The ground rules, in plain English.

Agreeing to these terms

By creating an account or using Kitchen Table, you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy. These terms are an agreement between you and Svelte Services LLC ("Svelte Services", "we" or "us"), the company that makes Kitchen Table. "You" means you. If you're using Kitchen Table for a group, such as your family, these terms apply to each person in it.

Who can use Kitchen Table

You need to be at least 13 (or the minimum age where you live, if that's higher) to have an account. If you're under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian needs to agree to these terms with you. To buy a plan, you need to be an adult who can enter into a contract.

Your account

Use an email address that's yours, and keep access to it secure, because signing in relies on it. You're responsible for what happens on your account, so if you think someone else has got into it, tell us straight away at hello@kitchentable.fyi.

Teams and roles

Kitchen Table is organized into teams, such as a family, a household or a group of friends. Each team has:

• Owners, who can do everything, including deleting the team and everything in it.
• Admins, who can invite and remove people, manage the question queue and manage the team's plan.
• Members, who take part in the conversations they're invited to.

Owners and admins are responsible for who they invite. Conversations are shared spaces: anyone at a conversation's table can edit its sources or delete it, which removes it for everyone.

Your content

Everything you write in Kitchen Table, including messages, positions, takes, notes and the questions you ask, belongs to you. We don't claim any ownership of it.

So that Kitchen Table can work, you give us permission to store your content, keep backups of it, and show it to the people you've shared it with, and nothing more. We won't use it for advertising, sell it, or use it to train AI. This permission ends when your content is deleted, once it has aged out of our backups.

When you share something at a table, the people there can read and respond to it, and what you've said stays in the conversation if you leave the team. You can ask us to remove it. Our privacy policy explains how.

Only share things you have the right to share, and please respect other people's privacy, including people who aren't at the table.

Keeping it kind

Kitchen Table is for honest disagreement, and that only works when people feel safe. When you use it, please don't:

• break the law, or help anyone else break it,
• harass, threaten, bully or demean anyone,
• share someone else's private information without their permission,
• post anything that sexualizes or exploits children, or that promotes violence,
• send spam, malware or anything designed to deceive people,
• try to get into accounts, teams or conversations that aren't yours, or to break our security (good-faith research under our security policy is welcome),
• overload, scrape, copy or reverse engineer the service, or
• resell Kitchen Table or offer it as part of another service without our permission.

If someone breaks these rules, we may remove content or suspend accounts, and we'll explain why whenever we reasonably can. To report a problem, write to hello@kitchentable.fyi.

The library

We wrote the library's questions, framings and classic positions to help families start good conversations. You're welcome to use them at your table, and in conversations anywhere else.

Library sources link to other websites, such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg. We checked every link when we built the library, but we don't control those websites, and their own terms apply when you visit them.

Plans, trials and billing

• Free trial: every team starts with 30 days free on any plan. You don't need a card to start.
• Plans and prices are listed on our pricing page, in US dollars, billed monthly or yearly per team. Taxes may apply where you live.
• Billing: plans are billed through Clerk, and card payments are processed by Stripe.
• When the trial ends: if there's a card on file, the plan starts and the card is charged, unless you've canceled. If there isn't, the team becomes read-only.
• Renewal: plans renew automatically at the end of each month or year until you cancel.
• Canceling: a team's owners and admins can cancel at any time from Settings → Billing. The plan keeps working until the end of the period you've paid for.
• Refunds: we don't refund partly used months or years, except where the law requires us to. If you were charged by mistake, or something went wrong, write to us and we'll put it right.
• Price changes: if we change a price, we'll tell you at least 30 days before it affects your next bill.

When a plan lapses

If a team has no active trial or plan, it becomes read-only. Everyone can still read their conversations, manage members and leave, but nobody can add anything new until someone picks a plan. Nothing is deleted, so you can pick up exactly where you left off.

Ending things

You can stop using Kitchen Table whenever you like: leave a team, cancel your plan, or ask us to delete your account.

We may suspend or close an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms, or where the law requires it. Unless it would be unsafe or unlawful, we'll tell you first and give you a chance to sort it out.

If we ever decide to shut Kitchen Table down, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice and help you get your conversations out first.

Changes

Kitchen Table will keep improving, so features will come and go. If we change these terms in a meaningful way, we'll update the date at the top and let you know in the app or by email before the change takes effect. If you keep using Kitchen Table after that, you're agreeing to the new terms. If you don't agree, you can cancel and leave at any time.

Disclaimers

We work hard to make Kitchen Table reliable and secure, but we provide it "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we don't make any promises beyond what's in these terms. That includes not promising that it will always be available, never have bugs, or suit every purpose.

Conversations on Kitchen Table, and the library that sparks them, are for thinking things through together. They aren't professional advice. For medical, legal, financial or mental health decisions, please talk to a qualified professional too.

Limits of liability

To the extent the law allows, Svelte Services LLC won't be liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, such as lost data or lost profits, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of what your team paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or US$50.

Some places don't allow these limits, so they may not all apply to you. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer protection law that can't be waived.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

If something goes wrong, please talk to us first at legal@svelte.llc. Most problems can be sorted out by talking, and we'll make a genuine effort to resolve yours within 30 days. If we can't, any dispute will be handled by the state or federal courts located in Ohio, and you and we both agree to those courts' jurisdiction.

If you live somewhere whose consumer protection laws give you the right to bring a claim in your local courts, or under your local law, nothing in these terms takes that right away.

Contact us

Kitchen Table is provided by Svelte Services LLC (svelte.llc).

• Questions about these terms, or legal notices: legal@svelte.llc
• Help with Kitchen Table: hello@kitchentable.fyi

A person reads every message.