# Terms of Service — Dubyu (Ulster County Legislative AI)

**Operator:** John Peter Quigley (contact: johnpeter@quigley.email)
**Candidate version:** 2.0 — 2026-08-15 (invite-only browser pilot)
**Release state:** the browser clauses below are the accepted invite-only pilot
contract, not evidence that the browser pilot is deployed or open. Release
requires matching code, migrations, staging evidence, and explicit approval.
**Quick summary:** use the Terms link in the browser or send `/terms` to the
Telegram bot. The Telegram command is answered without a model call and
without storing the request.

Using Dubyu requires accepting these terms and the privacy policy
([PRIVACY.md](/privacy)). Dubyu asks you to acknowledge both — once per
terms version — in the browser or in chat before it answers questions for you.

The release gate must set the application's required Terms/Privacy versions to
these candidate versions before browser access opens. A materially changed version requires a fresh
acknowledgment before another question is accepted; a documentation date by
itself is not proof of the version currently deployed.

## 1. Dubyu is an unofficial resource — verify against the real record

This is the most important section, so it comes first.

- Dubyu is a **private, unofficial project**. It is **not affiliated with,
  operated by, or endorsed by** Ulster County, the Ulster County Legislature,
  the Clerk of the Legislature, or any government body, official, or agency.
- Dubyu's answers are **generated by an AI model** over a database built from
  scraped public records. Both layers can fail: the database can be
  incomplete, stale, or contain ingestion errors, and the AI can misread,
  misattribute, or omit. Answers **can be wrong** even when they sound
  confident and carry a citation.
- **You must fact-check anything that matters against the official record
  before relying on it or repeating it.** Official sources, for each county,
  are that county's website and that county's official media channel. For
  Ulster, that is the Legislature's published records on the county site
  ([legislature.ulstercountyny.gov](https://legislature.ulstercountyny.gov),
  [ulstercountyny.gov](https://ulstercountyny.gov)) and the Legislature's
  official media channel. Where a Dubyu answer and the official record
  disagree, **the official record is correct and the answer is wrong.**
  Unpublished official material is a wait-on-county gap, not a closed
  product. FOIL is not a required path for public material.
- Dubyu tries to cite the official source URL for every factual claim
  precisely so you can do this check. Use the links.

## 2. Not advice

Nothing Dubyu produces is legal advice, election-law advice, professional
advice, or an official statement of any government position. Decisions with
legal, electoral, financial, or reputational consequences need a qualified
human and the primary record, not a chatbot.

## 3. No warranty

The service is provided **"as is" and "as available,"** without warranty of
any kind — express or implied — including accuracy, completeness,
fitness for a particular purpose, or availability. The operator does not
guarantee the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, and is not liable
for decisions made in reliance on its output. Your sole remedy for
dissatisfaction with the service is to stop using it.

## 4. Access

- Access is deny-by-default, granted personally by the operator, and may be
  **suspended or revoked at any time, for any reason**, without notice.
  Guest access expires automatically.
- Browser access is invite-only. A one-time access code is issued to one named,
  already-approved roster user and must not be shared. Claiming it creates an
  essential host-only browser session cookie. You must not copy or share the
  code or cookie, attempt to assume another user's session, or bypass a
  suspension, expiry, logout, or revocation. Logging out ends the current
  session; the operator may revoke codes, sessions, membership, or access at
  any time.
- Usage is budgeted (per-user, per-group, and global daily limits, plus hourly
  question limits — see PRIVACY.md §7). Browser and Telegram use by the same
  person share that person's financial ceiling. Approved end users may ask up to 15
  questions in their first hour after activation, then 5 questions per rolling
  hour; founder/admin operator accounts may have higher operational ceilings.
  When a limit is hit Dubyu says so; the question is not processed.
- Don't abuse the service: no attempts to extract other users' data, no
  prompt-injection or jailbreak attempts against the bot's safety rules, no
  automated scraping of the bot, no use of the service to harass, defame, or
  deceive, and no resale or republication of the service itself.

## 5. Your content and data

- What Dubyu stores about you, for how long, who can see it, and how to
  delete it is governed by the privacy policy ([PRIVACY.md](/privacy)) —
  it is part of these terms.
- You are responsible for what you send. Don't send anything you wouldn't put
  in a message to the operator.
- The service runs through third-party platforms and processors named in the
  privacy policy, including Railway and Anthropic. Telegram applies only when
  you use the Telegram surface; Groq applies only when configured for a voice
  message. Their own service terms and retention rules may also apply to data
  they process.

## 6. Acknowledgment requirement

Before Dubyu answers questions for you, you must confirm — through the browser
acceptance control or the in-chat acknowledgment button — that you have read
this document and the privacy policy and agree to both. Your acceptance (a
timestamp and the versions accepted, nothing more) is stored on your access
record. When either document changes materially, you will be asked to
acknowledge the current versions again before further use.

## 7. Changes

Material changes are announced on the applicable browser/chat surface before
they take effect, this document is versioned in the project repository, and
the current version is available through the browser Terms link and via
`/terms` in Telegram.

## 8. Contact

Questions, complaints, corrections, or deletion requests: use Ask Dubyu
Support in the Telegram bot when available (start your message with
"Dubyu:") or email johnpeter@quigley.email.