Terms of Service

You need an account to buy, sell, post to the Forum, request reviews, and use member features. You give us a name, email address, and password (hashed — we never see it in plain text), and you're responsible for keeping your credentials safe. One person or organization per account, and you must be at least 16 years old (or the digital-consent age in your country, if higher).

You may set a public handle (your profile URL). It is chosen onceand can't be changed later — pick something you'll want to keep. You may also set a secret question in Account → Security; we use it to verify your identity if you contact support by chat. Keep the answer private — anyone who knows it can be verified as you in a support conversation.

We can suspend accounts that break these terms (see §10). Suspended users keep read access to their own data and can appeal through the contact page.

zQinta has two halves that work together:

• The macOS app (local-first). Your knowledge boards, notes, AI chats, and settings live on your Mac. Your AI provider API keys stay in your Keychain. If you enable iCloud sync, boards sync through your ownprivate iCloud database — we can't read them.
• The website. The course Market (buy and sell AI-generated learning resources), the Forum, the Blog, consultant concept reviews, the Knowledge Library (Teach Me for uploaded books), account management, and support chat.

We also publish a public, anonymous, read-only MCP server(Model Context Protocol, at zqinta.com/mcp) so AI clients such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor can search the public catalog and published consultant reviews. It returns public information only — course titles, prices, excerpts, and links to course or review pages — and purchases always happen here on the site. Your AI client's own terms and privacy policy govern your conversation with it.

We may add, change, or retire features. If we retire something you paid for, we'll treat you fairly — see the Refund Policy.

Premium costs $9.99/month or $99.99/year (billed through Stripe) and unlocks selling on the Market plus premium features. The Free plan is free forever for learning and buying.

Billing. New subscriptions are billed immediately at signup — there is no free trial — and renew automatically at the end of each period.

Free registration. Creating a free account runs through the same Stripe checkout as Premium at a $0 price, so a payment method is stored on file for future purchases. Nothing is ever charged on the free plan, and you can remove the payment method anytime via the billing portal. Cancelling the free $0 subscription itself closes your account: the account is anonymized (public content stays under “Anonymous” so buyers keep access), exactly like account deletion.

Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, your subscription enters a grace period: Premium stays active while Stripe retries your card, and you can update the payment method from the billing portal (or Settings → Subscription in the app). If the retries ultimately fail, the account reverts to the free plan.

Cancellation.Cancel anytime from your account or with Stripe's billing portal. Cancellation stops future charges; your Premium access runs to the end of the paid period. See the Refund Policy for when renewal charges can be refunded.

Price changes.We may change prices on renewal with at least 30 days' notice by email. You can cancel before the new price takes effect.

Market courses are created by zQinta users (including AI-assisted courses generated in the Mac app). When you buy a course you receive a perpetual license key: import the course into the macOS app, re-download it, and keep it — as long as the license isn't revoked by a refund or a serious violation (see below).

• Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see your card number.
• Your license is for you— one person, your own devices. Don't share or resell license keys.
• If a course is refunded, the license is revoked and the course can no longer be downloaded or imported.
• Market courses are paid products priced between $1 and $99 — there are no free courses on the Market.
• If you reached a course through an AI assistant using our MCP server, the link opens the course page here — the purchase and payment happen on zQinta, never inside the AI client.

Course listings describe what the creator published. If a course materially doesn't match its description, you're covered by the Refund Policy.

Selling on the Market requires Premium and a Stripe Connect account (onboarding runs from your account page). When a learner buys your course:

• zQinta retains a 30% platform fee; you receive 70% of the list price.
• Payouts are made by Stripe to your connected account on Stripe's schedule, subject to Stripe's own terms and your region's payout rules.
• You're responsible for your own taxes on earnings; where required, tax handling is performed by Stripe.
• You may set your course price between $1 and $99. Prices are in US dollars.

Moderation. New and updated courses enter a review queue and must be approved before going public. We may reject or remove listings that violate these terms or the law, and refunds issued to buyers are deducted from your earnings.

Warranties you give.By publishing, you confirm the course is yours to sell (including rights to any media you upload), doesn't infringe others' rights, and complies with our content rules (§10).

Some courses include live group lessons scheduled by the course author. Lessons run on Apple FaceTime (video, audio and chat are provided and governed by Apple); zQinta schedules the sessions, records RSVPs, and reveals the meeting link 15 minutes before start (the join window ends 30 minutes after start). Buyers of a course attend its live classes at no extra cost; anyone else may buy per-lesson tickets. Each lesson is limited to 32 participants (one seat reserved for the author) — when a lesson is full, tickets show “all tickets sold”. A ticket covers the named lesson only (not the course, its import, or its other lessons), and is refundable only up to the lesson's start time (see the Refund Policy).

Course authors may pay to promote a course: it is pinned into the top row of the Market and labeled “Sponsored” for the purchased window (3 days $10, 10 days $25, 1 month $50). At most 10 promotions run at any time. Promotion is advertising placement only — it is not an endorsement by zQinta and does not affect course ranking otherwise. Promotion fees are non-refundable once the window starts; a promoted course is still subject to moderation and may be removed (promotion cancelled) if it violates these terms.

We can email you when a new course matches your interests — topics you explicitly follow, and (as interests) the categories/tags of courses you buy or, if you enable it in the Mac app, your boards' root-concept titles (never notes or chats). You choose the cadence (off / daily / weekly / instant) in Account → Course discovery emailsor the Mac app's Settings → Discovery. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe; unsubscribing or setting the cadence to off stops these emails entirely. Following a topic is treated as your consent to receive email about that topic.

You can submit an AI-generated concept for review by a human consultant. Each review costs a flat $7.99, paid at submission. The consultant reads your concept and publishes a written review on the site (and it can appear on the Blog, including in results from our public MCP server).

• If your request is declined (no consultant available or the concept is out of scope), the $7.99 is automatically refunded.
• Reviews are the consultant's honest assessment — payment isn't a guarantee of a positive review.
• Once a review is published, the fee is earned and non-refundable, except where the Refund Policy or consumer law says otherwise.

The Knowledge Library lets you upload a document (a book) and have the AI teach it as an interactive board you can question. Pricing:

• $2.99 one-time upload fee per book — covers hosting, embeddings, and share keys.
• Query pools for shared-reader access: $5 → 5,000 / $20 → 20,000 / $50 → 50,000 queries ($0.001 per query).
• $0.99 for a 1,000-query personal priority pack.

Dormancy. To keep hosting costs sane, a book with no activity for 30 days gets a warning email and is archived after 45 idle days. Archived books can be unarchived — your data isn't deleted, just put in cold storage.

Your responsibility.Only upload documents you have the right to use. Don't upload confidential third-party material.

Much of what zQinta produces — knowledge trees, concepts, overviews, quizzes, chat answers — is generated by AI models. AI can be wrong, outdated, or incomplete. Treat AI output as a starting point, not professional advice— verify anything important (medical, legal, financial, safety) with a qualified human source. zQinta isn't liable for decisions you make based on AI-generated content.

AI features on the website run on models we operate. In the macOS app, AI runs through your own OpenAI API key (configured in Settings → AI Provider) under OpenAI's terms — zQinta does not provide AI keys of its own.

You own your content. Your boards, notes, books you upload, courses you create, Forum posts, and reviews remain yours. By using zQinta you grant us the limited license we need to run the service: hosting, streaming, processing payments, displaying public content (Market listings, approved Forum topics, published reviews), and generating the AI features you asked for.

Buyers get a license, not ownership. When someone buys your course, you grant them a personal, non-transferable license to use its content for learning, on their own devices.

zQinta's own content — the apps, the site, branding, and original copy — belongs to us and is protected by intellectual-property law. Our name and marks may not be used to imply endorsement without permission.

Takedowns. If you believe content on zQinta infringes your rights, email support@zqinta.com with the URL and a description of your claim; we'll investigate and remove infringing material where warranted.

Don't use zQinta to:

• break any law or infringe anyone's rights;
• share content that is illegal, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit involving minors, or dangerous (malware, exploits);
• impersonate others or misrepresent who you are;
• scrape, overload, or reverse-engineer the service, or bypass access controls, rate limits, or license checks;
• sell or share license keys, or resell purchased courses;
• upload books or media you don't have the rights to;
• upload files containing malware or code designed to harm, exploit, or damage any system — infected uploads are rejected and lead to account suspension;
• use the support chat, Forum, or reviews for spam or abuse.

The public MCP server exists so AI clients can search the catalog and published reviews — that use is welcome. It is still subject to rate limits and the rules above: don't use it to bulk-download the catalog, build copies of our data, or circumvent purchase and access controls. We can throttle or block abusive traffic.

We enforce these rules with human moderation: Market listings and Forum topics pass through approval queues, and we can reject, remove content, or suspend accounts for violations. Suspended users can appeal via the contact page. We also respond to valid legal requests.

The support chat (bottom-right of every page) collects the email you give it, your IP address and browser user-agent (for security and abuse prevention), the messages you send, and any image or PDF attachments you upload. When the chat ends, a transcript is emailedto the address you gave. If you're a member, we may verify you with your secret question (§1). We keep chats for service quality and dispute handling; details are in the Privacy Policy.

We aim for high availability but can't promise uninterrupted service. Maintenance, upgrades, and events beyond our control (hosting outages, for example) can take features offline temporarily. Paid entitlements (licenses, subscriptions, book access) survive routine maintenance.

We may modify or discontinue parts of the service. If a discontinuation removes something you paid for and there's no reasonable replacement, the Refund Policy applies.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DON'T WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT AI-GENERATED CONTENT WILL BE ACCURATE.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, ZQINTA'S TOTAL LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM, OR (B) $100. WE'RE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, LOST PROFITS, OR LOST DATA. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS LIMITS LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED BY LAW (SUCH AS GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR WILLFUL MISCONDUCT WHERE APPLICABLE), AND YOUR STATUTORY CONSUMER RIGHTS ARE UNAFFECTED.

You agree to indemnify us against third-party claims arising from content you publish or your breach of these terms, to the extent permitted by law.

Termination.You can stop using zQinta anytime and delete your account from Settings → Privacy & Data (in the app) — see the Privacy Policy for what deletion covers. Deletion anonymizes the account: identity and login are stripped, notifications, support chats, and direct messages are removed, and public content — your Market courses (so buyers keep their licenses), Forum topics and comments, and published reviews — stays online under “Anonymous”, the same as admin-side removal. We can terminate accounts for material breaches, with notice where practical.

Survival. Sections on licenses already granted, fees owed, disclaimers, and liability survive termination.

Changes to these terms.We'll post updates on this page with a new “Last updated” date and email material changes at least 14 days in advance. Continuing to use zQinta after changes take effect means you accept them.

Disputes.Please contact us first — most issues are solved by one email or chat. If a dispute can't be resolved informally, it will be governed by the laws of the Republic of Armenia, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, subject to your mandatory local consumer protections if you're a consumer in the EU/UK or similar jurisdictions.

Contact. support@zqinta.com · or use the support chat on any page.