Socrates AI — Terms of Service (DRAFT)

This is a working draft, not an attorney-reviewed or legally finalized set of terms. It is written to be technically accurate to the current product as of this revision. This revision (28 September 2026) makes three material changes: (1) Socrates AI is now offered to students in Egypt and internationally, replacing the earlier "U.S.-only" scope, and these terms are now governed by Egyptian law (§10); (2) paid plans are sold as one-time Study Passes paid in EGP through Paymob (Visa/Mastercard), described in §5; (3) refunds now have their own document, our Return & Refund Policy. The "Knowledge Vault" has also been merged into the Study Binder (§2). No attorney has reviewed this document. See the companion Privacy Policy for how we collect and use personal information. The documents are meant to be read together and are kept consistent with each other.

Last technical review: 30 September 2026 (§3: 13 and over only; sign-up confirmation replaces guardian email consent). Effective date: not yet published — TBD on legal sign-off.

⚠ Grounding note: every feature, price, and limit described below was checked directly against the current codebase (config/plans.ts, config/passes.ts, server/passes.ts, components/AccessGates.tsx, server.ts, config/featureFlags.ts) rather than assumed. Where the product isn't finished or a policy hasn't been decided, that's stated explicitly rather than smoothed over.

1. Acceptance of Terms

By creating an account or using Socrates AI ("the Service"), you agree to these Terms of Service and to our Return & Refund Policy, which forms part of them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you are using the Service on behalf of a minor as their parent or guardian, you also agree to these terms on that basis where applicable (see §3).

Who you're contracting with: Socrates AI is currently operated by an unincorporated group of collaborators based in Egypt — referred to throughout this document as "the Socrates AI team." No company, LLC, or other registered legal entity has been formed for this project as of this revision, and no individual's name is used here. This is a deliberate operating decision, not an oversight — the team has chosen to launch on this basis rather than delay for incorporation, and accepts that these terms' practical enforceability is weaker as a result than it would be with a registered entity behind them. This should be revisited if the project is ever incorporated.

2. Description of the Service

Socrates AI is a study application for school and university students, including students following IGCSE/GCSE, A-Level, American (SAT/AP/EST) and national curricula. Based on what's actually implemented today, the Service includes:

• An AI tutor you can chat with for homework help and explanations (see §6 for important limits on what this is and isn't).
• AI-generated flashcards and quizzes, created from a topic you type or from files/photos you upload.
• The Study Binder — your notes, plus a library of everything you've saved (notes, flashcards, conversations, quiz results, mind maps and files). It includes long-term storage for files you upload (PDFs, images and videos), separate from one-off generation uploads, so the tutor can reference and cite your own material. (This library was previously called the "Knowledge Vault.")
• Spaced-repetition flashcard review, study-progress tracking (streaks, mastery indicators, and similar), and related study tools.

What is defined but not currently active: the product also has code (behind feature flags, currently off) for things like real advertising and a CS code-execution checker. We do not represent any flagged-off feature as available; if a flag is later turned on, that changes what's offered, not this document's honesty about what exists today.

The Service may change over time — features can be added, modified, or removed, including AI providers and models used behind the scenes (see §6).

3. Eligibility and Accounts

• Socrates AI is for students aged 13 and over. When you create an account you give your year of birth and must confirm: "I confirm I am over 13 and have authorization from my school or legal guardian to use this platform." Don't create an account if that isn't true.
• Age and permission are self-reported, not verified. We don't use ID verification or any age-assurance service, and we don't contact your school or guardian; we rely on what you tell us.
• Under 13: an account whose year of birth shows the student is under 13 can't use the Service and is deleted after 30 days (or immediately, if the student chooses). See Privacy Policy §14.
• Under 18: you need permission from your school or legal guardian to use Socrates AI, and you need a parent's or guardian's permission to buy a Study Pass (§5). Where the law where you live treats you as a child until 18 (as Egypt's Personal Data Protection Law does), see Privacy Policy §14 for how that applies and the gap we've disclosed there.
• Schools that give Socrates AI to their students are responsible for obtaining any permission they need from parents or guardians.
• You're responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for activity that happens under your account.
• You need a working email address to create an account (authentication is handled by our infrastructure provider, Supabase).

4. Acceptable Use

Socrates AI is meant to help you actually learn — we don't build in "cheating-facilitation" framing, and we're not going to pretend an honest homework-help tool needs one. That said, you agree not to:

• Attempt to abuse, overload, scrape, or reverse-engineer the Service, its AI routing, or its usage-limit enforcement (including trying to bypass daily message/upload caps described in §5).
• Use the Service to upload, submit, or generate content containing another person's personal information without their consent (for example, someone else's private data pasted into a chat or uploaded in a file).
• Upload or generate illegal content, or use the Service for any unlawful purpose.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to another user's account or data, or to any part of the Service's infrastructure not intended for you.
• Interfere with the Service's normal operation (e.g., attempting to disrupt rate-limiting, authentication, or abuse-protection systems described in Privacy Policy §19).
• Use a payment method you're not authorized to use, or abuse refunds or chargebacks.

We may investigate and take action — including warnings, feature restriction, or termination (§8) — in response to violations of this section.

5. Plans, Study Passes and Payment

Plans, as actually defined in the product:

"Unlimited" means no fixed daily cap; the fair-use and anti-abuse rules in §4 still apply.

Study Pass prices (Egyptian pounds, one-time payment):

Prices are configuration values and can change. The price shown at checkout is the price you pay us for that purchase; a price change never affects a pass you've already bought.

How Study Passes work:

• One payment, no renewal. A Study Pass is paid once. It does not renew, we don't store your card, and you are never charged again unless you buy another pass. There's nothing to cancel.
• Payment methods: Visa or Mastercard, through our payment partner Paymob. Fawry is no longer offered for new purchases. We never see or store your full card number, expiry date or CVV — you enter those directly in Paymob’s embedded card form.
• When it starts: your pass starts as soon as the payment partner confirms the payment to our server.
• Stacking and upgrades: buying the same plan while a pass is running adds the new days to the end. Buying a higher plan starts it immediately, and time left on a lower pass is not carried over (the checkout tells you this before you pay). Buying a lower plan while a higher one is running is blocked.
• When it ends: your account returns to the plan it had before the pass. Your study content is not deleted.
• If a payment method isn't open yet, the checkout says so and nothing is charged.
• Under 18: you need a parent or guardian's permission to buy a pass, and we recommend they make the payment.
• Card subscriptions: Socrates AI does not currently sell automatically-renewing subscriptions. Code for a Stripe subscription path exists but is switched off. If we ever offer subscriptions, we'll update these terms and the refund policy, including how to cancel, before they go on sale.

Refunds: see our Return & Refund Policy. In short: we don't refund a change of mind or unused time, but we always refund double charges, passes that never activated, payments we couldn't apply, payments you didn't authorize, and long outages we caused — and we always honor refund rights the law gives you.

Free-tier "watch an ad for bonus messages": the product has a real, working mechanism for granting bonus daily messages, but no actual ad network is connected — the "watch a short ad" step is an honestly-labeled simulated ad, and the app never claims otherwise to the user. Until a real ad network is integrated, this is shown as "coming soon," not offered as a working benefit. Bonus messages, gift passes, trials and launch offers are free extras and have no cash value.

5A. Laurels, XP and the Season Pass

• What they are. XP and Laurels are in-app rewards you earn by studying: active study time, flashcard reviews, quizzes, homework checks, streak days, daily quests and weekly challenges. XP moves you through the tiers of the current Season Pass; Laurels are spent in the in-app Agora on streak freezes, streak repairs, Focus Potions (extra XP for an hour), cosmetic titles and profile frames, and the perks below.
• Earned, never sold. Laurels and XP cannot be bought with money, and nothing in the Season Pass or the Agora is random: you always know exactly what you get. They have no cash value, can't be exchanged for money or goods, can't be transferred to another account, and aren't your property; they're a licence to use features inside Socrates AI.
• Perks. Some rewards add to your plan's daily limits: saved tutor messages and saved AI flashcard sets (used automatically only after that day's plan limit runs out; you can hold up to 60 messages and 10 sets, and they don't expire while your account exists), and, for accounts on the Free plan, a Plus Pass (3 days of the Plus plan, at most once a season from the Agora, plus one on the season's free track). A Plus Pass costs no money, ends by itself and returns the account to the Free plan; it never renews, never starts a subscription and isn't available on an account with a card subscription. On Pro and Ultra, which already have unlimited messages and sets, those perks are paid as Laurels instead, and on any paid plan the free track's Plus Pass is paid as 100 Laurels.
• Free and premium tracks. Everyone gets the free track. The premium track comes with any active paid plan (§5) at no extra charge. Premium rewards you've reached become claimable while your plan is active; anything you've already claimed stays yours when the plan ends.
• Seasons. Each season runs for a set period shown in the app. Season XP starts again at zero each season; Laurels and items you own carry over. Season-only rewards can only be earned during their season.
• Fair play and changes. Daily limits apply to how much XP each activity earns. We may change rewards, prices in Laurels, limits and seasons, and we may correct balances that were wrong because of a bug or were built up by automated or fake activity. We won't take away items you've fairly earned, except when your account is deleted (§8), which removes all Laurels, XP and items.

6. AI-Generated Content Disclaimer

The AI tutor, and the flashcards/quizzes/summaries it generates, are produced by third-party large language models (currently, depending on your plan and internal routing that can change over time, models from providers including Google, Groq, Mistral, and OpenRouter's model catalog — see Privacy Policy §7 for the full, currently-accurate list).

AI-generated content can be wrong. The tutor can make factual mistakes, misunderstand a question, or generate an incorrect or incomplete answer with total confidence. Socrates AI is a study aid, not a substitute for a teacher, textbook, or your own judgment.

• You are responsible for verifying accuracy before relying on, submitting, or being graded on anything derived from an AI-generated response.
• We do not guarantee that AI-generated flashcards, quizzes, explanations, or summaries are accurate, complete, or appropriate for any specific course, curriculum, or exam board.
• We make no guarantee of grades, test scores, or any other academic outcome from using the Service.

7. User Content and Intellectual Property

• You own what you create. Chat messages you write, notes, flashcards, quiz answers, mind maps, and files you upload to your Study Binder remain yours.
• You grant us a limited license to host, store, process, transmit, and display your content solely as needed to operate the Service for you — including sending relevant content to a third-party AI provider to generate a response, as described in Privacy Policy §7–§8. This license ends when the specific content is deleted, subject to the retention realities described in that document (§17).
• You're responsible for what you upload. You represent that you have the right to upload/submit the content you provide (don't upload someone else's copyrighted material without permission, and see §4 on not uploading others' personal information).
• Share links: if you explicitly create a share link for a flashcard deck, anyone with that link can view it (read-only). That's a deliberate action you take, not something that happens automatically.
• We don't claim ownership of your study content, and we don't sell it.

8. Termination

• You can stop using the Service at any time. You (or, if you're under 18, your parent or guardian) can request account deletion from Settings, or by contacting us (§12). As described in Privacy Policy §18, a request starts a 30-day grace period: you can cancel it from Settings at any time during that period, and we email a reminder about 3 days before it ends. If the request isn't cancelled, an automated daily job permanently deletes your account once the 30 days are up — your stored files first, then your account record, which automatically and permanently removes your study content, chat history, notes, flashcards, quiz results and purchase records with it. Deleting your account ends any Study Pass on it, and is not by itself a reason for a refund.
• We can suspend or terminate accounts that violate §4 (Acceptable Use), pose a security risk, or where we have a legitimate legal or safety reason to do so. Where practical, we'll try to give notice, but we reserve the right to act immediately for serious violations (e.g., abuse, attempted unauthorized access, illegal content). No refund is given for a pass on an account closed for breaking §4.
• If we close the Service, or close your account when you haven't broken these terms, we refund the unused days of any Study Pass on it, as described in the Return & Refund Policy.

9. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

The language below has not been reviewed by an attorney and is not guaranteed enforceable as written. Consumer-protection rights that the law doesn't allow to be waived — including under Egypt's Consumer Protection Law (Law No. 181 of 2018) and the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in — are not affected by anything in this section.

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including (without limitation) warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement, to the extent the law allows us to exclude them. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure (see Privacy Policy §19 for our actual security posture and its limits).

We do not guarantee any academic outcome — grades, test scores, admission results, or otherwise — from using Socrates AI (see §6).

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Socrates AI team's total liability for any claim arising from your use of the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or EGP 1,000 if you haven't paid us anything — a nominal figure chosen by the operator as a reasonable default, not calculated by counsel. This cap does not apply to, and is not intended to limit, liability for gross negligence, fraud, willful misconduct, or anything else the law doesn't allow to be limited. This limitation-of-liability clause as a whole has not been reviewed by an attorney and its enforceability is not guaranteed.

10. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Any dispute that can't be settled informally will be heard by the competent courts of Cairo, Egypt.

If you live outside Egypt, you keep the protection of any mandatory consumer law of the country you live in, and you may also be able to bring a claim in your own country's courts where that law gives you that right. Nothing in this section takes that away.

Before going to court, please talk to us. Email support@socratesai.app describing the problem; we'll try to resolve it within 30 days. No arbitration clause or class-action waiver is defined.

This choice of law is the operator's own judgment (the team is based in Egypt and most paying students are there), not an attorney's recommendation, and should be revisited if the project is ever incorporated or real legal counsel weighs in.

11. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms as the product changes — for example, as we change prices or payment methods, change AI providers, or activate flagged-off features like advertising. We'll update the "last technical review" date above every time we do — that's the notice for routine/minor updates. For a material change (one that meaningfully changes your obligations, pricing, or rights — e.g., adding automatically-renewing subscriptions, or reducing your refund rights), we will additionally post a visible in-app notice, not just a changed date. A change never applies to a Study Pass you already paid for: each purchase is covered by the terms and refund policy in force when you paid. This mirrors Privacy Policy §24's commitment, and the two documents' change-notice processes are kept consistent with each other by design.

12. Contact

support@socratesai.app — a real, monitored contact address for questions about these terms, payments and refunds. This is our general support inbox. You can also use the contact form.

Our website: https://www.socratesai.app — our permanent domain.

Location: Cairo, Egypt.

For how we handle your personal information, see our Privacy Policy. For refunds, see our Return & Refund Policy.

Document status: DRAFT — no attorney has reviewed this document. Every open question has a real, stated position (a scoping decision, a disclosed known gap, or the operator's own judgment call on a business term) rather than a placeholder. That does not mean this document is legally certified; the operator has knowingly accepted the risk of launching without counsel review, consistent with the same decision made in the Privacy Policy.