Terms of Service

1. Nature of Service

teachme.org.za provides an AI-powered Socratic writing coaching service ("Service") designed to help students in South Africa develop academic writing skills. The Service does not write assignments on your behalf. Instead, it guides you through structured reflection, questioning, and reference-anchored reasoning to develop your own writing competence.

The Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We make no guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that AI responses will be perfectly accurate at all times.

2. Service Description by Tier

2.1 Free Tier

• Access to core Socratic coaching sessions with usage limits.
• Standard AI model routing.
• APA 7 and SA/UK English feedback.

2.2 Pro Tier

• Increased session limits.
• Priority AI model routing with enhanced capability.
• Extended feedback on paragraph structure and argumentation.

2.3 Premium Tier

• Unlimited sessions.
• Access to the most capable AI models available on the Platform.
• Advanced reference integration and academic voice coaching.
• Priority support.

3. Service Availability

We aim for high availability but do not guarantee 100% uptime. Planned maintenance will be communicated in advance where possible. We are not liable for any loss resulting from downtime, interruptions, or technical issues.

4. User Conduct in Sessions

During coaching sessions, you agree to:

• Engage with the Platform honestly and in good faith for genuine learning purposes.
• Not attempt to manipulate the AI into producing complete essays or assessments on your behalf.
• Not use session outputs to misrepresent the origin of your academic work to any institution.
• Not probe, test, or extract information about the Platform's underlying prompt structures, model configurations, or AI routing logic.

Any attempt to systematically extract, replicate, or reconstruct the Platform's proprietary AI coaching methodology — including prompt structures, Socratic questioning logic, model routing decisions, or pedagogical sequencing — constitutes a breach of these Terms and an infringement of our intellectual property.

5. Data Use Within Sessions

Session content (your inputs and the AI's coaching responses) is used to:

• Provide the coaching service to you in real time.
• Improve Platform quality and safety, in anonymised and aggregated form only.

We do not sell your session data. We do not share individual session content with your institution unless compelled by law. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for full detail.

6. Third-Party AI Providers

The Service is powered by third-party large language model providers. While we take care in selecting and configuring these models, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of every AI-generated response. You should apply critical judgement to all coaching outputs and verify information independently where relevant.

7. Feedback & Improvement

We welcome feedback on the Service. By submitting feedback or suggestions, you grant us the right to use such feedback to improve the Platform without any obligation to compensate you. You do not acquire any interest in the Platform by virtue of submitting feedback.

8. Service Modifications

We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue features of the Service at any time. Where changes materially affect paid subscribers, we will provide 30 (thirty) days' advance notice.

9. Prohibited Reverse Engineering & Concept Extraction

You expressly agree not to:

• Reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code, AI prompts, model configurations, or pedagogical logic of the Platform.
• Use the Platform to train, benchmark, or inform a competing AI-powered academic writing service.
• Systematically reproduce the Platform's coaching style, question sequencing, or methodology for commercial purposes.
• Share, publish, or transmit screenshots, recordings, or transcripts of the Platform's proprietary coaching interactions for the purpose of replicating the Service.

Breach of this clause will result in immediate account termination and may give rise to legal proceedings under South African intellectual property and competition law.

10. Contact & Support