Terms of Use

1. Your agreement with us

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and Scaling Adventures LLC (“we”, “us”, “our”) covering the HabitStakes iPhone app, its widgets and Live Activity, and this website (together, the “Service”). By downloading, installing, or using the app, or by using this website, you agree to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

This agreement is between you and us. It is not with Apple Inc. See section 11.

2. Eligibility

• You must be 18 years of age or older to use the Service. It is not intended for or directed to minors.
• You must have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement.
• You are responsible for using the Service in a way that is lawful where you are. We make no representation that the Service is appropriate or available in every jurisdiction, and you must not use it where doing so would violate applicable law.
• You must not be located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and you must not be listed on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• The Service is provided for personal, non-commercial use. It is not for employers, coaches, insurers, clinical programmes, wagering operators, or any use where a third party depends on the app’s output.

If you do not meet these requirements, you may not use the Service, and you should delete the app.

3. What HabitStakes is

HabitStakes helps you set one habit commitment at a time and keep a record of whether you met it. You choose a habit, a daily target, a start date, a number of days, and a total amount in US dollars that represents how much the commitment matters to you. The app divides that amount into daily shares in whole US cents, assigning any remainder cent to the earliest days, tracks each day, and records each finished day as protected, forfeited, or unresolved.

That record is bookkeeping and motivation. It is the app’s way of making a personal promise concrete. It is not a financial account, a contract with a third party, or a claim on anything.

4. The money boundary

This is the most important section in these Terms, so it is stated at length.

In HabitStakes 1.0.0 (2), no real money is involved at any point. The app cannot charge you, does not ask for a card, has no in-app purchase, is not connected to a payment processor, holds no funds, and cannot pay, send, donate, or forfeit money to us or to anyone else. There is no balance you can top up, withdraw, or cash out.

The USD figures shown as protected, at stake, and forfeited are local calculations performed on your device from the terms you selected and the verification data available to the app. Accordingly, those figures:

• have no cash value and cannot be redeemed, withdrawn, transferred, sold, or exchanged for anything;
• are not gambling, betting, a wager, a lottery, a sweepstake, a contest, or a prize;
• are not a bank account, deposit, savings product, wallet, escrow, trust, safeguarded balance, or stored value;
• are not a payment service, money transmission, remittance, or funds transfer;
• are not a donation, charitable gift, reward, cashback, refund, credit, coupon, voucher, loyalty point, or virtual currency;
• are not insurance, a guarantee, a bond, a security, an investment, or a financial instrument of any kind;
• are not a debt owed by you to us, by us to you, or by either of us to a third party; and
• are not records maintained by a bank, payment provider, or regulated institution, and are not insured by any deposit-insurance scheme.

Because no money moves, a “forfeited” day costs you nothing except the record of a missed day, and a “protected” day earns you nothing except the record of a day you kept. The app performs no currency conversion; all monetary records are USD only, and any legacy non-USD label from an earlier build is normalized to USD without changing the numeric amount.

If paid functionality is ever introduced — for example a purchase, subscription, or any flow that moves real funds — it will be presented separately, with revised terms, a clear disclosure of who charges you and who holds any funds, and your explicit consent before anything is charged. Nothing in these Terms authorizes a charge, and no future feature will apply retroactively to commitments you created under this release. See the Refund Policy.

5. Your licence

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to download and use one copy of the HabitStakes app on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the App Store Terms of Service and the Usage Rules in them, for your own personal, non-commercial purposes. You may use this website for the same purposes.

We reserve all rights not expressly granted. This licence ends automatically if you breach these Terms.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that violates the rights of others;
• use the Service to operate, facilitate, or simulate gambling, betting, wagering, lending, deposit-taking, money transmission, or any regulated financial activity, or to promise anyone a payout based on your results;
• present the app’s output to a third party as verified, audited, certified, or clinically valid evidence of your behaviour;
• copy, modify, translate, adapt, or create derivative works of the app or this site, except as applicable law expressly permits despite this restriction;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the app, or attempt to derive its source code, except to the extent applicable law expressly permits despite this restriction;
• rent, lease, lend, sell, redistribute, sublicense, or provide the app as a service to others;
• remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notice, disclaimer, or in-app safety statement;
• circumvent, disable, or interfere with security-related features, permission prompts, or verification behaviour, or falsify data supplied to the app in order to misrepresent your results;
• use automated means to scrape, overload, or disrupt this website, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to any system associated with it; or
• use the Service in any way that could endanger your health or the safety of others.

Falsifying your own check-ins only devalues your own record; doing it to obtain something from someone else is your responsibility and may be unlawful.

7. Verification and accuracy

HabitStakes uses the least ambiguous verification available for each habit and labels it clearly, but no verification method in the app is guaranteed to be accurate, complete, or timely.

• Steps come from Apple Health, read only, and only if you grant permission. Health data can arrive late, arrive incomplete, be revised after the fact, or not appear at all — because of device sync, other apps, hardware, iOS behaviour, or your permission settings. Apple does not tell apps whether read access was denied, so the app does not claim to know; when nothing is visible, days remain unresolved rather than being treated as failures.
• Reading and hydration are recorded from your own explicit check-ins. They are self-reported and are not measured or confirmed by us or by any outside service.
• Focus is measured by an in-app timer, which depends on your device clock, on the app remaining able to run, and on you starting and finishing the session. Only observed elapsed time counts.
• Day boundaries are calendar days in the time zone recorded when the commitment started, not rolling 24-hour periods. Travel, clock changes, or time-zone changes may make a day feel different from what you expect.
• Finalization is deliberately patient. A finished day stays provisional for a grace period so late-arriving data can settle, and a later successful refresh can still upgrade a day from forfeited to protected. Results may therefore change after you first see them.

You accept that recorded outcomes may not perfectly reflect what you actually did, in either direction. We do not guarantee any particular outcome, streak, result, health benefit, habit change, or improvement from using the Service.

8. Reminders, widgets, and Live Activities

Local notifications, Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, and Live Activities are best-effort conveniences provided by iOS. The system decides when they are delivered or refreshed; they can be delayed, deferred, batched, suppressed by Focus modes or Low Power Mode, or shown with stale information. Do not rely on them as an alarm, a reminder of record, or a current statement of your progress — open the app for the current state. HabitStakes uses only on-device notifications; it does not use remote push notifications.

9. Your data, backups, and recovery

• Your commitment, activity, and history records are stored on your device. There is no HabitStakes server, no account required, and no cloud sync or remote backup of those records.
• You are responsible for keeping your own copies. If you lose your device, delete the app, delete local data, or restore a device without a backup, records held only on that device are gone and we cannot recover them.
• Recovery is an encrypted file you create, protected by a 256-bit key shown to you once. Both the file and the key are required. We do not store the key and cannot recover, reset, or bypass it. If you lose it, the file cannot be opened by anyone, including us.
• Exported JSON files and recovery files are yours to store and secure. Once you save or send a copy, it is outside the app’s control and outside ours.
• Deleting local data in the app removes the records HabitStakes manages on the device, including the Keychain identity. It does not delete anything in Apple Health and does not delete copies you exported. Deletion is immediate, permanent for the app’s own records, and cannot be undone. Deleting the app instead removes its container but may leave the Keychain identity in place, so use the in-app control first.

10. Health, wellness, and safety

HabitStakes is a general wellness and motivation tool. It is not a medical device; it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, monitor, or prevent any disease or condition; and nothing it displays is medical, clinical, nutritional, or professional advice.

• Consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting or changing an exercise, hydration, reading, sleep, or focus routine, particularly if you are pregnant, have a medical condition, take medication, or are recovering from injury.
• Do not set targets that are unsafe for you. A commitment you made in the app is never a reason to ignore pain, exhaustion, dehydration, overhydration, or medical advice. Stop and take care of yourself.
• If you think you are having a medical emergency, stop using the app and contact your local emergency services immediately. HabitStakes cannot detect, report, or respond to an emergency.
• Do not use the app while driving, cycling, operating machinery, or anywhere that looking at a phone would be unsafe.
• You are solely responsible for your own health decisions and for how you pursue any target you set.

11. Apple and third-party services

The Service depends on services operated by Apple Inc. — iOS, the App Store, Apple Health, HealthKit, WidgetKit, ActivityKit, and, if you use it, Sign in with Apple. Those services are provided by Apple under Apple’s own terms and privacy policy, they can change or become unavailable outside our control, and we are not responsible for them.

Apple acknowledgements

To the extent the app is licensed to you through the App Store, you and we acknowledge:

• These Terms are between you and Scaling Adventures LLC only, and not with Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content.
• The licence granted in section 5 is limited to use of the app on Apple-branded products that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in the App Store Terms of Service.
• Scaling Adventures LLC, not Apple, is solely responsible for providing any maintenance and support for the app. Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support services.
• In the event the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price for the app to you, if any. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the app.
• Scaling Adventures LLC, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims relating to the app, including product liability claims, any claim that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection, privacy, or similar legislation, including in connection with the app’s use of HealthKit.
• In the event of any third-party claim that the app or your possession and use of it infringes that third party’s intellectual property rights, Scaling Adventures LLC, not Apple, is solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement, and discharge of that claim.
• You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not listed on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You must comply with applicable third-party terms of agreement when using the app.
• Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance of these Terms, Apple has the right — and is deemed to have accepted the right — to enforce these Terms against you as a third-party beneficiary.
• Our contact information for questions, complaints, or claims regarding the app is in section 20.

Apple, iPhone, Apple Health, HealthKit, App Store, and Sign in with Apple are trademarks of Apple Inc. Apple is not a sponsor of HabitStakes, and HabitStakes is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc.

12. Intellectual property

The HabitStakes app, this website, and everything in them — software, design, layout, text, graphics, the app icon, screenshots, and the HabitStakes name and branding — are owned by Scaling Adventures LLC or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of anything to you. You may not use our name, logo, or branding without our prior written permission, except for ordinary descriptive references to the app.

The records you create in the app — your commitments, check-ins, and history — are yours. Since they stay on your device, you do not grant us any licence to them, and we do not claim any.

13. Feedback

If you send us ideas, suggestions, bug reports, or other feedback, you agree we may use it for any purpose — including improving or commercializing the Service — without any obligation of confidentiality, attribution, or compensation to you, and you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to do so. Please do not send us anything you consider confidential or that you are not free to share.

14. Changes, suspension, and termination

• We may change, improve, limit, suspend, or discontinue the Service or any feature at any time, with or without notice. Features described here may change in later versions, and we are not obliged to maintain backward compatibility.
• We may update these Terms. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top, and material changes will be summarized on this page. Continued use after an update means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and delete the app.
• You may end this agreement at any time by deleting the app. Deleting the app removes the records in its container on that device, but a Keychain identity created by Sign in with Apple can survive an uninstall, and exported files and existing device or iCloud backups are unaffected. To remove everything the app manages, use Delete all local data or Sign out inside the app before deleting it.
• We may terminate or suspend your right to use the Service if you breach these Terms or if we reasonably believe your use creates legal risk. Because the app is local and requires no account, our practical remedy is to end this licence and, if necessary, to stop distributing the app to you.
• Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including sections 4, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 — survive.

15. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express, implied, or statutory. We specifically disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, quiet enjoyment, accuracy, and non-infringement, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

Without limiting that, we do not warrant that: the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; defects will be corrected; verification data, step totals, timers, or day boundaries will be accurate, complete, or current; notifications, widgets, or Live Activities will be delivered or refreshed at any particular time; the Service will be compatible with your device or a future version of iOS; or that using the Service will produce any particular habit, health, fitness, behavioural, or motivational result.

No advice or information, oral or written, obtained from us or through the Service creates any warranty not expressly stated here. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of these exclusions may not apply to you; in that case our warranties are limited to the minimum extent permitted by applicable law, and your mandatory statutory rights as a consumer are not affected.

16. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• Neither Scaling Adventures LLC nor its members, officers, employees, contractors, or suppliers will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, data, records, time, or opportunity, arising out of or relating to the Service, whether based in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, or any other theory, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.
• This includes, without limitation, damages arising from inaccurate, missing, delayed, or revised verification data; missed, delayed, or stale notifications, widgets, or Live Activities; lost, corrupted, or unrecoverable local records, exports, or recovery keys; unauthorized access to your device or to files you exported; any decision you make in reliance on the app; and any injury or health consequence arising from an activity you chose to perform.
• Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you actually paid us for the app in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, which for this release is zero, because the app charges nothing, or (b) US $50.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, or the limitation of liability for death, personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, and in those jurisdictions our liability is limited to the smallest amount permitted by applicable law. These limits apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose, and they reflect a reasonable allocation of risk for a free, local, no-money application.

17. Indemnity

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Scaling Adventures LLC and its members, officers, employees, and contractors from and against any claims, demands, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of or relating to: your use or misuse of the Service; your breach of these Terms or of the Privacy Policy; your violation of any law or of the rights of a third party; any arrangement you make with another person based on your HabitStakes records; and any activity you undertake in pursuit of a commitment. We may assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, and you agree to cooperate with our defence. This section does not apply to the extent a claim arises from our own gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or fraud.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or to the Service are governed by the applicable law that determines the rights and obligations between you and Scaling Adventures LLC — that is, the law that applies given where we are established in the United States and where you reside — and by any mandatory consumer-protection rules of your place of residence, without applying conflict-of-law principles that would defeat those mandatory rules. This release intentionally does not designate a single governing state or an exclusive venue; a specific governing-law and forum clause will be stated in a future revision of these Terms, and until then, disputes proceed under the law and in the forum that applicable law would otherwise determine.

• Nothing in these Terms deprives you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country or state of residence, or of your right to bring proceedings in a court that has jurisdiction over you where applicable law gives you that right.
• Nothing in these Terms waives any right you have to bring a claim in a small-claims court, or to complain to a regulator or consumer-protection authority.
• These Terms contain no arbitration agreement and no class-action waiver. If either is ever introduced, it will be presented as a clearly marked change with any opt-out that applicable law requires, and it will not apply retroactively to a dispute that already exists.
• Before starting formal proceedings, we ask — but do not require — that you contact us at support@scalingadventures.com so we can try to resolve the issue directly.

The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply to these Terms.

19. General terms

Entire agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Refund Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service, and they replace any earlier draft, statement, or understanding about it — including the draft policy documents bundled inside earlier builds of the app. Marketing copy on this website describes the app; it does not create warranties beyond these Terms.

Severability

If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable, or, if it cannot be, severed. The rest of these Terms stay in force.

No waiver

If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it. A waiver is effective only if it is in writing from us, and it applies only to the specific instance.

Assignment

You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any rights under them without our prior written consent, and any attempt to do so is void. We may assign these Terms to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets, provided the assignee assumes our obligations under them.

No third-party beneficiaries

Except for Apple Inc. and its subsidiaries as described in section 11, and for the persons indemnified in section 17, these Terms create no third-party rights.

Force majeure

We are not liable for failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including outages, platform changes, network failures, natural events, and acts of government.

Notices

We give notice by posting to this website or through the app. You give notice to us by emailing support@scalingadventures.com.

Interpretation

Headings are for convenience only. “Including” means “including without limitation”. English is the controlling language of these Terms.

Relationship

These Terms do not create a partnership, joint venture, employment, agency, fiduciary, coaching, or professional relationship between you and us.

20. Contact

Questions, complaints, or claims about the app or these Terms: support@scalingadventures.com.

Scaling Adventures LLC, United States. We read messages as promptly as we can, but we do not promise a guaranteed response time or service level.

Drafting note: these Terms were written to describe the shipped HabitStakes build accurately and in plain English. They are not legal advice to Scaling Adventures LLC, they make no claim of completeness under any particular body of law, and no regulator or court has reviewed or approved them. Qualified counsel should review them — in particular the eligibility, verification, liability, and governing-law sections — and they must be revised before any paid or real-money functionality is offered.