Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Pickle Mechanic ("we" or "us"), and they govern your use of the Pickle Mechanic website, applications, and services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, purchasing credits, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree to them, do not use the Service.

1. What the Service does

Pickle Mechanic lets you upload pickleball video, have it analyzed by automated artificial intelligence systems, chat with our AI assistant ("Picklebot") about your results, and optionally request review or lessons from independent coaches who use the platform. Analysis consumes credits, described in Section 4.

We may add, change, or remove features at any time. We may also impose limits on uploads, file sizes, video length, storage, or request rates, and we may change those limits as the Service evolves.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If you are under 18, you may use the Service only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to be bound by these Terms on your behalf. If you are using the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization to these Terms.

You may not use the Service if we have previously removed you from it, or if applicable law bars you from doing so.

3. Your account

Accounts are created by signing in with a Google account. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, and for keeping the underlying Google account secure. Tell us promptly at legal@picklemechanic.com if you believe your account has been used without your permission.

Do not share, sell, or transfer your account, and do not create an account for anyone else without their permission. One person should not maintain multiple accounts in order to collect additional starter credits.

4. Credits

The Service runs on credits. New accounts receive a starter credit balance at no charge as a promotional grant. Additional credits are sold in fixed packs; larger packs include bonus credits at no additional charge, and bonus credits are ordinary credits once granted. Credits are consumed when you use metered features, which currently include video storage, video processing, AI analysis, and Picklebot chat. The number of credits an action costs depends on factors such as video length, file size, and the amount of AI computation involved, and is shown or estimated in the Service before you commit to the action.

Credits are not money

Pricing and rates

We may change credit prices, the packs offered, and the credit cost of any feature at any time. Changes are not retroactive: credits you have already purchased remain usable, but the number of credits a future action consumes may differ from what it consumed in the past. Purchased credits do not expire. Promotional or granted credits may carry expiration dates or usage restrictions, which we will identify when we grant them.

Purchases and refunds

Purchases are processed by our payment provider, Stripe. All purchases are final. Credits are non-refundable except where a refund is required by applicable law, or where we choose to issue one at our sole discretion. Credits consumed by a completed action are not refundable simply because you disagree with, or are dissatisfied with, the output of that action. If a technical failure on our side causes credits to be consumed without producing a result, contact us and we will generally restore those credits.

If a purchase is refunded, whether by us or through your payment provider, the credits that purchase granted (including its bonus credits) are removed from your account. If you have already spent some of them, your balance may go negative, and metered features remain unavailable until it is positive again.

You are responsible for any taxes associated with your purchases, other than taxes based on our net income.

5. Your content

"Your Content" means the video, images, pose and skeleton data, text, messages, and any other material you upload to or create with the Service. As between you and us, you own Your Content. We do not claim ownership of it.

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, transmit, reformat, transcode, trim, crop, analyze, and display Your Content, and to create derived data from it (such as processed video, skeleton overlays, statistics, and analysis results), in each case solely to operate, secure, and improve the Service, to provide it to you, and to provide it to anyone you share it with. This license lasts as long as we retain Your Content under Section 8 and ends when Your Content is deleted, except for copies retained in routine backups or as required by law.

We do not sell Your Content and we do not use your video to train publicly available AI models. Section 9 describes the automated processing Your Content undergoes, and our Privacy Policy describes how we handle the personal information in it.

Rights and consent

You represent and warrant, for everything you upload, that:

• you own it or otherwise have all rights necessary to upload it and to grant us the license above;
• every identifiable person appearing in it has consented to being recorded and to having that recording uploaded and analyzed; and, where a person appearing in it is a minor, that a parent or legal guardian has consented;
• it was recorded lawfully, in a place and manner where recording was permitted, and its upload does not violate anyone's privacy, publicity, contract, or intellectual property rights; and
• it does not violate Section 6.

This matters most for gameplay footage recorded at courts, clubs, and events, which routinely captures people other than you. Getting those permissions is your responsibility, not ours.

Third-party video

If the Service allows you to supply a video by link (for example, a YouTube URL), you are responsible for ensuring that your use of that video complies with these Terms and with the terms of the site hosting it.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• upload or generate content that is sexual or sexualized, that sexualizes or endangers a minor, that is violent or gratuitously graphic, that harasses, threatens, defames, or degrades any person, or that promotes hatred against people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or any other protected characteristic;
• upload video of anyone who has not consented to it, film a person covertly, or upload footage of anyone as a means of harassing, stalking, doxxing, or surveilling them;
• upload content that is not pickleball footage in an attempt to use the Service as general-purpose video storage or as a general-purpose AI service;
• abuse Picklebot or any AI feature, including attempts to make it produce prohibited content, to extract its instructions or underlying prompts, or to circumvent its safety behavior;
• infringe anyone's intellectual property rights, including uploading broadcast footage, instructional video, or other material you do not have the right to use;
• harass, deceive, defraud, or abuse coaches, other users, or our staff, including through Picklebot messages, coach requests, notes, or reviews;
• probe, scan, overload, or interfere with the Service or its infrastructure; circumvent credit accounting, rate limits, upload limits, authentication, or any other technical restriction; or access the Service by any automated means we have not authorized;
• create multiple or fraudulent accounts, exploit bugs or pricing errors, use stolen or unauthorized payment methods, or manipulate coach credit accrual or any other incentive we offer;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code or models behind the Service, or use the Service or its output to build a competing product; or
• break the law, or help anyone else do any of the above.

7. Suspension and termination

We may take this step for any violation of Section 6 or any other part of these Terms, for conduct that exposes us, our users, or our coaches to legal risk, or where we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect the Service or the people who use it. Where a violation is minor and appears unintentional, we will generally warn you first and give you a chance to correct it, but we are not obligated to, and serious violations (in particular anything involving minors, non-consensual recording, harassment, or fraud) will result in immediate permanent termination.

We may also suspend or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part, for legitimate business or technical reasons. If we discontinue the Service entirely for reasons unrelated to your conduct, we will give you reasonable notice and a reasonable opportunity to export your content, and we will refund purchased credits that remain unused.

If you believe we terminated your account in error, write to legal@picklemechanic.com and we will review it.

Closing your account

You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time. Closing your account does not entitle you to a refund of unused credits.

8. Storage and deletion of your videos

Videos and their derived files are retained for a limited period and are then deleted automatically. Our current retention period is 90 days from upload, after which a video and the files generated from it may be permanently removed. Analysis results may be retained after the underlying video is deleted.

The Service is not a backup service. Keep your own copy of any footage you care about. We are not liable for deleted, lost, or corrupted content, whether the loss results from scheduled deletion, account termination, a technical failure, or anything else.

9. AI analysis is informational only

Analysis, statistics, shot classifications, chat responses, and drill or technique suggestions are produced by automated systems. They are estimates, not facts. They will sometimes be wrong, incomplete, or misleading. They might misidentify a shot, attribute it to the wrong player, misread a body position, or confidently state something inaccurate.

Output is provided for general informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not medical, physical therapy, injury, fitness, nutrition, or professional advice, and it is not a substitute for a qualified professional. Do not rely on it to diagnose, treat, or rehabilitate any injury or condition. Consult a physician before beginning or changing any physical training program, and stop if something hurts.

You are solely responsible for any decision you make based on output from the Service. AI output may also be non-unique: similar input from other users may produce similar output, and we make no representation that output is original to you.

10. Coaches and coach services

The Service lets you request video review from, and arrange lessons with, coaches who independently use the platform. Coaches are independent third parties, not our employees or agents. We do not provide coaching, we do not supervise it, and we do not control what a coach says, does, or advises.

We do not endorse, certify, background-check, insure, or guarantee any coach, their credentials, their qualifications, their availability, or the quality, safety, or accuracy of their advice, unless we expressly state otherwise in the Service. Any lesson, session, or arrangement you make with a coach, especially one conducted in person, is between you and that coach, and you assume the risks of it. You are responsible for satisfying yourself that a coach is suitable before engaging them.

When you request a coach review, you authorize us to share the relevant video and analysis with that coach so they can perform the review.

If you are a coach

Coaches earn credits through the Service, including credits earned for reviews performed and credits accrued from their students' activity, on the terms shown in the Service at the time. Earned credits are credits, so Section 4 applies to them in full, including that they have no cash value and are not redeemable for money. We may change how credits are earned or accrued on a forward-looking basis. You are responsible for your own taxes, licensing, insurance, and legal compliance in connection with coaching, and you agree to provide services with reasonable skill and care and to treat students' footage as confidential and use it only to perform the review.

11. Our intellectual property

The Service, including its software, models, prompts, design, text, graphics, and the Pickle Mechanic name and logos, is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property law. We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service in accordance with these Terms. All rights not expressly granted are reserved. You may use the analysis output we generate about Your Content for your own purposes, including personal and internal use.

If you send us ideas, suggestions, or feedback, we may use them freely, without obligation or compensation to you.

Copyright complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice with the details required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to legal@picklemechanic.com. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

12. Third-party services

The Service depends on third parties, including Google (for sign-in, cloud infrastructure, storage, and AI processing) and Stripe (for payment processing). Your use of the Service is also subject to the terms of those providers where they apply to you. We are not responsible for third-party services, and outages or changes on their side may affect the Service.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, timely, or error-free; that analysis will be accurate, complete, or reliable; that defects will be corrected; or that your content will not be lost. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Assumption of risk

Pickleball is a physical activity and carries a risk of injury. You participate in it, and act on anything you learn from the Service, at your own risk. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you assume all risk of injury, and you release us from any claim arising out of physical activity you undertake in connection with the Service or in reliance on its output or on a coach's advice.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, content, goodwill, or business opportunity, arising out of or relating to the Service, even if we have been advised of the possibility of those damages.

Our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars ($50).

These limits apply regardless of the legal theory and are a fundamental part of the bargain between us; the Service would not be offered without them. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so parts of this section may not apply to you, and nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, such as liability for fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

16. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Pickle Mechanic and its owners, officers, employees, and contractors from any claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to Your Content, your use of the Service, your violation of these Terms or of any law, your dealings with a coach or another user, or your violation of anyone else's rights, including a claim by a person who appears in video you uploaded.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will give you reasonable notice by posting the updated Terms with a new effective date and, where appropriate, by notifying you in the Service. Changes take effect on the effective date, and using the Service after that date means you accept them. If you do not accept a change, stop using the Service and close your account.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree that the state and federal courts located in New York, New York have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service, and you consent to personal jurisdiction and venue there. Nothing in this section deprives you of the protection of mandatory consumer-protection law in your place of residence, or of the right to bring a claim in your local courts where that law gives you that right.

Before filing anything, please contact us at legal@picklemechanic.com. Most disputes can be resolved informally, and we will try in good faith to do so within 30 days.

19. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service, and supersede any prior agreement on that subject.
• Severability. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary, or severed, and the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Survival. Sections that by their nature should survive termination do so, including Sections 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 13 through 19.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms do not create rights for anyone other than you and us.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms: legal@picklemechanic.com.