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Terms of Service

Last Updated: May 5, 2026

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing and using The Art of CTO website, mobile application, interactive tools, API, Command Center, and related services (collectively, the "Platform"), you accept and agree to be bound by the terms and provisions of this agreement. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use the Platform.

These Terms of Service apply to all users of the Platform, including visitors, registered users, and subscribers. Additional terms may apply to specific features and are incorporated by reference when you use those features.

2. Account Terms

To access certain features, you must create an account via our authentication provider (Auth0). By creating an account, you agree that:

  • You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials
  • You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account
  • You will provide accurate and complete information when creating your account
  • You will maintain only one account per person
  • You will promptly notify us of any unauthorized use of your account

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account at our discretion if we believe you have violated these terms, engaged in fraudulent activity, or posed a security risk to the Platform.

3. Subscription and Billing

The Platform offers free and paid subscription tiers. By subscribing to a paid plan, you agree to the following:

  • Payment processing: All payments are processed by Stripe. We do not store your payment card details on our servers.
  • Auto-renewal: Paid subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each billing period unless cancelled before the renewal date.
  • Cancellation: You may cancel your subscription at any time from your account dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. No partial refunds are provided for unused time within a billing period.
  • Price changes: We may change subscription prices with 30 days' notice. Existing subscriptions will be charged the new price at the next renewal.
  • Free tier limits: Free accounts are subject to usage limits (e.g., limited AI Assistant questions per month). These limits may change at our discretion.

4. Use License

Permission is granted to access and use the Platform for personal and internal business purposes, subject to these terms. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title.

Under this license you may not:

  • Modify, copy, or redistribute our content, tools, or software without permission
  • Use the materials for any public display or commercial redistribution
  • Attempt to reverse engineer any software contained on the Platform
  • Remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the materials
  • Transfer the materials to another person or "mirror" the materials on any other server
  • Use automated tools to scrape, crawl, or bulk-download content without prior written permission

5. Newsletter and Communications

By subscribing to our newsletter or enabling push notifications, you:

  • Consent to receiving periodic emails containing insights, frameworks, and updates
  • Consent to receiving push notifications if you opt in via your browser or mobile device
  • Consent to receiving weekly briefing emails if enabled in your preferences
  • Acknowledge that your email address and optional information (name) will be stored securely with Brevo, our email service provider
  • Agree to our Privacy Policy
  • Understand that we will never sell or share your email address with third parties for marketing purposes

Unsubscribe

You may unsubscribe from communications at any time by:

  • Clicking the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any newsletter email
  • Disabling push notifications in your browser or device settings
  • Updating your preferences in your account dashboard
  • Contacting us at unsubscribe@theartofcto.com

Upon unsubscribing, we will remove your email address from our mailing list within 48 hours. You may continue to receive emails that were already in queue before your unsubscribe request was processed.

6. AI-Generated Content Disclaimer

Portions of the content on this Platform are generated or assisted by artificial intelligence systems, including but not limited to:

  • Published articles and daily syncs: Generated by our automated content pipeline (PosterBot, DailySync) and reviewed by editors before publication. While we strive for accuracy, AI-generated content may contain errors or omissions.
  • AI Assistant responses: Provided for informational and educational purposes only. Responses are not professional, legal, financial, or technical advice, and should not be relied upon as such.
  • Foundry AI features: AI-generated strategic recommendations, business plans, and analyses are suggestive tools to inform your decision-making, not prescriptive guidance.
  • 1:1 Assistant AI suggestions: AI-suggested meeting topics and insights are provided as a starting point and should be adapted to your specific context.

Third-party AI processing: AI features route through Cloudflare AI Gateway to OpenAI (GPT-4o and successor models) for the AI Assistant, Foundry AI, 1:1 AI suggestions, and content generation. Anthropic (Claude) is additionally used by our community-engagement automation (EngageBot) for moderation and reply assistance. We do not use your inputs to train third-party models. See our Privacy Policy for details on how third-party providers handle your data.

Third-party analytics: If you grant analytics consent, anonymized usage events and (for opted-in sessions) masked session replays are processed by Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, and PostHog. PostHog additionally provides product-funnel analysis. All three start with capturing disabled by default and are activated only after you accept analytics cookies; you can withdraw consent at any time via the consent banner. See our Privacy Policy for the full subprocessor list, retention periods, and your opt-out controls.

Sensitive data warning: Do not submit confidential, proprietary, or sensitive personal information (such as trade secrets, passwords, financial account details, or personal health information) to AI-powered features. While we take reasonable measures to protect your data, AI features involve third-party processing and are not designed for handling sensitive information.

You acknowledge that AI-generated content may be inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, and you use it at your own risk. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of AI-generated content.

7. Interactive Tools Disclaimer

The Platform offers 60+ interactive tools for technology leaders, including tools related to compliance (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, NIS2, CCPA, EU AI Act, WCAG, DORA), engineering metrics, financial planning, architecture, and team management.

These tools are provided for educational and informational purposes only. They are not substitutes for professional advice. Specifically:

  • Compliance tools are educational checklists and assessment aids — they do not constitute certification, legal compliance verification, or professional audit services
  • Financial tools (cloud cost estimator, engineering ROI, etc.) provide estimates based on your inputs and should not be relied upon for financial decisions without independent verification
  • Architecture and engineering tools provide frameworks and guidance, not definitive solutions for your specific technical environment
  • Team and organizational tools offer general guidance that may not apply to your specific jurisdiction or circumstances

You are solely responsible for validating any outputs from our tools against your specific requirements and consulting qualified professionals where appropriate.

8. File Uploads

Certain features (such as CTO Office inquiries) allow you to upload files. By uploading files, you agree that:

  • You are solely responsible for the content of any files you upload
  • Accepted file types include PDF, Word, Excel, images, and text files up to 50 MB per file
  • All uploaded files are automatically scanned for malware using ClamAV. Files that fail the scan will be rejected.
  • We reserve the right to reject or delete any uploaded file at our discretion
  • Uploaded files are stored in Cloudflare R2 and retained until the associated inquiry is closed, plus 90 days
  • We accept no liability for the content of uploaded files or any consequences arising from them

9. Referral Program

The Platform may offer a referral program that allows you to invite others to join. By participating in the referral program, you agree that:

  • You will only refer individuals you personally know and who have consented to receiving an invitation
  • You will not use the referral program for unsolicited mass outreach, spam, or misleading promotions
  • Referral credits are non-transferable, have no cash value, and may only be applied toward Platform subscriptions or features
  • We reserve the right to revoke referral credits and suspend referral privileges if we detect abuse, fraud, or self-referrals
  • We may modify or discontinue the referral program, including credit values and eligibility criteria, at any time with reasonable notice

10. User-Generated Content and Data Ownership

You retain full ownership of all content and data you create within the Platform, including but not limited to:

  • Command Center entities, relationships, assessments, incidents, and activity logs
  • Foundry business plans, lean canvases, and strategic planning data
  • SplitCause causal graphs, hypotheses, evidence, and snapshots
  • 1:1 Assistant meeting notes, action items, and team member data
  • Bookmarks, notes, tags, and learning path progress
  • SEO Command Center tracked keywords, rank snapshots, and LLM visibility history

By creating content on the Platform, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive license to store, process, display, and transmit your content solely for the purpose of operating and providing the Platform to you. This license terminates when you delete your content or close your account.

Your right to export: You may request an export of your data at any time by contacting us at privacy@theartofcto.com.

Our intellectual property: The Art of CTO retains all intellectual property rights in the Platform itself, including site content, tools, software, design, AI models, and underlying technology. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership of our intellectual property to you.

11. Content and Intellectual Property

All content published on The Art of CTO, including but not limited to text, graphics, logos, images, audio (daily sync recordings), and software, is the property of The Art of CTO or its content suppliers and is protected by international copyright laws. Some content is AI-generated and reviewed by editors (see Section 6).

12. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Platform and all materials are provided on an ‘as is’ and ‘as available’ basis. The Art of CTO makes no warranties, expressed or implied, and hereby disclaims and negates all other warranties including, without limitation, implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement of intellectual property or other violation of rights.

Without limiting the foregoing:

  • AI-generated content (articles, briefings, assistant responses, strategic recommendations) may contain errors, hallucinations, or outdated information
  • Interactive tools and assessments provide educational guidance and are not professional, legal, financial, or compliance advice
  • Compliance tools do not certify, verify, or guarantee compliance with any regulatory framework
  • We do not guarantee the availability, accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information or feature on the Platform

13. Limitations of Liability

In no event shall The Art of CTO or its suppliers be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of data or profit, or due to business interruption) arising out of the use or inability to use the Platform, even if The Art of CTO or an authorized representative has been notified orally or in writing of the possibility of such damage. This includes, but is not limited to, damages arising from:

  • Reliance on AI-generated content, tool outputs, or compliance assessments
  • Loss of user-created data (Command Center, Foundry, SplitCause, 1:1 data)
  • Service interruptions or unavailability
  • Unauthorized access to your account

14. Prohibited Uses

You may not use the Platform or its services:

  • In any way that violates any applicable local, national, or international law
  • To transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising or promotional material
  • To impersonate or attempt to impersonate The Art of CTO, our employees, another user, or any other person or entity
  • To engage in any automated use of the system (bots, scrapers, etc.) without prior written permission
  • To circumvent rate limits, access controls, or other security measures
  • To share account credentials with others or maintain multiple accounts for a single person
  • To use AI features (AI Assistant, Foundry, 1:1 AI suggestions) to generate harmful, misleading, illegal, or abusive content
  • To attempt to extract, reconstruct, or reverse-engineer training data, AI models, or proprietary algorithms
  • To use the Platform to compete with The Art of CTO by systematically copying content or functionality

15. Mobile Application Terms

If you access the Platform via our mobile application, the following additional terms apply:

  • The mobile application is subject to the applicable app store terms (Apple App Store, Google Play Store)
  • We do not guarantee that the mobile application will be available on all devices or operating system versions
  • The mobile application may require periodic updates. Failure to install updates may result in reduced functionality or security.
  • Push notifications are optional and can be disabled at any time through your device settings

16. API and Service Availability

We strive to maintain high availability of the Platform, but we do not offer a formal Service Level Agreement (SLA). We reserve the right to:

  • Perform planned maintenance, which may result in temporary service interruptions
  • Modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature or service at any time, with reasonable notice where practicable
  • Impose or modify rate limits on API usage and Platform features
  • Prioritize service availability based on subscription tier

17. Changes to Terms

We reserve the right to modify these terms at any time. We will notify users of any material changes by updating the "Last Updated" date and, where appropriate, via email notification.

Your continued use of the Platform after any modifications indicates your acceptance of the new terms.

18. Severability

If any provision of these Terms of Service is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect. The invalid or unenforceable provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid and enforceable.

19. Governing Law

These Terms of Service shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any disputes arising under or in connection with these terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

If you are a consumer in the European Union, you retain the benefit of any mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you reside. Nothing in this clause limits your rights under applicable consumer protection legislation.

20. Entire Agreement

These Terms of Service, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and The Art of CTO regarding your use of the Platform. These terms supersede any prior agreements or understandings, whether written or oral, relating to the subject matter herein.

21. Contact Us

If you have any questions about these Terms of Service, please contact us at:

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