Terms of Service

1. Welcome

These Terms govern your use of Guiding Light, a private Christian journaling and devotional app for iPhone. By installing or using the app, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the app.

These Terms are intended to be plainly readable. Where defined terms appear (e.g., “the App,” “the reflective companion”), they mean what the surrounding context makes clear. We are not a law firm, and these Terms have not been written like a contract for lawyers — they have been written for you.

2. The app at a glance

Guiding Light is:

• A private journaling space whose entries are encrypted on your iPhone and never visible to us
• A daily-verse companion drawing from public-domain Bible translations bundled with the app
• A “reflective companion” that asks honest questions about what you’ve written — backed by Anthropic’s Claude API
• Optionally, a narrated audio reader for public-domain scripture

What Guiding Light is not:

• An AI pastor
• A counselor, therapist, or medical professional
• A crisis hotline
• A substitute for in-person Christian community
• A scripture-translation engine — every verse it shows is retrieved from a bundled translation file, never generated

3. Your account and data

There are no accounts in version 1.0. Your data lives on your iPhone, encrypted with a key only you hold. Future versions may offer optional cloud sync; if and when they do, these Terms will be updated to describe how that works, and use of that feature will be opt-in.

You are responsible for keeping your device secure. If you lose your iPhone, the encrypted entries on it cannot be recovered by us; that’s a feature, not a bug.

4. Acceptable use

While using Guiding Light, please don’t:

• Use the app to harass, defame, or threaten anyone
• Attempt to break the app’s encryption or extract data belonging to other users (there is no other user data on the device, but principle matters)
• Reverse-engineer the app for the purpose of circumventing its security
• Use the reflective companion to generate content that violates Anthropic’s usage policies
• Use any third-party translation text the app loads (when applicable in future versions) outside the bounds of that translation’s copyright

Reasonable, prayerful, personal use — including the kinds of hard, painful, doubting, joyful, confused, grateful things you might write in a journal — is what the app is for.

5. The reflective companion is not a counselor

Guiding Light’s reflective companion offers questions, not answers. It is a software feature, not a person, not a pastor, and not a clinical or mental-health professional. It cannot replace the care of someone who knows you.

If you are in crisis — including thoughts of self-harm, ongoing abuse, or a recent loss you can’t carry — please reach out to a real person. The app will surface a region-appropriate referral when it detects crisis language:

• United States / Canada: call or text 988 anytime.
• United Kingdom / Ireland: call Samaritans on 116 123 anytime, free.
• Australia: call Lifeline on 13 11 14 anytime.
• New Zealand: call or text 1737 anytime, free.
• Other regions: findahelpline.com lists 24-hour lines by country.

Please don’t wait for the app to notice. Reach out to someone who can hear you.

The reflective companion is not infallible. It can phrase questions awkwardly, miss context, or surface a scripture that doesn’t fit your moment. We’ve built safeguards — every quoted verse is retrieved from a bundled translation rather than generated, contested interpretations are flagged where the model recognises them, the app is constrained from speaking as God or claiming divine authority — but software can still get things wrong. Treat its suggestions with the same discernment you would any other source.

6. Scripture

The app ships with the World English Bible (WEB) and King James Version (KJV), both in the public domain. Other translations may become available in future versions; each will be governed by its own licensing terms, which we will surface in the app.

Every verse the app displays is retrieved from a bundled translation file. The reflective companion may suggest a citation (for example, “Philippians 4:6”), but the verse text you see is always retrieved by the app, not produced by AI. If a citation can’t be resolved, the app declines to show it.

7. Audio

When narrated audio is available for a scripture passage, it is rendered by AI text-to-speech and cached on your device. Free-tier narration is produced on-device by Apple’s built-in speech synthesizer. Premium narration is produced on first play by OpenAI’s text-to-speech API (gpt-4o-mini-tts) and cached locally for offline replay. The cached audio is yours to listen to on your device; please don’t redistribute it. (In a future release premium narration will be pre-generated on our servers using ElevenLabs and bundled into a downloadable library.)

Narration is only ever made for public-domain translations (WEB, KJV). We do not produce AI-narrated audio of copyrighted translations.

8. Your content

The entries you write are yours. We don’t claim any rights to them, we can’t read them, and we never use them for any purpose. If a future version of the app introduces a sharing feature, it will be opt-in per share, not a blanket licence.

The app’s source code, design, copy, brand, and logo — including the dove mark and the typographic system — remain the intellectual property of Bergy Media. You’re welcome to take inspiration from the app, of course; please don’t clone the brand wholesale.

9. Updates and changes

We update the app to fix bugs, add features, and respond to changes in iOS, Anthropic’s API, scripture licensing, and our own product thinking. Updates may add, change, or remove features. We will note material changes in the App Store update notes.

We may update these Terms over time. The effective date at the top will change, and we’ll surface a notice inside the app the next time you open it for any material change. Continued use after a change means you accept it.

10. Disclaimers

Guiding Light is provided “as is.” We do not warrant that the app will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for any particular purpose. We do not warrant that the reflective companion will respond to every entry, that audio narration will be available for every passage, or that future features will arrive on any particular timeline.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Bergy Media disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Bergy Media’s total liability arising out of or relating to your use of Guiding Light will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you paid for the app in the twelve months preceding the claim, or (b) USD $50. We will not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost data, lost opportunities, or emotional distress.

This limitation is not intended to exclude liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law (for example, in some jurisdictions, liability for gross negligence or fraud cannot be limited). Where law restricts these terms, they apply to the maximum extent permitted.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold Bergy Media harmless from any claim, damage, or expense arising out of your misuse of the app or your violation of these Terms or applicable law. This clause is intended for serious abuse cases (e.g., using the app to attack someone) and is not meant to apply to ordinary, prayerful use.

13. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. You and Bergy Media agree that any dispute will be resolved in the courts located in the State of Texas, United States, except where local consumer-protection law requires otherwise.

If you live in the EU, UK, or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer-protection rules, those rules apply on top of these Terms; nothing here removes them.

14. Termination

You can stop using Guiding Light at any time by deleting it from your device. We can suspend or terminate access to the app if you materially violate these Terms — for example, by attempting to break its encryption, abusing the reflective companion to generate harmful content, or attacking other users.

Sections 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13 survive termination.

15. Apple App Store terms

You are also bound by the Apple Media Services Terms that govern downloading apps from the App Store. To the extent those terms conflict with these, the Apple terms control for the App Store-specific aspects (purchasing, refunds, etc.).

Apple is not a party to these Terms. Apple has no obligation to provide support for the app. Any claim that the app fails to conform to applicable warranties may be referred to Apple, and Apple may refund the purchase price; beyond that, Apple has no other warranty obligation. We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing claims about the app.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms:

Bergy Media
support@frozengrape.app

We read every email.