Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of The Refinery. By creating an account, you're agreeing to them. The Refinery is a small, independently-run app, not a company product -- read that in mind as you read the rest of this.

You must be 18 or older to create an account. The Refinery deals with personal, sometimes emotionally weighty reflection, and isn't built or moderated for minors. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 18, we'll remove it.

The Refinery, including its AI coach, is meant for personal growth and reflection only. Responses are generated by AI, not a licensed therapist, counselor, or medical professional, and are not a substitute for professional medical, mental health, legal, or financial advice. It does not diagnose or treat anything. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, please contact a licensed professional or a crisis line in your area -- not this app.

You're responsible for what happens under your account, including keeping your login secure. Give us a real email so we can reach you about your account if we need to. Don't share your login with anyone else.

Entries, testimonies, chat messages, and anything else you write stay yours -- we don't claim ownership of it. By posting something publicly or sharing it with a friend inside the app, you're giving us permission to store and display it back to whoever you shared it with, for as long as your account exists or until you delete it. You're responsible for what you post; don't post anything that isn't yours to share, or that's illegal, harassing, or intended to harm someone else.

Some features (currently the Habits bundle and Budget) require payment, processed entirely through Stripe -- we never see your card details. Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel from your Profile. Purchases from other users' Wisdom posts are one-time and final. If something's genuinely wrong with a charge, contact us (below) and we'll sort it out directly rather than hiding behind a policy -- this is a small app, not a call center.

• Use The Refinery for anything illegal, or to harass, threaten, or impersonate someone.
• Try to break, scrape, reverse-engineer, or overload the app.
• Create multiple accounts to get around a limit, ban, or paywall.
• Use it to generate or share content that violates Anthropic's own usage policies for the underlying AI models.

For the full list of what gets removed, what doesn't, and who actually reviews reports, see the Community Guidelines.

You can delete your account any time by contacting us. We can suspend or remove an account that violates these terms, is used to harm others, or is used by someone under 18.

The Refinery is provided as-is, run by one person, without guarantees that it'll always be available, bug-free, or perfectly accurate -- especially AI-generated responses, which can be wrong. To the extent the law allows, The Refinery isn't liable for damages arising from your use of the app, including decisions made based on anything the AI coach says.

If these terms change meaningfully, we'll update this page and note it in the app's changelog, the same way we handle privacy policy changes.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Kansas, USA.

Questions about these terms: use the Feedback form in the app, or email hello@therefineryapp.com.