law & disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Korea, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, and any dispute will be brought exclusively in the courts of the Republic of Korea. If you're a consumer in a jurisdiction that grants you non-waivable local consumer-protection rights (for example the EEA, UK, or California), this clause doesn't remove those rights, and you may also be able to bring a claim in your local courts.

14. Changes to these terms

If these terms change, we'll update the effective date above; for material changes, we'll make reasonable efforts to notify you (e.g. by email or an in-app notice). Your continued use of PacePen after a change is posted means you accept the updated terms.

15. Contact us

Questions about these terms, or a copyright/IP complaint about content on PacePen? Email byeongminchoi12@gmail.com. We aim to respond within a reasonable time, generally within 30 days.