Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By creating an account or signing in to Plaintext Strategies (“the Service”), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These Terms apply to both the web application at app.plaintextdc.com and the Plaintext Forms Assistant browser extension.

2. Description of Service

Plaintext Strategies provides AI-assisted tools for drafting responses to congressional appropriations request forms. The Service is intended for use by government affairs professionals, lobbyists, and organizations submitting funding requests to congressional offices in connection with the federal appropriations process.

The Service consists of two components with distinct functions: (1) a web application (“Dashboard”) at app.plaintextdc.com, which provides a searchable database of congressional form links, deadlines, and related information, and optional per-user tools for tracking submission activity and storing private notes; and (2) a browser extension (“Forms Assistant”), which reads form fields and uses AI to generate draft responses based on documents you provide. These two components are used together but operate independently — the Dashboard does not process AI requests and the extension does not store notes or submission tracking.

3. Account Terms

Accounts are issued on an individual basis. You may not share your login credentials with others or allow multiple individuals to use a single account. Each user of the Service must have their own account. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and for all activity that occurs under it.

Plaintext Strategies reserves the right to suspend or terminate accounts that show evidence of credential sharing or other misuse.

4. Acceptable Use

You agree to use the Service only for its intended purpose: drafting responses to congressional appropriations, NDAA, and related funding request forms on behalf of organizations you are authorized to represent.

You may not use the Service to submit false or misleading information to any congressional office, to circumvent any government process or requirement, or for any purpose that violates applicable law.

5. AI-Generated Content (Forms Assistant extension)

The Forms Assistant extension uses artificial intelligence to generate draft responses based on documents and data you provide. AI-generated content may be inaccurate, incomplete, or unsuitable for submission without modification. You are solely responsible for reviewing and verifying all generated content before submitting it to any congressional office.

Plaintext Strategies makes no warranty that AI-generated drafts are accurate, current, or appropriate for any particular form or submission. Dollar amounts, dates, and other factual fields require especially careful human review.

6. Data Handling

Forms Assistant (browser extension)

When you use the extension through our platform proxy, your form content and uploaded documents are transmitted to Anthropic's API for AI processing. We do not store your document content, generated drafts, or form field data on our servers. We retain only usage metadata (such as which forms were accessed) for operational purposes.

Your organization profile data is stored locally in your browser and is never transmitted to our servers except as part of a generation request, where it is used and immediately discarded.

If you use the “Bring Your Own Key” feature, your content is transmitted directly from your browser to your chosen AI provider and does not pass through our servers. You are responsible for your provider's data handling practices and for complying with your provider's terms of service.

Dashboard (web application)

The Dashboard stores your account credentials and provides access to our congressional form links database. It does not process AI requests or receive document content.

The Dashboard includes several optional features for organizing your work: private notes attached to form links, completion tracking (recording whether you intend to submit or have submitted to a particular office), workspace names, and private form entries (links you add manually that are not in our database). These features are provided for your convenience and have no effect on your access to or use of the platform's core functionality. Any content you enter in these fields is stored in our database and is not visible to other users of the Service. As a matter of policy, Plaintext Strategies will not access or review this data. However, staff with direct database access have the technical ability to view stored data. If you prefer not to use these features, you may leave them blank or unused at any time.

The Dashboard also allows you to submit flags reporting potential errors in our form link database. When you submit a flag, the flag and any reason you provide are reviewed by Plaintext staff in order to maintain the accuracy of the database. Flagged content is not subject to the non-access policy described above.

The Dashboard's From ZIP/Address list feature lets you upload ZIP codes or street addresses (for example, an employee roster) to build a list of the congressional offices representing those locations. Uploaded ZIPs and addresses are used only to determine which districts they fall in and are not stored — on our servers, in our database, or in any log. When a street address is needed to resolve a ZIP code that spans more than one district, that address is transmitted to the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoding service for processing; it is not retained by us and is not used for any other purpose. District lookups are also powered in part by the free HUD USER Data API. This product uses the HUD User Data API but is not endorsed or certified by HUD User.

7. Intellectual Property

The Service, including but not limited to its software, system prompts, AI instructions, form extraction logic, and user interface, is the proprietary intellectual property of Plaintext Strategies and is protected by copyright and other applicable law.

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, copy, reproduce, or otherwise attempt to extract the source code, system prompts, AI instructions, or other proprietary components of the Service, whether for competitive purposes or otherwise. You may not use any component of the Service as the basis for a competing product or service.

Nothing in these Terms grants you any ownership interest in the Service or its underlying technology.

8. Third-Party AI Providers (Forms Assistant extension)

If you use the Bring Your Own Key feature in the Forms Assistant extension, you are responsible for obtaining and maintaining your own API key with your chosen provider, for all costs charged by that provider, and for complying with that provider's terms of service and acceptable use policies. Plaintext Strategies is not responsible for the availability, pricing, or data practices of any third-party AI provider.

9. No Warranty

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranty of any kind, express or implied. Plaintext Strategies does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that AI-generated content will be accurate or suitable for any purpose.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Plaintext Strategies shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the Service, including but not limited to any errors in AI-generated content submitted to congressional offices.

11. Termination

Plaintext Strategies may suspend or terminate your account at any time for violation of these Terms or for any other reason at its discretion. You may stop using the Service at any time.

12. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Continued use of the Service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. We will note the date of the most recent update above.

13. Contact

Questions about these Terms may be directed to contact@plaintextdc.com.