Terms of Service

These terms cover your use of the Coastal Diligence website and web app at coastaldiligence.com. We call them "the service". The service is run by Coastal Diligence LLC, a California limited liability company. We call that company "Coastal Diligence", "we" and "us".

Access is by invitation. You accept these terms when you select "I agree" on the notice shown at your first sign-in.

1. If your organization has a signed agreement with us

You may be using the service for a company, firm or public agency that has signed an agreement with us. If so, that agreement governs your use. These terms do not change it. Where the two differ, the signed agreement controls.

In that case you are using the service on your organization's behalf, and what you do here counts as its use.

If you have no signed agreement with us, these terms alone govern your use. If you accept them for a business, you confirm that you have authority to bind it, and "you" includes that business.

2. What the service is

The service is a research tool for property due diligence and permit questions. You ask about a property, a project or a rule. Software run by artificial intelligence (AI) searches public records and the rules that appear to apply, then writes an answer or a report.

"Public records" means documents and data that government bodies publish, such as local codes, staff reports, and parcel and map data.

3. AI-written output can be wrong

• Answers and reports are written by AI models. They can be incorrect or incomplete. They are not a substitute for review by a person.
• Public records can be incomplete, out of date or wrong at their source. We do not guarantee them. Each report states its sources so that you can check them.
• A search that found nothing is not a finding that nothing exists.
• Nobody inspects the property. The work is done from records and from the files you supply.
• A report speaks as of its date. We have no duty to update it.

Check any fact before you rely on it or pass it on. Have a qualified person review each report before you rely on it or give it to anyone else.

4. You direct the work and you review it

You decide what to ask. You give the instructions and the files. We do not choose the subject of your research. We do not review, edit or approve individual answers or reports.

Reviewing what the service produces is your job, or your organization's.

5. No legal or other professional advice

Nothing here is legal advice. It is also not the opinion of a broker, appraiser, home inspector, engineer, geologist, surveyor, architect or environmental professional.

We are not your attorney, broker or agent. We do not decide or predict how a public agency will rule on any matter.

If you have professional or legal duties of your own, such as a duty to inspect or to disclose, they stay with you. Using the service does not perform or reduce them.

6. The method is confidential

"The method" means the guides, playbooks, handbooks, tool descriptions and other working instructions that the service uses to do its research. The method is confidential. It is provided only for producing and checking your own reports.

You will not:

• copy the method out of the service, publish it or disclose it;
• retrieve the method, the list of tools or the record collection in bulk;
• prepare a summary, outline or reconstruction of the method as a whole, or of how the service is built;
• use the method or the record collection to train or test an AI model, or to write prompts or instructions for use outside the service;
• use the service or the method to build a product or service that does substantially the same thing.

What stays open to you:

• You may quote or describe the specific rule, source or calculation applied to a specific point in a report, to anyone.
• Any public record you get from its public source is yours to use for any purpose.
• Nothing here limits what you build on your own, without the service and without the method.

7. Acceptable use

• Keep your sign-in to yourself. Do not share your account.

• Do not try to get around access controls or usage limits.

• Do not use the service as the only basis for a decision in a regulated profession without review by a qualified person.

• Do not say that a named human professional wrote or checked a report if they did not.

• Do not remove the statement that a report was produced with AI.

• If you give a report to someone else, give it complete, with its sources and limits. Do not present it as our advice to them.

• Do not put any report, or any part of one, in a seller's disclosure statement or disclosure packet. Make the disclosures the law requires in your own words.

• A report marked as sell-side advisory is for the listing agent and brokerage named on its cover. Do not give it to a buyer, a buyer's agent, a lender or anyone else. Nothing in these terms asks you to hold back anything the law requires you to disclose.

• Do not reverse engineer, decompile or try to extract the source code of the service, except where the law allows it despite this limit.

• Do not resell, rent, lend or sublicense access to the service, or run it for others as a service bureau.

• Do not use the service to break the law, or to infringe anyone's rights.

• Do not send us files or content you have no right to use.

• Do not interfere with the service, overload it, or reach it by automated means other than those it provides.

8. Your content and your reports

Your content is what you send to the service: addresses, parcel numbers, questions, drafts and files.

We use your content to do what you asked, and to improve the service through the automated review the Privacy Policy describes. We do not use it to train any AI model. We do not use it to prepare reports for anyone else. To run your research and the review, we send your content to an AI model provider named in the Privacy Policy, under terms that do not let the provider train its models on your content.

As between you and us, the reports you produce with the service belong to you or your organization. We keep our rights in the method, the record collection, the tools, the report template and the Coastal Diligence name. You may use those as they appear in your report, as part of that report.

We may research the same property or question for other people. Nobody gets exclusive rights over public records or over conclusions drawn from them.

The Privacy Policy explains what we store, for how long, and how to ask for deletion.

9. Plans, payment and usage limits

Each account has a usage allowance. When you reach it, the service tells you when more becomes available.

• Trial. A trial account may use the service free for 14 days from the first time it opens the app, or until its trial allowance is used, whichever comes first. We do not ask for a card for a trial, and a trial never turns into a paid plan by itself.
• Subscriptions. A subscription is billed monthly or yearly, at the price shown on the billing page before you subscribe. It renews automatically at the end of each period, and your card is charged the then-current price, until you cancel. Its usage allowance renews every month.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time from Manage billing on the billing page. Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.
• Changing plan. Moving to a larger plan takes effect at once, with credit for your unused allowance. Moving to a smaller plan takes effect when the current period ends.
• Additional usage. A subscriber may buy packs of additional usage. A pack is a one-time payment, is used once the month's allowance is used up, and expires 12 months after purchase.
• Invoiced accounts. If we have agreed to invoice you, pay each invoice within 30 days.
• Payment processing. Stripe takes card payments and sends invoices. We do not see or store your card number.
• Refunds. Payments are not refundable, including for part of a period, except where the law requires a refund or section 10 provides one.
• Price changes. We will tell you at least 30 days before a new price applies to your subscription. It applies from your next renewal, and you can cancel before then.
• Taxes. Prices do not include taxes, which we add where the law requires.

We may change the service, the method, the records and the tools at any time. We may withdraw the service on notice.

10. Suspension and ending access

We may suspend or end your access, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe these terms have been broken, or if your use harms the service or other people. When practical we will tell you first and say why.

Your access also ends if your invitation is withdrawn, or if your organization's agreement with us ends.

Ending your access ends any subscription. If we end it for a reason other than a breach of these terms, we refund the unused part of any period you paid for in advance.

You may stop using the service at any time. The Privacy Policy explains how to ask us to delete your account.

Sections 3, 5, 6, 8, 11 and 12 continue after your access ends. Your duties under section 6 continue for five years after your access ends, and for any part of the method that is a trade secret, for as long as it remains one.

11. Warranty and liability

The service and the reports are provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted or free of errors.

To the extent the law allows, neither we nor our suppliers are liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or business opportunities, arising from the service or any report, even if told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims arising from these terms or the service is limited to the greater of (a) what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose and (b) US$100.

These limits do not apply to liability that the law does not allow to be limited, including liability for fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct. They do not limit what you owe for breaking section 6 or section 7.

You will indemnify us (cover our losses and reasonable legal costs) against claims by a third party that arise from your breaking section 6 or section 7, or from a report you gave to someone else in breach of these terms.

Where an organization has a signed agreement with us, the limits in that agreement apply instead.

12. Governing law and disputes

California law governs these terms, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute goes to the state courts in Monterey County, California, or the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and you and we agree to those courts' jurisdiction. Either of us may still ask any court for an order to stop a breach of section 6.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows the latest version. Before a material change takes effect, we email the address on your account. If the notice you accepted at sign-in changes, you are shown the new notice before you can carry on.

14. Contact

hello@coastaldiligence.com