Terms of Service

Effective date: 2026-06-15 Last updated: 2026-06-15

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a legally binding agreement between you ("you", "Customer") and Cobalt Stream Technologies LLC, a Missouri limited liability company that operates Essence.Report ("we", "us", "Essence.Report", the "Service"). By creating an account, accessing, or using the Service at https://essence.report (the "Site"), you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you are entering into these Terms on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you have authority to bind that organisation, and "you" refers to that organisation.

1. The Service

1.1 Essence.Report provides AI-assisted research synthesis. For each request, multiple independent large language models reason in parallel, augmented by publicly available sources retrieved at the time of query, and a separate model adjudicates them into a single coherent report (each, a "Report").

1.2 Reports are research artifacts. They are not, and you must not treat them as, legal advice, medical advice, financial or investment advice, tax advice, a background check, a consumer report, or any other form of professional advice or regulated screening (see § 5).

1.3 Every Report is produced with the same full-strength synthesis. We do not offer a "lower-quality" tier; plans differ in volume, not in the quality of the synthesis applied to each Report.

1.4 We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the Service at any time. We will give reasonable advance notice (at least 30 days) before discontinuing a paid feature you actively use.

2. Accounts and eligibility

2.1 You must be at least 16 years old, or the age of digital consent in your jurisdiction if higher, to use the Service.

2.2 You are responsible for all activity under your account. Keep your credentials secure and notify us immediately at security@essence.report if you suspect unauthorised access.

2.3 You must provide accurate, current information and must not impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation.

2.4 You represent that you are not located in, a national of, or ordinarily resident in a comprehensively sanctioned territory, and that you are not on any restricted-party list (see § 17).

3. Subscriptions, quotas, and billing

3.1 Subscription plans. The Service is offered on a recurring subscription basis. Current plans and prices are at https://essence.report/pricing. Prices are exclusive of taxes; applicable taxes are calculated at checkout.

3.2 Quota system. Each plan grants a monthly Report quota that resets on each billing cycle; unused quota does not carry over. Each plan also grants a daily refine allowance for the prompt-refinement tool, which resets at 00:00 UTC and does not consume Report quota.

3.3 Failed Reports. If a Report fails to complete (for example, an upstream provider error or a timeout), the Report quota consumed for that request is automatically refunded to your account.

3.4 Billing. We use a third-party payment processor (currently Stripe) to handle payments. By providing payment information, you authorise us, via that processor, to charge the recurring fee on each renewal date until you cancel.

3.5 Renewal and cancellation. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled. You may cancel at any time via the billing portal accessible from Settings → Billing. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; access continues until then.

3.6 Refunds. Except where required by applicable law, fees are non-refundable and we do not provide pro-rata refunds for partial billing periods. Failed Reports are handled under § 3.3. Consumers in the EEA and UK have a 14-day right of withdrawal, subject to the immediate-performance terms in our Refund & Cancellation Policy. For other refund requests, contact support@essence.report. See our Refund & Cancellation Policy for full details.

3.7 Price changes. We will give at least 30 days' notice of any price increase before it affects your renewal.

3.8 Failed payment. If a payment fails, we may retry per the processor's standard cadence. After repeated failure, we may suspend access until payment is restored. Data-retention rules (§ 11) apply during suspension.

4. Acceptable use

Your use of the Service is governed by these Terms and by our Acceptable Use Policy, which is incorporated by reference. Without limiting that policy, you agree not to:

• Use the Service for unlawful, fraudulent, defamatory, harassing, or threatening purposes.
• Generate content that infringes the intellectual property or privacy rights of others.
• Generate content that facilitates serious harm — including weapons (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or conventional), malware, or any sexual content involving minors (zero tolerance).
• Submit personal data you have no lawful basis to process, or use the Service to surveil, profile, or target an identifiable individual without a lawful basis.
• Scrape, mirror, or systematically extract Service outputs to build or train a competing AI system.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the underlying model architecture, weights, or prompts.
• Circumvent quota, rate limits, or any access controls, or access Reports or accounts belonging to other users.
• Use automated means to generate Reports at a rate inconsistent with human use, unless we authorise it in writing.

Violation may result in immediate suspension or termination without refund.

5. Not a consumer reporting agency; restricted uses

5.1 Not an FCRA consumer report. Essence.Report is not a consumer reporting agency, and Reports are not "consumer reports," under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA") or any analogous law. You must not use the Service or any Report, in whole or in part, as a factor in establishing an individual's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, housing or tenancy, or for any other purpose covered by the FCRA, the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or any similar law in any jurisdiction.

5.2 No unlawful surveillance or targeting. You must not use the Service to monitor, profile, or build dossiers on identifiable individuals without a lawful basis, nor to obtain or publish the home address or contact details of protected persons (such as judicial, law-enforcement, or other at-risk individuals) where prohibited by law.

5.3 Not standalone evidence. A Report is research synthesis and must not be relied upon as the sole basis for any adjudicative, disciplinary, lending, hiring, or other consequential decision about a person without independent verification.

5.4 You are solely responsible for your compliance with the laws that apply to your use of the Service and any Report, including data-protection, anti-discrimination, and equal-opportunity laws.

6. Customer Content

6.1 What it is. Anything you submit — prompts, uploaded files, Vault entries, and refinement inputs — is "Customer Content".

6.2 Your ownership. You retain all rights in Customer Content. We claim no ownership.

6.3 Licence to operate. You grant us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use Customer Content solely to operate the Service for you — to generate, store, retrieve, and deliver Reports back to you, and to meet legal obligations. This licence ends when you delete the content or close your account, subject to backup retention (§ 11).

6.4 No training use. We do not use Customer Content or generated Reports to train any AI model. Customer Content is processed through first-party large language model provider APIs and a web-retrieval provider under contractual terms that prohibit those providers from using API inputs or outputs to train their models. We do not sell Customer Content, and we disclose it only to the sub-processors strictly necessary to operate the Service, as listed in our Privacy Policy.

6.5 Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for the legality of Customer Content and represent that you have all rights and lawful bases necessary to submit it.

7. Generated Reports

7.1 Your licence. Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual licence to use, reproduce, modify, and distribute Reports generated for you, for any lawful purpose.

7.2 No exclusivity. AI-generated content may be similar or identical for similar prompts. We do not warrant that any Report is unique to you.

7.3 Citations. Reports may include citations to publicly available sources. We make reasonable efforts to verify citation URLs but do not guarantee the accuracy, legality, or continued availability of any cited source.

8. Intellectual property

8.1 The Service, the Site, our trademarks, the system architecture, and the software powering Essence.Report are owned by us or our licensors and protected by applicable intellectual-property laws.

8.2 We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service in accordance with these Terms.

8.3 Feedback you provide is not confidential; we may use it without restriction or compensation.

9. AI-generated output — nature and limitations

9.1 AI-generated output may contain errors, omissions, or fabricated information ("hallucinations"). Output is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute definitive evidence, a legal conclusion, or professional advice.

9.2 You are responsible for independently verifying any Report before relying on it. Best practice is to open each cited source and confirm it supports the claim as stated.

9.3 A Report is not an automated decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects on any person within the meaning of Article 22 of the GDPR. You remain solely responsible for any decision you make on the basis of a Report.

10. Privacy and data protection

10.1 Our Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, and protect personal data.

10.2 Roles. For account, billing, and usage data about you, we act as controller. For personal data contained in Customer Content about third parties, you are the controller and we are the processor, acting on your documented instructions.

10.3 DPA. Our Data Processing Addendum is incorporated into these Terms by reference and takes effect when you accept these Terms; no separate signature is required for standard subscriptions. Enterprise customers who require a counter-signed copy may request one at legal@essence.report.

10.4 We comply with the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA/CPRA, and other data-protection laws to the extent they apply to our processing.

11. Data retention

You may request earlier deletion at privacy@essence.report, subject to legal retention requirements.

12. Disclaimers

12.1 THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE.

12.2 We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, legality, or availability of third-party public sources retrieved or cited in Reports.

12.3 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including, in some jurisdictions, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under non-excludable consumer-protection law.

13. Limitation of liability

13.1 TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, NEITHER PARTY SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION.

13.2 OUR AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF: (a) the total fees you paid us in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) USD 100.

13.3 The limitations in this § 13 do not apply to: (i) your breach of § 4 or § 5, (ii) either party's indemnification obligations, (iii) a party's gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or fraud, or (iv) any liability that cannot lawfully be limited (§ 12.3).

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any third-party claim arising from: (a) your Customer Content, (b) your violation of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, (c) your violation of applicable law (including § 5), or (d) your use of a Report in a manner that breaches a third party's rights.

15. Suspension and termination

15.1 By you. Cancel anytime via the billing portal; effective at the end of the current billing period.

15.2 By us, for cause. We may suspend or terminate immediately if you materially breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, threaten the stability or security of the Service, or use the Service unlawfully.

15.3 By us, for convenience. We may terminate any account with 30 days' notice. If we do so without cause, we will refund prepaid, unused fees on a pro-rata basis.

15.4 Survival. Sections that by their nature should survive — including §§ 5, 6.4, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, and 19 — survive termination.

16. Governing law and dispute resolution

16.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles, except where mandatory law in your country of residence requires otherwise.

16.2 Forum. Subject to § 16.3 and § 16.4, the state and federal courts located in Missouri, USA have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service.

16.3 Good-faith resolution first. Before filing suit, the parties will attempt to resolve the dispute in good faith, by senior representatives conferring (in person or by video) within 30 days of written notice of the dispute.

16.4 Mandatory consumer rights. If you use the Service as a consumer, nothing in this § 16 deprives you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, including your right to bring proceedings in your local courts.

17. Export controls and sanctions

You may not use the Service if you are located in, or are a national or resident of, a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions, or if you appear on any restricted-party list maintained by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United Nations, or other applicable authority. You agree to comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions laws in your use of the Service.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. Material changes will be notified by email to subscribers, and posted on this page, at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using the Service before they take effect.

19. Miscellaneous

19.1 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Acceptable Use Policy, and the DPA, are the entire agreement between you and us and supersede any prior agreement on the same subject.

19.2 Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganisation, or sale of substantially all our assets.

19.3 Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force.

19.4 No waiver. Failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.

19.5 Force majeure. Neither party is liable for failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

19.6 Notices. We may send legal notices by email to the address on your account. You may send legal notices to legal@essence.report.

20. Contact