Terms of Service

A short summary to help you find your way. The full Terms below are what apply.

• Paddlewheel is an MVP. Expect bugs, changes and downtime, and keep your own copy of anything important.
• You must be 18 or older to use Paddlewheel.
• You own your prompts, your code and the apps you build, including the code the AI writes for you. You give us the permissions we need to run the Service.
• We use your chats and code to train and improve AI models, unless your organization is on the Ultimate plan or you opt out.
• AI makes mistakes. Review and test what it generates before you rely on it or deploy it.
• You’re responsible for the apps you build, host and publish, and for following the acceptable use rules.
• Paid plans renew automatically until you cancel. Payments are handled by Dodo Payments.
• We can suspend or ban accounts that break these Terms.
• The Service is provided “as is”, and our liability is limited.

Paddlewheel lets you describe software in a chat and have an AI coding agent build it. The agent writes and changes code in a cloud sandbox, you preview the result, and you can deploy it to the web, connect a domain, sync it with GitHub, connect other services and publish it to the community.

Paddlewheel is an early, MVP version of the product. That means:

• features may be incomplete, may change, and may be removed, sometimes without notice;
• the Service may be slow or unavailable, may behave unexpectedly, and may lose data — there is no uptime commitment or service level agreement;
• plans, limits and prices may change as we learn (for paid subscriptions, see Plans, credits and payments for how we handle price changes);
• we may limit who can sign up or use particular features.

Keep your own copy of anything important — for example by syncing your projects to a GitHub repository you control.

Who can use Paddlewheel

You must be at least 18 years old. Paddlewheel is not for anyone under 18. You must also be able to form a binding contract and must not be barred from using the Service under the laws that apply to you, including sanctions laws.

Keeping your account secure

Give accurate information and keep it up to date. You’re responsible for what happens under your account, so keep your ways of signing in secure: your email inbox (we sign you in with emailed links), your password, your GitHub account and your two-factor codes. If you think someone has got into your account, tell us straight away at support@paddlewheel.dev.

Don’t share your account or sign-in links. Don’t create more than one account to get around limits, credits, referral rewards or a suspension.

Organizations

Projects, members, connected services and billing belong to organizations — shared workspaces in Paddlewheel. An organization’s owners and admins control its settings, invite and remove members, and manage its plan. Projects you create in someone else’s organization belong to that organization: its owners and admins can access and manage them, and you lose access if you’re removed.

Usernames

Pick a username that doesn’t impersonate anyone, mislead people, or infringe someone else’s rights. We may change or reclaim usernames that do.

Definitions

• Input is anything you or members of your organization submit to the Service: prompts and chat messages, files, images, code, data, environment variables and credentials.
• Output is what the Service generates for you in response, such as code, text and designs.
• Your Content is your Input and Output, and the projects and apps built from them.

You own Your Content

As between you and us, you keep all rights you have in your Input, and you own the Output. To the extent we have any rights in Output, we assign them to you. We don’t claim ownership of the apps you build.

That ownership doesn’t extend to:

• the Service itself, which belongs to us (see Our intellectual property);
• third-party material that ends up in your project, such as open-source packages, which come with their own licenses, and stock images, which are subject to their providers’ licenses;
• starter templates and components we provide, which we license to you to use, modify and deploy, including commercially, as part of the apps you build — but not to redistribute or sell as templates or components on their own.

AI models can produce the same or similar output for other people, and you don’t get exclusive rights in output someone else generates independently. In some countries, material generated by AI may not be protected by copyright at all.

The permission you give us

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, process, transmit, run, display and adapt Your Content, only as needed to:

• provide, maintain, secure and support the Service for you — including sending Input to AI model providers and running your code in sandboxes and on hosting providers;
• do what you ask, such as deploying an app, syncing with GitHub or publishing to the community;
• prevent abuse and enforce these Terms; and
• comply with the law.

This license ends when Your Content is deleted from the Service, except for copies we have to keep for the reasons in our Privacy Policy, and except for projects you’ve published to the community, which are covered in Community publishing.

AI training

You also grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use your chats and code to train, fine-tune, evaluate and improve AI models — ours, and those of the AI model providers we use — as described in our Privacy Policy. This doesn’t apply to organizations on the Ultimate plan, or once you opt out by emailing us. Models already trained aren’t affected when your content is deleted or you opt out.

Your responsibilities for Input

You must have the rights and permissions you need to submit your Input and let us process it as these Terms describe. Only put other people’s personal data into the Service if you’re allowed to. Keep secrets such as API keys in environment variables or connector settings rather than in chat messages.

Feedback

If you send us ideas, suggestions or feedback, we may use them without restriction or payment to you.

Paddlewheel is built on AI models, and AI makes mistakes. Output may be wrong, incomplete, insecure or out of date, may resemble other people’s work, and may not do what you asked. Apps built with Paddlewheel may contain bugs, security vulnerabilities, or accessibility, licensing or legal problems. So:

• review, test and secure Output before you rely on it, deploy it or let other people use it;
• don’t treat Output as professional advice — legal, security, financial, medical or otherwise;
• don’t rely on Output alone for decisions that could significantly affect people.

The agent acts on your instructions: it can create, change and delete files in your project, install packages, run commands in your sandbox, and use services you’ve connected. You’re responsible for the instructions you give it and for what you deploy. AI requests use credits whether or not you’re happy with the result.

You must not use the Service — including your sandboxes, office cloud computers, previews, deployed apps and connected services — to:

1. break the law, or help anyone else break it;
2. infringe or misappropriate anyone’s intellectual property, privacy or other rights;
3. create, host or share child sexual abuse material, or any content that sexualizes or endangers children;
4. create or host content that is obscene, or that harasses, threatens, defames, or promotes violence, terrorism or hatred against people;
5. build or host phishing pages, scams, fake sign-in pages, or sites that impersonate a person, brand or organization;
6. create or distribute malware, spyware or any code designed to damage systems, steal data or gain unauthorized access;
7. attack, probe, scan or overload any system or network — ours or anyone else’s — including denial-of-service attacks, credential stuffing or vulnerability scanning without permission;
8. mine cryptocurrency, run open proxies, or use sandboxes or hosting for anything other than building and running your apps;
9. use an office cloud computer for anything but your own work: no mining, no proxies or bots, no keeping it busy unattended, and no sharing it with people outside your organization. A computer that runs flat out with nobody looking at it is paused and flagged for review;
10. harass people in the office, by voice, chat, emotes, desk notes or whiteboards;
11. send spam or unsolicited bulk messages;
12. scrape or collect data in breach of a website’s terms or the law, or collect personal data without a lawful basis;
13. promote unlawful gambling, money laundering or other financial crime, or knowingly spread false information to cause harm or for financial gain;
14. get around limits, credits, quotas, captchas, bans or security controls, or abuse the free plan or referral program, for example with multiple accounts;
15. access, or try to access, other users’ accounts, projects or data;
16. copy, resell or reverse engineer the Service, or extract its non-public parts, such as our prompts, except where the law allows it;
17. violate the usage policies of the AI model providers we use or of services you connect, such as GitHub.

We may investigate suspected violations, remove or disable content and apps, and suspend or ban accounts (see Suspension and termination). If you find a security vulnerability, please report it to support@paddlewheel.dev instead of exploiting it.

Your apps are your responsibility

You decide what your apps do, what they show and who uses them. You’re responsible for their content, legality and security, and for your relationship with their users, including:

• giving your app’s users any terms and privacy notice the law requires, and getting any consent it needs — for example for cookies or analytics you add;
• handling any personal data your app collects lawfully — for that data you are responsible as its controller, and we only process it on your behalf to build, host and run your app;
• keeping secrets out of code that runs in the browser; and
• following the terms of any service your app uses, such as a database or payment provider.

Previews and deployments are public

Anyone with the address of a preview or a deployed app can open it. Don’t put confidential information in an app unless you’ve protected it. Deployed apps get a free address on paddlewheel.dev, and apps on that address show a “Made with Paddlewheel” badge.

How hosting works

Your project runs in a cloud sandbox while you build, and deployed apps are hosted by our infrastructure providers — on your organization’s own hosting account if you’ve connected one, and on ours if you haven’t. Sandboxes stop when they’re idle, and plans limit daily sandbox time, projects, publishes and other usage.

Custom domains

Paid plans can connect domains you own or control. You’re responsible for registering and renewing the domain and for its DNS records. A domain can only be connected to one project, and claims that aren’t verified within 7 days expire. If your plan no longer includes a custom domain, it’s suspended after a 7-day grace period and your app stays available on its paddlewheel.dev address. When you stop using a domain with Paddlewheel, remove its DNS records so nobody else can point it somewhere.

When we take action

We may stop, restrict or take down a sandbox, preview, deployment or domain that breaks these Terms, puts the Service, other users or the public at risk, is the subject of a valid legal complaint, or exceeds your plan. Where it’s reasonable, we’ll tell you first.

You can share a deployed project on Explore, Paddlewheel’s public community pages.

What becomes public

A listing shows the title, tagline, description and category you enter, the screenshots you upload, a link to the version of your app you published (which people can also try live on the listing), your username and avatar, and stars and view counts. Anyone can see listings, including people who aren’t signed in. Your source code, chat and project settings are not published.

Review

Every listing is checked before it goes live, including by an AI model that reviews your app’s page, your screenshots and the text you entered. We may reject, hide or remove a listing, take down the published app or block you from publishing — for example if it breaks these Terms, doesn’t work, or is reported. Listings reported by several people may be hidden automatically while we review them.

License

When you publish, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, reproduce, display and distribute your listing and the published version of your app on Explore, for as long as the listing is published. You confirm you have the rights to everything in the listing, including the screenshots.

Unpublishing

You can unpublish a listing at any time, and it stops appearing on Explore. We keep its versions and statistics so it can be restored, and screenshots already shared at public addresses, or copies other people made while it was public, may remain.

Paddlewheel works with services we don’t control, such as GitHub, Supabase, hosting providers, Dodo Payments, the connectors in our integrations catalog, and the AI model providers behind the agent. When you connect one, you authorize us to access it on your behalf and to take the actions you or the agent request, within the permissions you grant. For example, GitHub sync can create a repository in your account and push your project’s code to it, and a connected database can be changed by the agent.

Your use of those services is governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We aren’t responsible for them, and they may change or stop working with Paddlewheel. Connections to an organization’s services can be shared with its other members. You can disconnect a service at any time; things that depend on it may stop working.

Plans

Paddlewheel has a free plan and paid plans, billed monthly or annually. Plans belong to an organization. What each plan includes — credits, projects, sandbox time, publishes, custom domains and connections — is shown on the pricing and billing pages when you buy, and may change as described below.

Credits

Sending a message to the AI uses credits. Plans include a daily credit allowance that doesn’t carry over, and the free plan also has a monthly cap. Paid plans add bonus credits with each subscription payment; they replace the previous payment’s bonus and end when the subscription ends. You can also buy credit packs: purchased credits expire 730 days after purchase, and the credits that expire soonest are used first. Credits belong to an organization, have no cash value, can’t be transferred or sold, and aren’t refundable except as described under Refunds.

Who you pay

Payments are handled by Dodo Payments, which acts as the merchant of record: it sells subscriptions and credit packs to you on our behalf, takes payment, charges any applicable taxes and issues invoices, and its own terms apply to your purchase. You enter your payment details on Dodo Payments’ checkout; we never receive your full card details.

Automatic renewal and cancellation

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period, monthly or annually, at the price then in effect, and your payment method is charged until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your organization’s billing settings. When you cancel, your plan stays active until the end of the period you’ve paid for and doesn’t renew.

Price changes

We’ll tell you before a new price applies to your subscription, so you can cancel before it takes effect.

Failed payments and downgrades

If a renewal payment fails, your plan stays active for a 7-day grace period while payment is retried, and we email your organization’s owner. If payment still fails, or your plan ends, your organization moves to the free plan:

• projects above the free plan’s limit are paused after a 7-day grace period: you can still read their code, but you can’t keep building them until you upgrade or choose which projects stay active. Nothing is deleted;
• deployed apps stay online;
• custom domains are suspended after a 7-day grace period, and your apps stay available on their paddlewheel.dev addresses.

Refunds

Payments are non-refundable, except where the law requires a refund or we choose to give one. If a payment is refunded, the plan period it paid for ends and any unused credits it bought or granted are removed. Nothing in these Terms limits refund or cancellation rights you have under the law of the country where you live. [Counsel: how the EU/UK 14-day right of withdrawal applies to subscriptions and credits]

Chargebacks

If you dispute a legitimate charge with your bank, we may suspend your organization’s paid features, or your account, until the dispute is resolved.

Referrals

If we offer referral rewards, they have no cash value, and we may change or end the program at any time and withhold rewards obtained through abuse, such as self-referrals or fake accounts.

You can leave at any time

You can stop using the Service at any time; remember to cancel any subscription. To delete your account, email support@paddlewheel.dev from the address on your account — self-serve deletion isn’t available yet. What happens to your data when your account is deleted is explained in our Privacy Policy.

We can suspend or ban accounts

We may suspend or restrict your account, or ban it temporarily or permanently, if:

• you break these Terms or the law, or we reasonably believe you have;
• your use creates a risk of harm, loss or liability for us, other users or anyone else;
• we’re required to by law or by a valid request from an authority;
• payments are disputed or reversed; or
• we stop offering the Service.

While your account is suspended or banned you can’t sign in, and your apps, listings and domains may be taken offline. We’ll tell you the reason unless the law, an investigation or a security risk prevents it. If you think we got it wrong, email support@paddlewheel.dev and we’ll review the decision.

If we stop offering the Service

If we discontinue Paddlewheel, we’ll try to give you reasonable notice so you can move your projects.

What continues after

Sections that by their nature should continue after your account ends — including ownership, licenses for published listings, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and governing law and disputes — continue.

If you believe something on the Service — a community listing, an app hosted by Paddlewheel or anything else — infringes your copyright or other rights, or is unlawful, report it with the report button on the listing or email support@paddlewheel.dev. Include:

• your name and contact details;
• the work or right concerned, and the web address of the content;
• why you believe the content is infringing or unlawful;
• a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use isn’t authorized, and that the information in your notice is accurate; and
• your physical or electronic signature.

We may remove or disable the content and tell the person who posted it, who can respond. We close the accounts of repeat infringers where appropriate.

Grievance Officer (India). [Grievance Officer name], support@paddlewheel.dev, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. [Counsel: whether the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules, 2021 apply, and the response times to state]

The Service — its software, design, agents and prompts, templates, documentation, and the Paddlewheel name and logo — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by law. Subject to these Terms, we give you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable right to use the Service. Apart from Your Content, you don’t get any rights in the Service, and you may not use our name or logo in a way that suggests we endorse you without our permission.

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Service and all Output are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory — including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. We don’t promise that Output will be accurate, secure or fit for your purpose, that the Service will always be available, or that data won’t be lost.

Some countries don’t allow some of these disclaimers, so some of them may not apply to you.

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• we aren’t liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or business opportunity, even if we were told they were possible; and
• our total liability for all claims relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the amounts you paid for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits don’t apply to liability that can’t be limited by law, such as liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you’re a consumer, you may have rights under the law of the country where you live that these Terms can’t take away.

To the extent the law allows, you will defend and indemnify us, and our officers, employees and contractors, against third-party claims, and the losses and costs (including reasonable legal fees) that result from them, arising out of Your Content, the apps you build, host or publish, or your breach of these Terms or the law. This doesn’t apply to the extent a claim is caused by our own breach of these Terms.

We may update these Terms, for example when we add features or when the law changes. The “Last updated” date at the top shows when they last changed. If a change is material, we’ll tell you in advance by email or in the app, and give you at least 30 days before it takes effect — unless it’s needed sooner for legal or security reasons.

If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, the updated Terms apply to you. If you don’t agree to them, stop using the Service and cancel any subscription before they take effect.

Talk to us first. Most problems can be sorted out quickly. Before starting formal proceedings, contact us at support@paddlewheel.dev and give us 30 days to try to resolve the issue informally.

Governing law. These Terms, and any dispute arising from them or the Service, are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Consumers. If you’re a consumer, nothing in this section takes away the protection of mandatory laws of the country where you live, or your right to bring a claim in the courts there where that law gives you one.

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any plan details shown when you buy, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
• Severability. If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest stays in effect, and the unenforceable part is applied as far as the law allows.
• No waiver. If we don’t enforce a right straight away, we haven’t given it up.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our written consent. We may transfer ours as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, or to an affiliate.
• Events outside our control. We aren’t responsible for failures or delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages at our providers, natural disasters, war or government action.
• Notices. We send notices to the email address on your account. Legal notices to us go to support@paddlewheel.dev.
• Export controls and sanctions. You must comply with export control and sanctions laws that apply to your use of the Service.
• Relationship. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, employment or agency relationship between you and us.
• Language. If we translate these Terms, the English version prevails where the two differ.

Paddlewheel
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Email: support@paddlewheel.dev