These terms are the agreement between you and Stephen Kobata, trading as Synapie (formerly Penaptic) (“we”, “us”) covering the Synapie apps and service. By creating an account, or by using Synapie, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.
Three things people are most likely to be caught by. They are set out in full below, but they matter enough to state up front:
Synapie is operated by Stephen Kobata, an individual trading as Synapie, in California, United States. There is no company: Synapie is one person, and “we” and “us” in this document mean him. “The service” means the Synapie applications for macOS, Windows, Linux and iOS, this website, and the servers we run at synapie.com and api.penaptic.com.
You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live, whichever is greater. By using the service you confirm that you are, and that nothing in law prevents you from entering into this agreement. The service is not directed at children.
You need an account to sync between devices, to share, and to use the server-hosted assistant. You sign in with a Google account or a phone number.
You are responsible for keeping access to your sign-in method and to your devices. Anyone who controls a device that is signed in and unlocked can read everything in that workspace. If you think someone else has access to your account, remove that device from the Devices panel and change your sign-in credentials with the relevant provider.
One person, one account. Do not share an account, and do not let anyone else use your credentials.
We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the Synapie applications on devices you own or control, for your own use, for as long as these terms are in force. That is the whole of what is granted: we keep all other rights, including all intellectual property in the software and the service.
You may not sell, rent, sublicense or redistribute the applications; remove or alter any notices in them; or attempt to derive source code from the distributed binaries, except where and to the extent that applicable law gives you a right to do so that cannot be excluded by contract.
The licence is set out in full — including the restrictions above, the third-party components, and the terms Apple requires of software distributed through the App Store — in the End-User Licence Agreement, which applies alongside these terms. Where the two disagree, these terms win.
Your content stays yours. We claim no ownership of anything you write, store or generate in Synapie, and — as section 5 explains — for most of it we are not in a position to claim anything, because we cannot read it.
This section describes how the product actually works, and it is the most important one here.
Your notes, todos, lists, calendar entries and attachments are encrypted on your device before anything is sent to us. What reaches our servers is ciphertext, along with its size, the time it arrived, and which of your devices sent it. The key that decrypts it is generated on your device and is never transmitted to us in a form we can read.
We cannot recover your data, and we cannot reset your access to it. That is not a policy we could choose to make an exception to — it is a consequence of not holding the key. Specifically:
You are responsible for keeping your own backups. Synapie exports your data as plain, readable files, and pairing a second device gives your key somewhere else to live. We strongly recommend doing both. We are not liable for data that is lost, corrupted or rendered unreadable, however that happens — including through device loss or failure, forgotten passphrases, sync conflicts, defects in the software, or our own service failing. See section 10.
We keep synced data on our servers only for as long as needed to deliver it to your other devices, after which it is pruned. Our servers are a relay, not an archive, and must not be relied on as your only copy of anything.
Synapie includes an assistant that can answer questions, write text and act on your data. It runs either on your device or on our servers, depending on which model you choose.
Its output can be wrong, incomplete, biased or entirely fabricated, including when it is confident and specific. It is not legal, medical, financial, tax, safety or other professional advice, and must not be relied on as such. You are responsible for checking anything that matters before you act on it, and for anything you do as a result.
The assistant can also change your data — create, edit and delete notes, todos, events and files — and can run tools and connect to services you authorise. You are responsible for the instructions you give it and for reviewing what it does.
When you use a server-hosted model, the content of that request leaves your device and is sent over an encrypted connection to us and to the model provider that serves it, so that it can be answered. This is the one part of the product where your content is not end-to-end encrypted, and it is unavoidable: a model cannot answer a question it cannot read. Do not send anything to a server-hosted model that you are not willing to have processed this way. The on-device model, which is included on every plan, sends nothing anywhere. Our Privacy Policy names the providers involved.
You agree not to use Synapie to:
Sharing is a feature of the product, and what you share becomes visible to the people you share it with. You are responsible for what you send them and for choosing who they are.
There is a free plan and a paid plan. What each includes is described at synapie.com and may change; we will not reduce what a paid plan includes during a period you have already paid for.
Subscriptions are bought on this website and are billed in advance, each period, until cancelled. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never receive or store your card number. Your subscription renews automatically at the then-current price until you cancel it.
You can cancel at any time from your account page. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not refund the period you are in, and you keep paid features until that period ends.
Except where the law where you live gives you a refund right that cannot be excluded — and it may — payments are non-refundable, including for partial periods and for periods in which you did not use the service. If something has gone wrong, contact us; we would rather sort it out than stand on this.
Server-hosted assistant use is metered in credits. Credits are a prepaid entitlement to use the service: they are not money, have no cash value, cannot be transferred, sold or refunded, and may expire on the schedule described when they are granted. Running out of credit does not stop the app working — it stops our servers answering, and the on-device model keeps working regardless.
We may change prices. We will give you at least 30 days' notice before a change affects a renewal, and you can cancel before it takes effect.
Prices exclude sales tax, VAT and similar taxes unless stated otherwise. You are responsible for any that apply.
The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, or arising from a course of dealing.
We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or free from data loss; that defects will be corrected; that the assistant's output will be accurate or suitable; or that it will keep working with any third-party service it connects to.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
To the fullest extent the law allows:
Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including, in many places, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you, and where a limit is unenforceable it is reduced to the minimum the law requires rather than removed.
These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose, and they are a fundamental part of the basis on which the service is offered at its price.
You will indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, demand, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by a third party arising out of your use of the service, content you store or share through it, your breach of these terms, or your violation of any law or of anyone else's rights. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you control the defence, and you will not settle anything that imposes an obligation on us without our consent.
You can stop using Synapie at any time, and delete your account from your account page or by contacting us. Deleting your account removes your account record and the ciphertext we hold; because we cannot read that ciphertext, deletion is not reversible.
We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if your use puts the service or other users at risk. Where it is reasonable to do so we will tell you first and give you a chance to put it right. If we terminate your account without cause, we will refund the unused portion of any period you have paid for.
Sections 4 (as to our retained rights), 5, 9, 10, 11, 14 and 15 survive termination.
We may change the service, and we may change these terms. When we make a material change to these terms we will publish the revised version here with a new version number, and ask you to agree to it the next time you sign in on the web. Changes are not retroactive. If you do not agree to a revised version, stop using the service and cancel any subscription; your data remains exportable from your devices.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The state and federal courts located in California have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and we each consent to their jurisdiction and venue.
If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory law of the country where you live, or of your right to bring proceedings there.
Before filing anything, please contact us — most disputes are a misunderstanding and we would like the chance to fix it.
These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the End-User Licence Agreement, are the entire agreement between us about the service and the software, and replace any earlier understanding about it. If a provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign this agreement; we may assign it to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. Nothing here creates a partnership, employment or agency relationship, and there are no third-party beneficiaries.
[email protected] — for anything about these terms, your account, or a problem with the service.