Terms of service.

These terms are the agreement between you and Tandem App LLC (“Tandem”, “we”, “us”) for the Tandem app — the web app at go.tandemapp.xyz, the desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Linux, and this site at tandemapp.xyz. Using Tandem means you accept them.

Two other documents are part of this agreement, and you should read both: the Privacy policy, which says what we do with your data, and the Community guidelines, which say what you can and can't post. Where the guidelines describe behaviour and these terms describe the legal relationship, both apply.

If you accept these terms for a company — buying a desk plan for your team, say — you confirm you're allowed to bind that company, and “you” means the company.

Tandem is a beta service. That is not a disclaimer we're hiding in the small print — it changes what you should expect:

• Features will change, move, or be withdrawn. Things labelled as coming soon may not arrive, or may arrive differently.
• There is no uptime commitment and no service-level agreement. We may take Tandem down for maintenance without notice.
• Bugs are likely, including bugs that lose or misdeliver data. Don't make Tandem the only place something important exists.
• Prices and plan limits may change during the beta. Where a change affects something you've paid for, we'll tell you first — see Plans and billing.

When the beta ends we'll say so, and these expectations tighten rather than loosen.

• Age. You must be at least 13, or 16 where local law sets that age. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we'll close it.
• One account, two sides. A Tandem account carries both a Personal and a Business side. They are one account for billing and for these terms, even though they are kept separate everywhere else.
• Accurate details. Give us a real email address and keep it current — it's how we reach you about security and billing.
• Your credentials are yours to protect. Don't share them. You're responsible for what happens under your account, unless someone used it without your permission and you tell us promptly. Turn on two-factor authentication if the account matters to you.
• No handing it on. Don't sell, rent or transfer your account, and don't create a new one to get around a suspension.

The Community guidelines set out what you can and can't post and how to behave. On top of those, you agree not to:

• break the law with it, or use it to help someone else break the law;
• interfere with the service — no malware, no attacks on our infrastructure, no probing for weaknesses without our written permission;
• scrape, crawl or bulk-export other people's content, or build a dataset from Tandem, by any automated means we haven't published an interface for;
• work around plan limits, paywalls, rate limits or access controls, including by running multiple accounts to do it;
• reverse-engineer, decompile or copy the service, except where the law says you may despite this clause;
• resell or sublicense access to Tandem, or run it as a service for someone else.

Security researchers are welcome — write to support@tandemapp.xyz before you start, and we'll agree what's in scope.

You may not post content that is abusive, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, threatening or illegal, or that violates others' rights. There is no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users.

Anyone can report a message or block a user from within the app. We review reports within 24 hours and will remove offending content and suspend or ban the accounts responsible.

How to report something, and how to mute or block someone, are set out on the Support page. What we enforce and the sanctions available to us are in the Community guidelines.

You own what you post. Messages, files, clips and anything else you put into Tandem stay yours. We don't claim ownership of them.

To run the service we need your permission to handle that content: you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, adapt for display and show your content, for as long as you keep it on Tandem and only for the purpose of operating and improving Tandem. That licence covers the ordinary mechanics of a chat app — making a thumbnail, transcoding a clip, syncing to your devices, indexing a message so search can find it.

Deleting your account takes your messages with it. Your messages and direct messages are deleted along with the account, on both sides. A space you created is handed on to another owner or admin so the people in it aren't stranded, and a space with nobody else in it is deleted. The detail is in how to delete your account and the Privacy policy.

You're responsible for what you post: that you have the right to post it, and that it doesn't break these terms, the guidelines, or the law.

Tandem hosts two kinds of place, and neither is run by us day to day.

• Personal spaces belong to whoever created them. They set the space's rules, appoint moderators, and can remove content or members.
• Business desks belong to the organisation that owns them. Desk owners and admins control roles and permissions, can read and remove content in the desk, can remove members, and can export the desk where their plan allows it. If you use a desk your employer owns, assume your employer can see what you do in it.
• Connect rooms let a desk invite an external guest by email into exactly one room. A guest sees that room and the people in it, and nothing else about the desk. Inviting a guest means you're happy for them to see that room.

Space and desk rules sit on top of ours: an owner can forbid things we allow, but can never permit something these terms or the guidelines forbid. Disagreements between you and a space owner are between the two of you — we'll step in only where our own rules are broken.

Keeping your Personal and Business lives apart is the point of Tandem. Every space belongs to exactly one side, and the split is enforced in the database rather than hidden in the interface: your coworkers can't see your personal persona, and your crew can't see your work one.

The same duty runs the other way. You must not use Tandem to link, expose or out someone else's two sides — not by posting the connection, not by using one identity to find the other, not by hinting at it. Doing so is a serious breach and we act on it quickly. It is also listed in the Community guidelines.

We can't promise the separation defeats every possible inference. Someone who already knows you may recognise you from how you write. The guarantee is about what Tandem discloses, not about what other people can work out.

A paid personal plan comes with Backer Credits — two on Tandem+, five on Tandem+ Pro — and you assign them to the personal spaces you want to support. As a space accumulates backers it climbs the rank ladder, and what unlocks, unlocks for everyone in the space.

• No money changes hands between users. Backing a space sends it no payment. You are paying us for your plan; the credits are a feature of that plan.
• Credits are not currency. They have no cash value, can't be bought, sold, traded, gifted or withdrawn, and you have no property right in them. Selling or trading credits is a guidelines breach.
• Credits follow the plan. Cancel or downgrade and the credits go with it, which may drop a space's rank.
• Rank can fall as well as rise. If a space loses backers, its perks pause. Nothing is deleted, and the perks return if the rank does.
• Backers are a personal-space feature. Business desks have no backers and no ranks — a desk unlocks features by paying for its plan.

There are two independent ladders. Tandem+ is a personal subscription on your account and follows you into every space, on both sides. Desk plans are bought per business space by whoever owns that desk. Neither depends on the other, and the current prices and limits are on the pricing page.

• Renewal. Paid plans renew automatically — monthly or annually, as you chose — until cancelled. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it doesn't refund the period you're in, and you keep the plan until that period ends.
• Who pays for a desk. A desk plan is paid by the desk's owner and covers that one space, however many people are in it. Losing access to a desk is between you and its owner.
• Currency and tax. Prices are in US dollars and exclude tax unless we say otherwise. You're responsible for any tax that applies where you are.
• Payment. Our payment processor handles your card; we never see the full number. If a payment fails we may retry it and, if it keeps failing, downgrade the plan.
• Refunds. Payments are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise, or where we've clearly got something wrong — ask us and we'll deal with it fairly.
• Price changes. We'll give at least 30 days' notice before a price change affects you, and it takes effect at your next renewal. If you don't want it, cancel before then.
• Verified badges. A verified badge carries a review fee. It's included with Tandem+ Pro for an account and with Desk+ Pro for a space. The fee pays for the review, not for a guaranteed outcome, and we can withdraw a badge if the details behind it stop being true.

A desk's plan sets how far back its members can scroll — 90 days on Desk Starter, 12 months on Desk+, everything on Desk+ Pro. History outside that window is veiled, not deleted: it stays on our side, nobody in the desk can read it, and upgrading brings it straight back. We say this in the product because it is the honest description — a plan changes what you can see, not what exists.

Voice and video calls are not recorded by Tandem. A recording exists only if somebody in the call starts one, and that recording belongs to the room it was made in.

If you start a recording, telling the other people is your responsibility, and so is complying with the recording-consent law where you and they are. Some places require everyone's consent. Tandem showing a recording indicator does not discharge that duty for you.

Signing in with Google is optional, and using it means accepting Google's terms as well as ours. What we access and why is set out in the Privacy policy. Content that other people link to from Tandem — a document, a site, a file — is theirs, not ours, and we don't vouch for it.

Where something breaks these terms or the Community guidelines, we may remove content, limit a feature, suspend or close an account, or remove a space. What we do depends on how serious it is, whether it was deliberate, and what has happened before — the ladder is described in the guidelines.

We usually tell you what happened and why, and you can appeal. We may act first and explain afterwards where there is a risk to someone's safety, a legal requirement, or an active attack on the service. We are not obliged to monitor everything posted on Tandem, and not acting on one thing doesn't waive our right to act on another.

Tandem — the software, the design, the name and the mark — belongs to us. These terms give you permission to use the app as it's meant to be used, and nothing more. Don't use our name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you.

Copyright complaints

If something on Tandem infringes your copyright, write to legal@tandemapp.xyz with enough detail to identify the work and where it appears, a statement that you believe the use is unauthorised, and your contact details. We remove infringing material, and we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. If we remove something of yours and you think we were wrong, tell us and we'll look again.

You can stop using Tandem whenever you like and delete your account from settings. We delete it within 30 days, on the terms in the Privacy policy.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and we may stop offering Tandem — or any part of it — with reasonable notice. If we close your account for something other than a breach, we'll refund the unused part of a prepaid plan.

Ending the agreement doesn't undo what came before. The sections on your content, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and governing law survive.

Tandem is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties — express or implied — about merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, and we don't promise that Tandem will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, or that anything stored in it will never be lost. This matters more than usual while Tandem is in beta. Nothing here takes away rights you have as a consumer that can't be waived where you live.

To the extent the law allows, neither we nor anyone working with us is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or lost goodwill, arising from your use of Tandem. Our total liability for any claim relating to Tandem is capped at the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or US$100. Some places don't allow these limits, and where that is so they don't apply to you.

If someone brings a claim against us because of what you posted, what you did on Tandem, or because you broke these terms or the law, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and damages in defending it. We'll tell you about the claim and let you take part in the defence.

We'll update the date at the top when these terms change. For a change that materially affects your rights we'll tell you in the app or by email at least 30 days beforehand, and continuing to use Tandem after it takes effect means you accept it. If you don't, cancel and delete your account before then.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the courts there have jurisdiction — except where the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim locally, which it may.

Before filing anything, write to legal@tandemapp.xyz and describe the problem. Most things are faster to fix than to litigate, and we'll try for 30 days to sort it out directly.

Legal notices go to legal@tandemapp.xyz. Anything else — including a problem with your account — goes to support@tandemapp.xyz.