Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these terms

By creating an account, signing in, or using ctoschool.live and related services (collectively, "CTOschool" or the "Service"), you agree to these Terms of Service ("Terms") and to our Privacy Policy. If you don't agree, don't use CTOschool.

These Terms form a binding contract between you and [TODO(tos-counsel-review): operating-entity legal name] ("we", "us", "our").

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to use CTOschool. If you are under 16, you may not create an account or otherwise use the Service. By using CTOschool you represent that you meet this age requirement and that you have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement in your jurisdiction.

CTOschool is not directed at users in regions where its operation would be unlawful. If a court or regulator determines that your access is unlawful in your jurisdiction, you must stop using the Service.

3. Your account

You are responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for everything that happens under your account. Use a strong, unique password. If you suspect unauthorised access, email [email protected] immediately.

You may close your account at any time from Settings → Privacy → Delete account. The deletion flow is described in our Privacy Policy, section 4.

4. Your content · what you keep, what you grant us

You own what you ship. Posts, projects, comments, profile information — collectively, "Your Content" — belongs to you. We don't claim ownership of Your Content.

License you grant to CTOschool. To run the Service, you grant CTOschool a worldwide, non- exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, display, reproduce, format, distribute, and make Your Content publicly available on the Service — including via search results, discovery surfaces, AI citation (see section 5), embeds, and social-card previews. This licence:

• Exists solely for the purpose of operating and improving the Service
• Does not transfer ownership of Your Content to us
• Does not permit us to sell Your Content to third parties
• Does not permit us to train our own AI models on Your Content
• Terminates when you delete the content or your account, except as needed for backup, legal compliance, or thread-coherence (see Privacy Policy section 4 on anonymisation)

Public by default — for now. Content you mark public is visible to anyone, including visitors who are not signed in, search engines, and AI search engines. Per-content visibility controls (public, followers- only, private) are on our roadmap. Until they ship, treat the Service as a public platform.

You represent that Your Content is yours to share, that you have the right to grant the licence above, and that Your Content does not infringe anyone else's rights.

5. AI search and citation

Public content on CTOschool may be indexed and cited by AI search engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and similar). We publish our crawler policy openly at /llms.txt and configure robots.txt to allow named AI crawlers to access public surfaces.

Attribution. AI citations link back to your canonical URL on CTOschool — your Profile or the specific post. The attribution chain is built into the structured data we emit on every public page.

What we don't do. We do not train our own AI models on Your Content. We do not sell Your Content to third-party AI training pipelines.

Your control. You can make your account inactive or delete it at any time. We cannot retroactively remove Your Content from AI models that have already trained on it (an industry-wide limitation, not a CTOschool choice). A per-account opt-out toggle for AI search indexing is on our roadmap.

6. Acceptable use

You must not, and you must not encourage anyone else to:

• Post content that is unlawful, infringes someone's intellectual property, harasses, threatens, or is sexually explicit content involving minors
• Impersonate another person or misrepresent your affiliation with anyone
• Post content that doesn't belong to you (stolen code, screenshots, repos, or work claimed as your own)
• Scrape, crawl, or otherwise extract data from the Service except as permitted by /robots.txt and /llms.txt
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to other users' accounts, our infrastructure, or our internal systems
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or extract source code from the Service except where this right is granted by law
• Use CTOschool to send unsolicited bulk messages, spam, or advertising
• Use automated systems (bots, scripts) to artificially inflate engagement, post volume, follower counts, or any other metric
• Resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service or any portion of it

We may remove content or suspend accounts that violate these rules, with or without prior notice. Repeat or severe violations may result in permanent termination.

7. Pricing and paid features

Free forever. Your Profile, your posts, and your access to public discovery surfaces are free, with no time limit, no feature gating, no ads in the public Profile.

Paid Live cohorts (future). When we offer paid cohorts, mentorship sessions, or other human-time products, the price will be disclosed clearly before you are charged. No automatic upgrades. No surprise billing. Cancellation terms will be presented at checkout.

8. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your account, with reasonable notice where practical, if we determine that you have materially breached these Terms (including the Acceptable Use rules in section 6). Where the breach is severe — for example content that endangers a person, infrastructure attacks, or confirmed impersonation — we may act without prior notice.

You may terminate your account at any time. Effect of termination on Your Content is described in the Privacy Policy, section 4.

Sections 4 (your content licence, for the limited period described therein), 9, 10, 11, and 12 of these Terms survive termination.

9. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties — express, implied, statutory — including any warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted availability.

No guarantees of outcomes. We do not guarantee that using CTOschool will result in a job, an internship, a particular level of reputation, or any other specific outcome. Reputation is what compounds; we provide the surface, you ship the work.

No professional advice. Content on CTOschool — from us or from other users — is not professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Don't rely on it as such.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service — whether in contract, tort, negligence, statute, or any other theory — is limited to the greater of:

• The amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to liability; or
•  [TODO(tos-counsel-review): liability cap amount in INR or USD — typically INR 5,000 or USD 100 for free-tier products]

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or exemplary damages, including lost profits, reputation, opportunities, or data — even if we were advised of their possibility.

Some jurisdictions don't allow these limitations. If yours doesn't, the limitations above apply to the maximum extent permitted by your local law.

11. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold us harmless from any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from:

• Your use of the Service in violation of these Terms
• Your Content, including any claim that Your Content infringes a third party's rights
• Your violation of any law or third-party right

We will notify you promptly of any such claim and may, at our option, participate in the defence at our own expense.

12. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of [TODO(tos-counsel-review): governing jurisdiction — India inferred from operator location; founder + counsel to confirm], without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Any dispute arising from or relating to these Terms or your use of the Service shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located in [TODO(tos-counsel-review): specific city / forum].

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive relief in any competent court to protect intellectual property, trade secrets, or confidential information.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms. Material changes — to the licence you grant us, the AI citation policy, pricing, liability, or governing law — will be notified to you by email and in- product at least 30 days before they take effect. Non- material changes (typos, clarifications, structural edits) take effect on update; the "Last updated" date at the top reflects the most recent change.

Your continued use of the Service after a material change has taken effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you don't accept the change, stop using the Service and delete your account.

14. Contact

For questions about these Terms:

Email

[email protected]

Postal

[TODO(tos-counsel-review): postal address for formal notices]