encoded_brands

Terms of Service

Last updated: 2026-06-11

These terms cover your use of the Encoder and the Registry, operated by Estuary Group LLC, doing business as Encoded Brands ("Encoded", "we", "us"). By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

These terms are written in plain language on purpose. If anything is unclear, write to us at the contact address at the end.

1. The service

The Encoder takes your inputs, including your domain, documents, and interview answers, and produces a Brand Context Protocol (BCP): a set of structured markdown files that describe your brand for use by you and by AI agents. You may publish those files yourself or host them through our Registry.

We may change, improve, or discontinue parts of the service. The Brand Context Protocol spec itself evolves. The files you generate reflect the spec version current at the time you generate them.

Claimed and Verified BCPs

A BCP moves through three stages:

  • Draft — still being worked on, not yet published.
  • Claimed — a live Registry record managed by the publishing account. It is public, and AI agents can read it. Publishing a BCP makes it Claimed.
  • Verified — a Claimed BCP that has passed domain-control verification (a DNS TXT record) or manual review. A Verified BCP is marked as the official source for that brand; agents are told to treat it as authoritative.

A Claimed BCP is not a Verified BCP, and is not presented as the official brand source until verification succeeds. You should publish only BCPs you are authorized to manage. For verification, brand-transfer, or takedown questions, contact hello@encodedbrands.com.

2. Accounts

You must provide accurate account information and keep your credentials secure. You are responsible for activity under your account. You must be at least 18 and authorized to bind the brand you encode.

3. Payment and automatic renewal

The service is a recurring subscription of $499 USD per month after a 30-day free trial. Payments are processed by Stripe.

Your subscription renews automatically each month at $499 until you cancel. Your billing period begins when your first charge is processed and renews on the same date each month. By subscribing, you authorize us to charge your payment method on each renewal date.

Payments made in stablecoins or other crypto assets are final and non-refundable. On-chain transfers cannot be reversed, and we cannot return funds to a sending address. If a crypto-paid encoding fails on our end, our remedy is a re-run of the encoding, not a refund.

You may cancel at any time from the Billing Portal in your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, and you will not be charged again after that date. If you cancel during the free trial before any charge is processed, you owe nothing.

After your paid period or trial ends, your Registry endpoint is marked lapsed. You retain the BCP files you generated.

Prices may change for future billing cycles. We will give at least 30 days' email notice before a price change takes effect. Purchases made under prior pricing or terms are honored under the terms in effect at the time of purchase.

4. Refunds

Subscription fees are non-refundable. When a billing period is charged, that charge stands regardless of when you cancel within the period. We do not issue partial refunds for unused time.

We correct billing errors. If you were charged the wrong amount, charged after a confirmed cancellation, or charged twice for the same period, contact us at hello@encodedbrands.com within 60 days of the charge. Documented billing errors are refunded. Dissatisfaction with the output is not a billing error.

If you initiate a chargeback before contacting us, we may suspend your account pending resolution.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • Submit content you do not have the rights to use, or that infringes anyone's rights.
  • Encode a brand you are not authorized to represent.
  • Submit unlawful, deceptive, or harmful content, or use the output to mislead.
  • Submit or publish content that is defamatory, libelous, hateful, harassing, or that incites violence.
  • Submit personally identifiable information about other people (names, contact details, government IDs, or similar) without a lawful basis and their consent.
  • Attempt to break, overload, probe, reverse-engineer, or gain unauthorized access to the service or to other customers' data.
  • Use automated means to scrape or extract our methodology, prompts, or scoring systems.
  • Resell, sublicense, or relabel the service as your own without our written agreement.

You are responsible for the inputs you provide and for reviewing the output before you publish or rely on it. The Encoder proposes; you decide. We mark gaps rather than invent facts, but you must confirm your BCP is accurate before use.

Automated and agent use

You may operate the Encoder through software agents or automated tools, including through an API key we issue. If you do, you are fully responsible for everything that agent does under your account or key, exactly as if you did it yourself. That includes the sources it submits, the answers it gives, and any BCP it compiles or publishes on its own, without a person reviewing it first. We do not review or supervise agent activity on your behalf, and how your agent reports back to you is between you and your agent. By authorizing an agent, you authorize those actions and accept liability for them. Keep your API key secret. You are responsible for all activity under it until you ask us to revoke it. Where payment is required, your agent presents a payment credential to complete the charge, and you authorize that charge the same as any other purchase under your account.

An agent may also register itself, with no person in the loop, by completing payment through our agent registration endpoint. When an agent registers itself this way, the person or entity that controls the payment credential accepts these Terms at the moment the payment completes, becomes the account owner, and is liable for everything done under the API key we issue, including any content the agent compiles or publishes on its own. If you control a payment credential that was used to register an agent and you want the key shut off, write to support@encodedbrands.com and we will revoke it. If your agent provides a contact email at registration, we will use it for required notices about the account, such as content removal.

Content moderation and removal

We may review, screen, flag, suspend, or remove any content submitted to or published through the service, at our discretion and without prior notice, including content we reasonably believe: violates these terms or any law; infringes or violates another person's rights; is defamatory, hateful, or harassing; contains personally identifiable information used without a lawful basis; or is otherwise harmful, deceptive, or problematic. We are not obligated to monitor content, but we reserve the right to. Removal of hosted content may include taking down the public Registry endpoint for the affected brand. Where practical and lawful, we will tell the account owner what we removed and why.

6. Your content and ownership

You own the inputs you provide and the BCP you generate ("Customer Content").

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide license to host, store, process, transmit, reproduce, display, review, and analyze Customer Content as needed to: (a) operate and deliver the service, including hosting your BCP in the Registry if you publish it; (b) secure the service and enforce these terms; (c) provide support; and (d) improve and develop the service as described in Section 7.

A published BCP is a public file by design. Anyone, and any agent, can fetch and read it until you unpublish or delete it. Unpublished Customer Content is treated as your confidential information, and we access it only for the purposes described in these terms and the Privacy Policy.

7. Service improvement and session review

Building a better Encoder requires understanding where encoding sessions succeed and where they fail. You agree that:

We may review your sessions. Authorized Encoded personnel, bound by confidentiality obligations, may access and review Customer Content, including your uploaded documents, the encoding interview dialog, and generated outputs, to evaluate quality, tune our interview, prompts, parsers, and scoring systems, diagnose errors, develop new features, and respond to your support requests.

We may create derived data. We may create and use aggregated, anonymized, or de-identified data and learnings derived from sessions, provided they do not identify you or your brand. Derived data is ours, may be used for any lawful purpose, and survives termination of your account.

Bright lines. Your identifiable Customer Content is never disclosed to another customer, never used in another customer's session, and never used to train machine-learning models without your separate, prior consent. Anonymized derived data is not Customer Content.

Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use it without restriction or obligation to you.

8. Intellectual property

The Encoder, the Registry, our methodology, scoring rubrics, prompts, software, derived data, and all related intellectual property belong to Encoded Brands or its licensors. These terms grant you no rights in them except the right to use the service.

The Brand Context Protocol specification is published separately under CC BY 4.0. Reference code is published under the MIT License. Nothing in these terms limits the rights those licenses grant.

9. Disclaimer

The service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the output is error-free, complete, legally compliant, or suitable for any particular use. We do not warrant that third-party AI tools and agents will fetch, parse, or follow your BCP. The Encoder is a drafting tool, not legal, branding, or compliance advice.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Encoded will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to the service, even if advised of the possibility.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the service will not exceed the total fees you paid us in the 90 days preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the maximum extent the law permits.

11. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Encoded against third-party claims, and the resulting damages and reasonable legal costs, arising from: (a) inputs you submit, (b) your published BCP, (c) your breach of these terms, or (d) your encoding of a brand you were not authorized to represent.

12. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these terms, if your payment fails and is not cured, or if required by law. You may stop using the service and delete your account at any time. Sections 4, 6 through 11, and 13 through 15 survive termination.

13. Disputes and arbitration

Any dispute arising from or relating to these terms or the service will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by JAMS under its Streamlined Arbitration Rules, in Marin County, California or remotely by agreement. You and Encoded each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class action or class arbitration.

This section does not prevent either party from seeking emergency injunctive relief in court, or from bringing an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. For any matter not subject to arbitration, you consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in California.

15. General

Severability. If any provision of these terms is held invalid or unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions continue in full force.

Entire agreement. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Encoded regarding the service. They supersede any prior agreements, representations, or understandings, written or oral.

Waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision on one occasion does not waive our right to enforce it, or any other provision, on another occasion.

Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For material changes, we will email account holders at least 30 days before the change takes effect. Continued use after that period constitutes acceptance. The "Last updated" date above reflects the current version.

17. Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@encodedbrands.com

Estuary Group LLC d/b/a Encoded Brands 1005 Northgate Drive, #193 San Rafael, CA 94903