Terms of Service

1. Agreement to These Terms

ShelvesAI is operated by Trout Pond, LLC, a Florida limited liability company ("Trout Pond," "ShelvesAI," "we," "us," or "our"). We make a mobile application and this website that help you catalog, organize, and share the physical things you collect.

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between you and Trout Pond, LLC, and they govern your use of the ShelvesAI app, the website at shelvesai.com, and every related service and feature (together, the "Service").

By downloading, installing, registering for, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. If you do not agree with any part of these Terms, do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility & Your Account

You must be at least 13 years old — or the minimum age of digital consent in your country, if that age is higher — to use ShelvesAI. If you are under 18, you represent that your parent or legal guardian has reviewed and agreed to these Terms on your behalf.

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us at support@shelvesai.com and we will delete it.

• Accurate information: You agree to provide accurate registration details and to keep them current.
• Account security: You are responsible for safeguarding your password and for all activity that occurs under your account. Tell us promptly at support@shelvesai.com if you suspect unauthorized access.
• One account, one person: Accounts are personal to you. You may not share, sell, rent, or transfer your account or its credentials to anyone else.

3. Personal, Non-Commercial Use Only

ShelvesAI is licensed to you for personal, non-commercial use only. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to install and use the app on devices you own or control, and to use the website, for the sole purpose of cataloging, organizing, and sharing your own personal collection. We reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.

Personal use covers what you would expect: cataloging the things you own for your own enjoyment and reference, keeping household records, and sharing your shelves with friends and fellow collectors. It does not cover using the Service to operate a business.

Unless you have a separate written agreement with us, you may not:

• Run a business on it: Use the Service as inventory, point-of-sale, stock, or asset-management software for a shop, dealership, gallery, rental business, library, institution, or any other commercial or professional enterprise.
• Resell or monetize access: Sell, resell, sublicense, rent, lease, or otherwise commercialize the Service or access to it, or charge anyone for the use of your account.
• Extract data commercially: Scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-export data from the Service by automated means, or sell, license, or redistribute any data, metadata, images, or catalog output obtained from it.
• Build a competitor: Use the Service, or anything it produces, to develop, train, or improve a competing product, model, or service.
• Advertise through it: Use the Service for advertising, solicitation, affiliate marketing, or promotional campaigns, except for promotional content we expressly permit and that you clearly and conspicuously label as such.

If you want to use ShelvesAI commercially, we would genuinely like to hear from you — write to support@shelvesai.com. It simply requires a separate license from us first.

4. Acceptable Use

When using ShelvesAI, you agree to interact respectfully with our platform and with other users. The following are strictly prohibited:

• Illegal or explicit content: You may not upload, share, or promote content that is illegal, sexually explicit, lewd, or pornographic, or that depicts or promotes violence, self-harm, or the exploitation of minors.
• Harassment & bullying: We maintain a zero-tolerance policy for harassment, bullying, hate speech, abusive language, or threatening behavior toward any individual or group.
• Doxxing: You may not share, broadcast, or reveal the personally identifiable information of others — including addresses, phone numbers, or real identities — without their explicit consent.
• Spam & unlabeled advertising: You may not use ShelvesAI for unsolicited advertising, spam, chain messages, or promotional campaigns. Any permitted promotional content or sponsorship must be distinctly and explicitly labeled as such.
• Content you do not have the rights to: You may only upload content — including photos and text — that you own or have explicit permission to use. You may not upload copyrighted material for which you do not hold the necessary rights.
• Impersonation: You may not impersonate any person or organization, or misrepresent your affiliation with one, including us.
• Interference & security: You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Service (except where that restriction is prohibited by law), probe or test its security, circumvent rate limits or access controls, introduce malware, or otherwise interfere with or place undue load on the Service or its infrastructure.
• Automated access: You may not access the Service through bots, scrapers, or other automated means, except through features we expressly provide for that purpose.

We may investigate suspected violations and take whatever action we consider appropriate, including removing content, limiting features, suspending or terminating accounts, and reporting conduct to law enforcement — with or without prior notice.

5. Your Content & the License You Grant Us

You retain full ownership of the data, images, reviews, notes, and collections you add to ShelvesAI ("Your Content"). To operate the Service, however, we need certain permissions. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable license to host, store, cache, reproduce, display, distribute, and modify Your Content — for example, resizing an image for a phone screen or generating a link preview — solely to operate, provide, secure, and improve the Service, and to share it with other users according to the visibility settings you choose.

You represent and warrant that you own Your Content or have all rights necessary to grant this license, and that Your Content does not violate these Terms, any law, or anyone else's rights.

When you delete content or your account, we stop displaying that content going forward. Copies may persist for a reasonable period in routine backups, server logs, and caches, and we cannot retrieve copies that other users have already saved, screenshotted, or re-shared.

We may review, moderate, hide, or delete any content or account that violates these Terms, without prior notice. We have the right to do so, but no obligation to monitor content, and we do not endorse anything users post.

If you send us ideas, feature requests, or feedback, you grant us an unrestricted, perpetual, royalty-free right to use them for any purpose without compensation or attribution. Please do not send us anything you consider confidential.

6. Other Users, Sharing & Public Collections

ShelvesAI includes social features. We do not verify the identity of users or the accuracy of what they post, and we are not responsible for the content, conduct, or collections of other users. You interact with them at your own risk.

When you set a shelf, item, or list to public — or send someone a share link — you should treat it as fully public. Anyone with the link can view, screenshot, copy, and re-share it, search engines and social platforms may index or cache it, and we cannot claw it back. Please think about what a photograph of your shelves reveals, including anything visible in the background.

ShelvesAI is not a marketplace. If you buy, sell, trade, lend, or insure anything as a result of something you saw on ShelvesAI, that arrangement is entirely between you and the other party, and we are not a participant in it.

7. Automated Identification & Accuracy of Information

ShelvesAI uses artificial intelligence, automated image recognition, and third-party catalog databases to identify items from your photos and fill in details such as titles, authors, editions, release years, formats, and cover art. Some features also produce an automated assessment of an item's condition or grade, and an estimate of what it might be worth.

This identification is a convenience, and it will sometimes be wrong. It can misidentify an item entirely, confuse editions, pressings, printings, regions, or variants, and return details that are incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate. You are responsible for reviewing what the app produces and correcting anything that matters to you.

We make no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness, currency, or reliability of any identification, metadata, artwork, condition assessment, rarity indication, or value associated with an item, whether generated by us or supplied by a third party.

8. No Appraisal, Insurance, or Professional Advice

ShelvesAI is a cataloging tool. It is not an appraiser, insurer, broker, auction house, or adviser, and nothing it produces is appraisal, valuation, insurance, tax, legal, estate-planning, or financial advice.

Automated value and condition estimates are informational only. Where the app estimates what an item might be worth, or assesses its condition or grade, that result is generated by an AI model from a photograph and limited metadata. It is a rough opinion, not an appraisal. It can be wrong by a wide margin. It cannot verify authenticity, provenance, restoration, or the true condition of your particular copy, and it does not represent what any buyer, insurer, dealer, or auction house would actually pay. Do not rely on it for insurance, sale, purchase, lending, tax, or estate purposes. Any price or value you enter yourself is your own record, and pricing information drawn from third-party sources is unverified.

A catalog you build with ShelvesAI can be a helpful starting point for insurance or estate documentation, and many collectors use it that way. It is not a substitute for a professional appraisal, an insurance policy or schedule, or formal legal or estate records. If a collection matters financially, have it appraised by a qualified professional, confirm requirements with your insurer or attorney, and keep independent records of your own.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any denied, reduced, or delayed insurance claim, tax outcome, estate or probate dispute, sale, purchase, trade, or other decision that relies on information in or produced by the Service.

9. Your Records, Backups & Data Loss

We take reasonable care with your data, but no online service is immune to bugs, outages, provider failures, security incidents, accidental deletion, or corruption. We do not guarantee that Your Content will be preserved, and the Service is not a backup service or an authoritative system of record.

Please keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose — original photographs, purchase records, certificates, provenance documents, and appraisals. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss, corruption, or unavailability of Your Content, however caused.

10. Cookies, Tracking & Website Data

The ShelvesAI website does not use cookies and does not track you. We built it that way on purpose. Specifically, on shelvesai.com we do not:

• Set cookies of any kind — first-party or third-party.
• Use analytics, advertising, or attribution services, tracking pixels, web beacons, session recording, heatmaps, or device fingerprinting.
• Load third-party scripts, embedded trackers, social widgets, or ad-network code. Our fonts, styles, and images are served from our own domain, so no outside company observes your visit.
• Store your browsing activity in your browser's local storage or session storage, or build any profile, history, or advertising identifier about you.
• Track you across other websites or apps, or receive tracking data about you from anyone else.
• Sell, rent, or share personal information, or serve targeted advertising anywhere on the site.

Because we set no cookies and run no trackers, there is no cookie banner on this site and no tracking consent to give or withdraw. The pages you load talk only to ShelvesAI's own domain, API, and media storage.

The only information the website receives from you is what you deliberately submit — for example, the email address you type into our mailing list form, or the credentials you enter on the password reset page. As with every website on the internet, the servers that deliver our pages necessarily process basic connection information such as your IP address and browser type in order to send you the page and to protect the site from abuse. We do not use that information to profile, target, or identify you, and we do not sell or share it.

The mobile app is a different matter, because it has to be: it stores your account, your collection, your photos, and your social activity so that the app can work at all. What it collects and why is described in our Privacy Policy. That data exists to run the Service you asked for — not to track you, and not to be sold.

11. Copyright Policy (DMCA)

We respect intellectual property rights and expect our users to do the same. If you believe material on ShelvesAI infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated copyright agent at support@shelvesai.com with the subject line "DMCA Notice," including:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed.
• Identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it (a link, username, or screenshot).
• Your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

We will investigate and remove or disable access to infringing material. If your material was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you may send a counter-notification to the same address containing your signature, identification of the removed material and its former location, a statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good-faith belief it was removed by mistake or misidentification, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district — or, if you are outside the United States, of the federal court for the district in which Trout Pond, LLC is located.

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. Submitting a knowingly false notice or counter-notice may expose you to liability for damages.

12. Third-Party Services & Links

The Service depends on third parties, including cloud hosting and storage providers, image recognition and AI providers, catalog and metadata sources, crash reporting and diagnostics services, email and push notification services, and the Apple App Store and Google Play. Their services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies.

We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, availability, accuracy, security, or content of any third party, and we are not liable for any loss arising from their failure, downtime, pricing changes, or discontinuation. The Service may also contain links to third-party sites, which we neither control nor endorse.

13. Apple App Store & Google Play

If you obtained the app from the Apple App Store, the following applies. These Terms are between you and Trout Pond, LLC only, not with Apple, and Trout Pond, LLC alone is responsible for the app and its content. Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support for the app. In the event the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple may refund the purchase price you paid, if any; to the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the app.

Trout Pond, LLC, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim relating to the app, including product liability claims, any claim that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, claims arising under consumer protection or similar legislation, and third-party claims that the app infringes intellectual property rights. You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.

If you obtained the app from Google Play, your use is also subject to the Google Play Terms of Service, and Google is not a party to these Terms and has no responsibility for the app. You must also comply with any applicable third-party terms — for example, your wireless carrier's data plan.

14. Availability, Changes to the Service & Fees

We may add, change, limit, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time, with or without notice, and without liability to you. Some features may be offered as beta or experimental, may behave unpredictably, and may be withdrawn at any time.

ShelvesAI is currently offered free of charge. We may introduce paid features or subscriptions in the future; if we do, we will disclose the price and terms before you are charged, and nothing you already have will start costing money without your agreement. Purchases made through the App Store or Google Play are also subject to those stores' payment, billing, and refund policies.

15. Suspension, Termination & Data Retention

You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may delete your account using the account deletion feature in the app or by contacting support@shelvesai.com.

We may suspend or terminate your account at any time, with or without notice, including on a reasonable suspicion that you have violated these Terms. In cases of severe violations — such as illegal content, harassment, or the exploitation of minors — accounts will be terminated immediately and permanently.

On termination, your license to use the Service ends and you may lose access to all data, collections, and content associated with your account. We may permanently delete that data from our servers, and we are not responsible for the loss of it. If your collection matters to you, keep your own copy before closing your account. Provisions of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination — including licenses already granted, disclaimers, limitations of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution — survive.

16. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," with all faults and without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Trout Pond, LLC and its members, managers, officers, employees, contractors, agents, and suppliers (together, the "ShelvesAI Parties") disclaim all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise — including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, quiet enjoyment, accuracy, and non-infringement, and any warranties arising out of course of dealing, course of performance, or usage of trade.

Without limiting that, we do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; that defects will be corrected; that the Service or the servers that make it available are free of harmful components; that any identification, metadata, valuation, or other information will be accurate, complete, or reliable; or that the Service will meet your requirements or preserve your data.

No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained from us or through the Service creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you; in that case, such warranties are limited to the minimum scope and duration permitted by law.

17. Limitation of Liability & No Personal Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the ShelvesAI Parties will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, business, goodwill, data, collections, records, or opportunity, or for the cost of substitute services — whether based on warranty, contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, statute, or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

This applies to every claim arising out of or relating to the Service, including misidentified items or inaccurate metadata, loss or corruption of your catalog, reliance on the Service for insurance, valuation, estate, or resale purposes, unauthorized access to your account or content, the conduct or content of other users, and any interruption, suspension, or termination of the Service.

In no event will the total aggregate liability of the ShelvesAI Parties for all claims relating to the Service exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us for the Service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars (US $100).

No personal liability. ShelvesAI is operated by Trout Pond, LLC, a limited liability company. To the fullest extent permitted by law, any claim relating to the Service may be brought only against Trout Pond, LLC, and not personally against any member, manager, officer, employee, contractor, or agent of the company. No such individual assumes any personal liability for the Service or for the obligations in these Terms, and you agree not to seek to hold any of them personally liable.

These limitations are an essential part of the agreement between you and us, apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose, and reflect the fact that the Service is provided to you free of charge. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation — so some of the above may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, and where a limitation is not permitted, our liability is limited to the least extent the law allows.

18. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the ShelvesAI Parties from and against any claims, demands, actions, damages, losses, liabilities, and costs — including reasonable attorneys' fees — arising out of or related to Your Content, your use or misuse of the Service, your violation of these Terms or of any law, your infringement of anyone else's rights, or your disputes or dealings with other users or third parties.

We reserve the right to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, at your expense, and you agree to cooperate with our defense of such claims.

19. Dispute Resolution & Class Action Waiver

Please read this section carefully — it affects how disputes between us are resolved and limits the ways you can seek relief.

Talk to us first. Most problems can be sorted out quickly. Before starting a formal proceeding, you agree to email support@shelvesai.com describing the dispute and the relief you want, and to give us 30 days to resolve it informally.

Where disputes are resolved. If we cannot resolve a dispute informally, it will be resolved in the courts identified in Section 20. Either party may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief to protect intellectual property rights or to stop unauthorized access to or misuse of the Service.

Class action waiver. To the extent permitted by law, you and Trout Pond, LLC agree that each may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, it will not apply to that claim, and the remainder of these Terms is unaffected.

20. Governing Law & Venue

These Terms, and any dispute arising from them or from your use of the Service, are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict of law principles. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be brought exclusively in the state courts located in Polk County, Florida, or in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, and you and Trout Pond, LLC consent to the jurisdiction and venue of those courts and waive any objection to them. If you are a consumer resident in a jurisdiction whose law grants you the right to bring proceedings in your local courts, or guarantees consumer protections that cannot be waived by agreement, nothing here deprives you of those rights.

21. General Provisions

• Entire agreement: These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Trout Pond, LLC regarding the Service, and supersede any prior agreements or understandings.
• Severability: If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the remaining provisions stay in full force.
• No waiver: Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment: You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them, in whole or in part, in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets.
• Notices & electronic communications: You consent to receive communications from us electronically. We may provide notices by email, through the app, or by posting to this website, and such notices are effective when sent or posted.
• Force majeure: We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including outages, network or provider failures, natural disasters, labor disputes, cyberattacks, war, or government action.
• Export & sanctions compliance: You agree to comply with all applicable export control and sanctions laws in your use of the Service.
• No third-party beneficiaries: These Terms create no third-party beneficiary rights, except for Apple and its subsidiaries as described in Section 13, and for the ShelvesAI Parties with respect to Sections 16 through 18.
• Headings & language: Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation. The English version of these Terms controls.

22. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in the Service or in the law. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last Updated" date above and notify you by email at the address associated with your account before the changes take effect, and we may also notify you within the app. Please keep your email address current — you are responsible for the address on your account receiving our notices.

By keeping your account active after the changes take effect — or by otherwise continuing to use ShelvesAI — you accept the revised Terms. If you do not agree with the revised Terms, your only remedy is to stop using the Service and delete your account before they take effect.

23. Contact Us

Questions, feedback, copyright notices, commercial licensing requests, or reports of a violation — we read all of it. Write to us at support@shelvesai.com.

ShelvesAI is a product of Trout Pond, LLC, a Florida limited liability company based in Polk County, Florida.