Terms of Service

QuietRoots is run by Yesod Code LLC, a company formed in Wyoming, USA. In these Terms, "we" and "us" mean Yesod Code LLC. "You" means the person using QuietRoots. These Terms apply to you from the moment you accept them.

These Terms are the agreement between you and us. They cover what QuietRoots gives you, how your private journal works, what we publish, what an organization can see, how subscriptions work, and who is responsible for what.

You accept these Terms when you create an account. You accept them again when you accept a new version in the app.

1. Who you are agreeing with

2. What QuietRoots gives you

QuietRoots is a quiet place to read, reflect, and practice on your phone.

You get a library of texts from many traditions. Next to them we publish our own translations, notes, summaries, and reflection questions.

You also get a private journal, described below.

You can choose which traditions you want to see more of. That choice shapes what the app shows you, and it is kept on your phone — we do not store it. Nobody else sees it, we do not sell it, and we do not use it for advertising.

We add, change, and sometimes retire features over time. Where the law requires advance notice of a change that significantly affects what you use, we give it. You can stop using QuietRoots or cancel your subscription at any time.

3. The texts we publish, and our own work

Two different things sit side by side in QuietRoots.

The first is the source text itself, as it stands in its tradition.

The second is our work around it: our translation, our notes, our summary, our reflection questions.

Our work is our reading of a text. It is not the teaching of any church, community, school, or teacher, unless the material says so.

Faithful readers within the same tradition often read the same passage differently. When we show one reading, we offer it as just that — one reading.

You are free to weigh it, keep it, or set it aside.

We correct our own work when it is wrong. That means our translations, our notes, and our summaries. We do not alter sacred texts.

If you find a mistake in a translation, a note, a source, or an attribution, write to legal@quietroots.app. We read every report.

4. Reading here is not a statement of faith

Opening a text in QuietRoots says nothing about what you believe.

People read for faith, for study, out of curiosity, or because someone they love reads it. All of those are ordinary uses of the app.

We do not record a religion for you, and we do not guess one from what you open.

5. Who can use QuietRoots

You must be 18 or older to use QuietRoots. If we learn that an account belongs to someone younger, we close the account and delete the data on it.

When you create an account, give accurate information. Keep your login details to yourself. You are responsible for what happens on your account.

Write to support@quietroots.app if you think someone else has gotten into your account.

6. What we keep about you

Your profile includes a username and an email address.

You can also add a first name, a last name, a gender, a birth date, and a picture of yourself. You can leave every one of those optional fields empty.

We count how the app is used, so we can see which parts work. For example, how many times a screen was opened.

We never send what you read. No passage text, no tradition, no tag, and nothing that identifies which work you read goes to a company that measures app usage for us.

The Privacy Policy explains all of this in full: what we keep, why we keep it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it.

7. What you write, and where it lives

Three things here are yours: your journal, any practice you write for yourself, and the traditions you choose to read from.

All of it starts on your phone, in an encrypted database. Other apps on your phone cannot read it.

The seal, and what is under it. Some of what you write can be sealed on your phone before it leaves, so that the copy we store is one we cannot open. Today the seal covers your journal. We are moving your practices and your tradition choices under the same seal, and this section will name each one as it arrives — until then, see what this section says about each of them below.

Sealed sync is part of a paid subscription. With one, your sealed writing is copied to our servers so you can reach it on another phone — still sealed, still unreadable to us. Without one, it simply stays on the phone you wrote it on. The difference is whether a second copy exists, not whether you keep your own.

If a subscription ends, we stop making new copies. We delete nothing, and what was already sealed stays where it is. You never lose access to your own writing because a subscription ended — unlocking with your Recovery Key works whether you are paying or not.

The seal uses a Recovery Key: 24 words that only you hold. Write them down and keep them somewhere safe. They are how you access what you wrote on a new phone. One key covers everything sealed, not the journal alone.

If you lose the Recovery Key and lose your devices, what was sealed cannot be opened again. Not by us either. That is the honest cost of writing we cannot read.

A practice you write. This one is different today, and we would rather tell you plainly than let you assume it is private: the steps you write are stored on our servers, where we are able to read them. That is what we are changing. Until it changes, treat a practice as something we can see.

The traditions you choose to read from. These stay on your phone. We do not store them, and the passage you are shown each day is picked on your phone rather than on our servers. We are not claiming we see nothing: the app still remembers which materials you opened, so it can hand them back to you, and the Privacy Policy explains that. What we no longer keep is a statement from you about what you follow. Because the choice lives only on your phone, it does not follow you to a new one yet. When it moves under the seal, it will.

Sharing a practice is different, and it cannot be undone. When you share one, the people you share it with can see it, and it stops being private. We say so at the moment you share.

What you write stays yours. You give us only the narrow permission we need to store it and show it back to you.

No organization, no administrator, and no other member ever sees your journal, or a practice you have not shared.

8. Organizations

An organization is a group that uses QuietRoots to share material with its members.

You join by invitation, and you can decline.

When you join, we show you the rules for taking part in that organization. Read them before you accept.

An organization sees that you are a member. Which profile details it sees is set out in the rules you accept when you join.

If you share a bookmark inside an organization, its title and the note you attached go with it. They are the only writing of yours the organization sees.

You can leave an organization whenever you want, and leaving takes effect at once.

The administrators of an organization can suspend your membership there. They do that when you break that organization's rules, or while they look into a report about you.

While your membership is suspended, you keep your account and your journal. You lose access to that organization's material until the administrators restore your access.

9. Subscriptions

Most of QuietRoots is free. A subscription unlocks the features marked as paid in the app.

Subscriptions are sold through the Apple App Store and Google Play. The store takes the payment, renews the subscription, and handles cancellation. We never see your card details.

To cancel, use your Apple or Google account settings. We cannot cancel a store subscription for you.

A refund for a purchase made in the App Store or Google Play is requested through that store, and follows that store's policy. That policy does not take away the rights consumer law gives you where you live.

We use a company called RevenueCat to tell us whether your subscription is active. The store sends the purchase record to RevenueCat, and RevenueCat tells the app what you have access to.

Deleting your QuietRoots account does not cancel your subscription. The store keeps billing you until you cancel there. Cancel in the store first.

10. Using QuietRoots fairly

You are welcome to hold your beliefs, ask hard questions, read against the grain, and disagree with a note we wrote.

What we act on is how you treat people, never what you believe.

Do not do any of the following in what you share or upload:

Two more rules keep the app working for everyone. Do not pull content out of QuietRoots beyond what the app itself offers you. Do not attack our security, work around access controls, or upload harmful code.

11. Who owns what

Three sources of material meet inside QuietRoots. Each one has an owner.

Our material

Our translations, notes, summaries, and reflection questions are ours or our licensors'. So are the app, the QuietRoots name, and the design. We hold the rights we need to run the app, and you may use all of this material inside QuietRoots.

Many source texts are in the public domain. That means the copyright has expired, so anyone may use them, with credit to the author. We publish other source texts under a license from the rights holder, and the rights stay with that holder.

An organization's material

Recordings, documents, and posts that an organization uploads belong to that organization. It is responsible for having the right to share them.

Your material

Your journal entries, your notes, and your bookmarks belong to you. We ask for no rights in them beyond storing them and showing them back to you.

Whatever the source, you may not copy the library in bulk, republish it, build a competing library out of it, or train an AI model on it. The only exceptions are a written license from the owner, or a right the law gives you.

12. What QuietRoots is not

QuietRoots is for reading, reflection, and practice.

It is not medical, psychological, psychiatric, or legal care, and it is not a crisis service.

We say this so that nobody relies on an app when they need a real person.

We do not speak for any tradition we publish, unless the material comes from a named organization or author.

13. Who is responsible for what

We are responsible for

An organization is responsible for

You are responsible for

This split does not push our own duties onto anyone else.

14. Moderation, suspension, and closing your account

We can remove material, limit access, or suspend or close an account. We do that when these Terms are broken, or when the law requires it.

Where we can, we tell you what happened and how to respond. When people or the app are at immediate risk, we act first and explain after.

You can delete your account yourself, inside the app. Open your account settings and choose to delete your account.

When you do, we remove your personal data as the Privacy Policy describes. Cancel a store subscription first, because deleting the account does not stop the billing.

Three parts of these Terms continue to apply after your account closes: "Who owns what", "Who is responsible for what", and "Our responsibility to you".

15. Our responsibility to you

We work to keep QuietRoots accurate, available, and safe. We stand behind what we publish ourselves.

We cannot promise the app will never break or never go down. We cannot promise that a particular text will suit a particular need you have.

If you have a claim against us, there is a cap on what we owe you. The cap is whichever is larger: what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or $100.

We are also not responsible for indirect losses. Those are losses that follow from a problem rather than being the problem itself, such as lost profit, lost time, or a missed opportunity.

The cap does not apply to fraud, to deliberate wrongdoing, to gross negligence, or to death or injury we cause.

It also does not apply where the law where you live does not allow it.

Where the law allows it, bring a claim within one year of the day you learned of the problem, or should have learned of it. If the law where you live gives you longer, you get the longer period.

Consumer law gives you rights you cannot sign away. Nothing here takes those rights from you. If a line here conflicts with such a right, the right wins and the rest of these Terms still stands.

16. Changes to these Terms

Every version of these Terms carries a version number. When you accept one, we record which version it was. The current version is always available in the app.

What we do about a change depends on what changed.

Even while we are asking, you can still read our documents, manage your subscription, leave an organization, delete your account, sign out, and write to us.

You do not have to accept. If you would rather stop, deleting your account costs you nothing more. A subscription bought in a store is canceled in that store, and canceling stops the next charge.

17. Governing law and disputes

The law of the State of Wyoming, USA, applies to these Terms.

The consumer rights of the place where you live still apply, as "Our responsibility to you" says.

If something goes wrong, write to legal@quietroots.app first. Most problems are settled faster that way than in court.

We do not force you into arbitration. You keep your right to bring a claim in court, including small claims court.

18. Copyright complaints

If you own the rights to something published here and it should not be, tell us and we will act.

Write to legal@quietroots.app. Tell us what work you own, where it appears in QuietRoots (a link, or a description clear enough to find it), how we can reach you, and that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized and that what you are telling us is true. Sign it, on paper or electronically.

We read every notice. When a complaint is credible we remove or block the material, and we tell whoever put it there.

If your material came down and you believe that was a mistake, write to the same address and say why. We look again, and we put it back if we were wrong.

We close the accounts of people and organizations that infringe repeatedly.

Our agent for copyright notices: Yesod Code LLC, 30 N Gould St, Suite R, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States, dmca@yesodcode.com. This is a company address rather than a QuietRoots one, because the agent handles notices for everything the company runs.

19. Contact

Yesod Code LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company.
30 N Gould St, Suite R, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States.