Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Penling is a spec-driven workspace for teams using AI to build software. These terms apply to the Penling website at penlingapp.com and the Penling application.

The entity providing Penling (“we,” “us,” or “Penling”) is:

2. Your account

To use Penling you need an account. You agree to:

• Provide accurate information when you sign up and keep it current.
• Keep your login credentials secure and not share them.
• Be responsible for everything that happens under your account.
• Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised.

You must be at least 18 (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction) to use Penling. Penling is a tool for professional software work and is not directed at children.

If you create a workspace for a team, you're responsible for the people you invite and for ensuring they understand and follow these terms.

3. What Penling does

Penling lets you and your team plan work as specifications, build software from those specifications, and commit the specification into your code repository as a permanent record. Penling integrates with third-party services to do this, including your source code repository and AI providers.

We may add, change, or remove features over time. We'll give reasonable notice of material changes that reduce functionality you rely on, where we can.

4. Your content and your repositories

You own your content.Penling does not claim ownership of the specifications, code, or other material you create or connect through the service (“Your Content”).

You grant us a limited licence to operate the service. To provide Penling, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, store, process, transmit, and display Your Content solely as needed to run the service for you. This licence ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for backups retained for a limited period and anything we must keep by law.

You're responsible for your content and your rights to it.You confirm you have the rights to the code, specifications, and other material you bring into Penling, and that using it through Penling doesn't break any law or any agreement you have with someone else (for example, your employer or a client).

Repository access.When you connect a code repository, you authorise Penling to read from and write to it as needed to perform the actions you direct — including committing specifications and tests. You're responsible for the permissions you grant and for the state of any repository you connect.

5. AI-generated output

Penling uses AI providers (currently Anthropic) to help generate specifications, code, tests, and related output.

• Output may be wrong. AI output can contain errors, omissions, or content that looks correct but isn't. You're responsible for reviewing and verifying anything Penling helps produce before relying on it, merging it, or shipping it.
• You decide what to keep. Penling proposes; you dispose. Nothing Penling generates is committed, merged, or acted on without your direction.
• Similar output for others. AI may generate similar or identical output for different users. We don't claim ownership of AI output, and we can't promise it's unique to you.

You are solely responsible for the software you build and ship using Penling.

6. Acceptable use

Don't use Penling to:

• Break the law or help anyone else break it.
• Infringe someone else's intellectual property, privacy, or other rights.
• Upload malware, or attempt to disrupt, attack, probe, or reverse-engineer the service or its infrastructure.
• Gain unauthorised access to any system, account, or data.
• Resell or sublicense the service without our written agreement.
• Use the service to build a directly competing product by copying it.

We may suspend or close accounts that breach this section. Where the breach is serious or creates risk to others, we may act without notice.

7. Third-party services

Penling relies on third-party providers to function, including Anthropic, AWS, Supabase, Stripe, Resend, Google Analytics, and the code repositories you connect. Your use of those services is also governed by their terms, and we're not responsible for how they operate or for outages on their side. We choose our providers carefully but we don't control them.

8. Fees and billing

How pricing works. Penling is priced per seat. You pay for the number of seats in your workspace, at the rate shown on our pricing page at the time you subscribe.

Billing cycle. You can pay monthly or annually. Whichever you choose, your subscription renews automatically at the end of each cycle until you cancel. Annual plans are billed once upfront for the year; monthly plans are billed at the start of each month.

Adding and removing seats.If you add seats during a billing cycle, we'll charge for them on a pro-rata basis for the rest of that cycle. If you remove seats, the change takes effect at your next renewal — we don't refund mid-cycle for seats you stop using.

Payments.We use Stripe to process payments. By subscribing, you authorise us (through Stripe) to charge your payment method for the fees due, including at each automatic renewal. You're responsible for keeping a valid payment method on file.

Price changes.We may change our prices. If a change affects your subscription, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice before it takes effect, and the new price will apply from your next renewal. If you don't agree to a new price, you can cancel before it takes effect.

Non-payment.If a payment fails, we may retry it and will let you know. If we can't collect payment, we may suspend your access and, if it stays unpaid, close the account. We'll give you notice before suspending where we reasonably can.

Taxes.Prices are exclusive of GST and other applicable taxes unless stated otherwise. Where we're required to collect tax, it will be added to your invoice.

Cancellation.You can cancel at any time. Your subscription stays active until the end of the cycle you've already paid for, then it won't renew. Cancelling stops future charges; it doesn't refund the current cycle.

Refunds.We don't offer refunds for partial billing periods or for seats you've stopped using. This doesn't affect your rights under the Australian Consumer Law — if a consumer guarantee applies and we fail to meet it, you may be entitled to a remedy (including a refund) regardless of anything in this section.

9. Availability and changes

We work to keep Penling available and reliable, but we don't promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may need to take the service down for maintenance, and outages can happen. Where practical we'll give notice of planned downtime.

We may change these terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we'll let you know (for example, by email or an in-app notice) before they take effect. Continuing to use Penling after a change means you accept the updated terms.

10. Termination

You can leave any time. You can stop using Penling and close your account whenever you like.

We can suspend or close accountsthat breach these terms, that create legal or security risk, or where we're required to by law. Except where a breach is serious or urgent, we'll give you notice and a chance to fix the problem first.

What happens on termination.When your account closes, your right to use the service ends. We'll make Your Content available for export for a reasonable period where practical, then delete it in line with our privacy policy. Sections that by their nature should survive — ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and governing law — continue to apply.

11. Disclaimers

Penling is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the extent the law allows, we don't make warranties that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or fit for a particular purpose, and we don't warrant the accuracy of AI-generated output.

12. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, we won't be liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of Penling. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited by law, including under the Australian Consumer Law.

13. Indemnity

You agree to cover us for claims, losses, and costs that arise from your misuse of Penling, your breach of these terms, or your content infringing someone else's rights.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria and the courts able to hear appeals from them.

15. Contact

Questions about these terms?