Heartvault — Terms of Use

Version: 1.4 Effective date: 2026-08-04

This is a short, plain-language Terms of Use for an invite-only family-and-friends platform operated by one person on personal hardware. We've kept it brief deliberately.

1. Who these terms cover

If you have a Heartvault account and you use it, these terms apply to you. By signing up or continuing to use Heartvault, you agree to them.

2. Eligibility and accounts

• Heartvault is invite-only. You're here because someone invited you with a friend code.
• One account per person. Don't create multiples.
• You're responsible for your account. Keep your password reasonable; don't share account credentials with anyone.
• If you're under 18, an adult parent or legal guardian should be a Heartvault household member who invited and consented for you. If you're under 13, see also the Children's privacy section of the Privacy Policy.
• At signup we will ask for your date of birth so we can apply age-appropriate defaults.

3. What you can do

Use Heartvault for what it's designed for: staying connected with people you actually know, running your household, sharing food / calendar / chores / messages within your circle.

4. What you can't do

We're going to skip the 800-line lawyer version because nobody reads those. The things we genuinely care about:

• Don't be cruel to other members. Harassment, threats, hate speech, sustained meanness — grounds for suspension.
• Don't use Heartvault for anything illegal. Including but not limited to: doxxing, stalking, distributing illegal content, fraud.
• Don't impersonate other people. Don't claim to be someone you're not.
• Respect other people's data. Information you see about other members (their locations, messages, calendars, recipes, journeys) is shared with you because they trust their circle. Don't republish it elsewhere, don't screenshot-and-share, don't sell it, don't trade it.
• Don't try to find security holes by attacking the site. If you spot one accidentally, please report it via the in-app bug-report form.
• Don't try to evade moderation by creating new accounts after suspension. The cascade-freeze rule (see section 6) means trust chains matter.

If you do these things, the operator can warn, suspend, freeze, or ban your account.

5. Content you create

• You own what you create. Your messages, journey points, recipes, profile, photos — Heartvault does not claim ownership of your content.
• You give us a limited license to make Heartvault work. Specifically: to display your content to the people you've chosen to share it with, and to store it so they can see it when they look.
• What you create stays until you delete it. Heartvault is a vault: your content has no automatic expiration (see Privacy Policy §7). If you delete your content (or your account), deletion is immediate — Heartvault hard-deletes it right away, with no recoverable copy and no grace window; the only remaining copies are in disaster-recovery backups, which rotate out within about 30 days. Deleting is final — be sure.
• Expedited erasure is available on request — see the Privacy Policy section 8.

6. The operator can suspend or terminate accounts

The operator (Shagy) can suspend, freeze (read-only), or terminate any account that breaches these Terms or the Privacy Policy. In particular: serious abuse, illegal use, or repeated harassment will lead to suspension.

The cascade-freeze rule: because Heartvault grows by invitation, if the person who invited you is suspended for serious abuse, your account may be reviewed and frozen pending review — because the trust chain that brought you here is in question. This is unusual and is not used for trivial offenses; it exists as a safety mechanism for the invite-only model.

You can also leave Heartvault at any time by asking the operator to delete your account (see the contact section of the Privacy Policy); deletion is handled promptly and is immediate and final.

7. Things we don't promise (disclaimers)

We have to say this because the law expects us to, but in plain terms:

• Heartvault runs on a home computer. Sometimes the power goes out, the network has a hiccup, or a bug breaks something. There is no uptime guarantee.
• We do our best, but if Heartvault is down for a few hours — or rarely, a few days — that's a known possibility for a system of this size.
• The site is provided "as is". We don't warrant it's bug-free or that it fits a particular purpose.

8. Limits on liability

If something goes wrong (downtime, data loss, a bug) and you suffer a loss as a result, the operator's total liability is limited to what's recoverable under applicable law and, additionally, capped at the total amount you have paid for Heartvault in the prior twelve months — which, because Heartvault is free, is zero.

Heartvault is run by a single person with no insurance against catastrophic data loss, and there is no business behind Heartvault to sue. If this is a deal-breaker for you, please don't use Heartvault for anything you can't afford to lose.

Indemnification: if your misuse of Heartvault (for example, using it to harass another user, or to violate someone else's legal rights) causes a third party to bring a claim against the operator, you agree to indemnify and hold the operator harmless from that claim, including reasonable legal fees.

9. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms occasionally. If we do, we'll show you the updated version on your next login and ask you to accept it. We'll keep a version history at the bottom of this page.

10. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws provisions. Any disputes will be resolved in Virginia courts. If you don't agree to this choice of law, please don't use Heartvault.

11. Contact

Questions, complaints, or anything in between: see the contact section of the Privacy Policy.

Version history:

• v1.4 — 2026-08-04 — §5 aligned to vault retention (content kept until deleted; deletion immediate and final; the earlier planned 14-day soft-delete window withdrawn); §6 leave-path updated to the operator-handled deletion process.
• v1.3 — 2026-06-16 — §5 deletion reframed to immediate hard-delete.
• v1.0–v1.2 — 2026-05-29 — Initial drafting and early revisions.