Legal
Terms of Service
Effective date: 20 April 2026
Please read these Terms carefully. By creating an account or using the Waterline hosted service, you enter into a binding agreement with Daniel Franco, trading as Waterline.
These Terms govern only the hosted service (app.getwaterline.dev).
1. Definitions
- “Waterline”, “we”, “us”, or “our” means Daniel Franco, trading as Waterline, operating from the Netherlands.
- “Service” means the hosted software-as-a-service platform accessible at app.getwaterline.dev, including all related APIs, integrations, and documentation provided by Waterline.
- “Customer”, “you”, or “your” means the natural person or legal entity that creates an account and uses the Service, and, where the account is created on behalf of an organisation, that organisation.
- “Workspace” means a logical grouping within the Service associated with a single organisation or team.
- “Customer Data” means data imported into or generated through the Service by or on behalf of the Customer, including GitHub metadata, Jira data, and any content originating from systems the Customer connects.
- “Subscription” means a paid plan for access to the Service as described on the pricing page.
2. Eligibility and Account Registration
You must be at least 16 years old and have the legal capacity to enter into contracts to use the Service. If you are using the Service on behalf of an organisation, you represent and warrant that you have the authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.
You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You must notify us promptly at hello@getwaterline.dev upon becoming aware of any unauthorised use of your account.
You must provide accurate and complete registration information. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts where information is materially false or misleading.
3. Licence Grant
Subject to your compliance with these Terms and, where applicable, payment of the applicable Subscription fees, Waterline grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to access and use the Service during the Subscription term solely for your internal business purposes.
This licence does not include the right to sublicence, resell, or make the Service available to third parties outside your organisation, or to reverse-engineer the underlying software.
4. Acceptable Use
You agree not to use the Service to:
- violate any applicable law, regulation, or third-party right;
- upload, transmit, or distribute malicious code, malware, or any content designed to interrupt, damage, or gain unauthorised access to any system;
- circumvent, disable, or interfere with security-related features of the Service;
- access the Service by means other than the interfaces and APIs that Waterline makes available;
- use the Service to build a competing product or to systematically extract or scrape the underlying functionality for external redistribution;
- exceed usage limits or rate limits in a manner that materially degrades the Service for other users;
- impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.
We reserve the right to investigate suspected violations and, without limiting other remedies, to suspend or terminate access to the Service for any Customer who we reasonably believe is in material breach of this section.
5. Customer Data
5.1 Ownership
As between the parties, Customer Data is and remains the property of the Customer or the Customer's licensors. Waterline acquires no ownership rights in Customer Data by virtue of providing the Service.
5.2 Licence to process
You grant Waterline a limited, worldwide, royalty-free licence to access, process, and display Customer Data solely to the extent necessary to provide the Service to you and to fulfil our obligations under these Terms. With respect to source code specifically: the licence extends to reading file content for the purpose of deriving functionality summaries as described in Section 5.4; it does not include any right to store, copy, index, or otherwise retain the underlying source code itself. We will not use Customer Data to train machine-learning models or for any purpose beyond operating and improving the Service.
5.3 Data processing
To the extent that Customer Data contains personal data of individuals within the European Economic Area, Waterline processes such data as a data processor acting on the Customer's behalf. Our Privacy Policy describes how we handle personal data. Where required by the GDPR, a Data Processing Agreement is available upon request.
5.4 Source code is read and summarised, not stored
Waterline requires read access to your repository to track ticket progress. When code changes, Waterline reads the relevant file content and derives a natural-language functionality summary — an abstraction describing what the code does. That summary is stored in your workspace and updated automatically each time the relevant code is modified. The underlying source code — file contents, diffs, and line-level changes — is never written to any Waterline database, file system, log, cache, or backup medium.Progress answers are computed by matching the stored summary against your ticket's acceptance criteria, not by re-reading the code on each query.
LLM sub-processors: Generating the functionality summary requires transmitting relevant portions of your code to a third-party large language model API. Waterline currently uses OpenAI and/or Anthropic for this purpose. Code content is sent to these providers over encrypted connections solely to produce the summary and is not retained by Waterline or, by default under their respective API policies, by those providers. Waterline will notify you before adding or replacing any LLM sub-processor used for this purpose.
Waterline makes no claim over your source code, does not index it verbatim, and does not use it for any purpose beyond deriving the functionality summary described above. This constraint applies to all tiers of the Service. Any future change to this data model that would involve retaining source code will be communicated in advance and will require your explicit consent.
6. Subscriptions and Payment
6.1 Free tier
Waterline may offer a free tier with limited functionality. We reserve the right to modify or discontinue the free tier at any time upon reasonable notice.
6.2 Paid subscriptions
Paid Subscriptions are billed in advance on a monthly or annual cycle as selected at sign-up. All fees are exclusive of VAT and other applicable taxes, which will be added where required by law.
6.3 Payment failure
If payment fails, we will notify you and provide a grace period of at least 7 days to resolve the issue before downgrading or suspending access to paid features.
6.4 Refunds
Subscriptions are generally non-refundable. If you cancel, you retain access until the end of the current billing period. We may, at our sole discretion, issue a pro-rata refund where we consider it equitable to do so.
6.5 Price changes
We will provide at least 30 days' notice before increasing the price of your current Subscription plan. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of a price change constitutes acceptance of the new pricing.
7. Service Availability and Changes
We aim to provide a reliable service but do not guarantee any specific uptime or availability. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the Service at any time. Where we discontinue a feature on which you materially rely, we will endeavour to provide at least 30 days' advance notice.
Scheduled maintenance will be communicated in advance wherever practicable. Emergency maintenance may be performed without prior notice where necessary to protect the security or integrity of the Service.
8. Intellectual Property
The Service (excluding Customer Data) and all associated intellectual property rights are and remain the exclusive property of Waterline and its licensors. Nothing in these Terms grants you any rights in the Service beyond the limited access licence described in Section 3.3.
If you provide feedback, suggestions, or ideas regarding the Service, you grant Waterline a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use such feedback for any purpose without restriction or compensation to you.
9. Confidentiality
Each party agrees to keep confidential any non-public information disclosed by the other party that is designated as confidential or that reasonably should be understood to be confidential given the nature of the information and the circumstances of disclosure. Confidential information of each party will be used only for the purpose of performing obligations or exercising rights under these Terms.
Obligations of confidentiality do not apply to information that: (a) is or becomes publicly known through no breach of these Terms; (b) was rightfully known before receipt from the disclosing party; (c) is independently developed without reference to the confidential information; or (d) must be disclosed pursuant to law or court order, provided that the receiving party gives prompt prior written notice where legally permitted.
10. Disclaimer of Warranties
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, WATERLINE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
WATERLINE DOES NOT WARRANT THAT: (A) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS; (B) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; (C) RESULTS OBTAINED THROUGH USE OF THE SERVICE WILL BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE; OR (D) ANY ERRORS IN THE SERVICE WILL BE CORRECTED.
The progress assessments generated by the Service are derived from code metadata and are provided for informational purposes only. They do not constitute a guarantee of software quality, completeness, or fitness for any purpose.
11. Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, AND EXCEPT IN CASES OF WILFUL MISCONDUCT OR GROSS NEGLIGENCE:
- WATERLINE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, OR COST OF SUBSTITUTE SERVICES, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THESE TERMS OR THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
- WATERLINE'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE TOTAL FEES PAID OR PAYABLE BY YOU TO WATERLINE IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR, IF YOU ARE ON A FREE PLAN, €100.
Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under Dutch law.
If you are a consumer within the meaning of Dutch consumer protection legislation, nothing in these Terms affects your statutory consumer rights.
12. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Waterline and its officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms; (b) your violation of any applicable law or third-party right; or (c) your Customer Data, including any claim that Customer Data infringes the intellectual property or privacy rights of a third party.
13. Term and Termination
13.1 Term
These Terms commence on the date you first use the Service and remain in effect until terminated in accordance with this section.
13.2 Termination by you
You may terminate these Terms at any time by deleting your account. Account deletion does not entitle you to a refund of prepaid fees except as set out in Section 6.4.
13.3 Termination by Waterline
We may terminate or suspend your access to the Service immediately and without prior notice if: (a) you are in material breach of these Terms and, where the breach is remediable, you fail to remedy it within 14 days of written notice; (b) you fail to pay undisputed fees when due; or (c) we are required to do so by law.
We may also terminate the Service for all users upon 60 days' written notice if we decide to discontinue the Service.
13.4 Effect of termination
Upon termination, your right to access the Service ceases immediately. We will make Customer Data available for export for 30 days following termination, after which it will be deleted in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Sections 1, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16 survive termination.
14. Governing Law and Disputes
These Terms and any disputes arising out of or in connection with them are governed by the laws of the Netherlands, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.
In the event of a dispute, the parties agree to first attempt resolution through good-faith negotiation for a period of 30 days. If the dispute cannot be resolved by negotiation, it will be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you also have the right to use the EU Online Dispute Resolution platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.
15. Amendments to These Terms
We may amend these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we will provide at least 14 days' written notice to registered users before the new Terms take effect. Notice will be given by email to the address associated with your account and/or by a prominent notice within the Service.
Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of amended Terms constitutes acceptance of the amended Terms. If you do not accept the amended Terms, you must cease using the Service before the effective date.
16. General Provisions
16.1 Entire agreement
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any applicable Order Form or Subscription confirmation, constitute the entire agreement between the parties regarding the Service and supersede all prior agreements, representations, and understandings.
16.2 Severability
If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
16.3 No waiver
Failure by either party to enforce any provision of these Terms will not constitute a waiver of that party's right to enforce it on a later occasion.
16.4 Assignment
You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. Waterline may assign its rights and obligations under these Terms to a successor entity in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of its assets, provided that the successor assumes all obligations herein.
16.5 Force majeure
Neither party will be liable for delays or failures in performance resulting from circumstances beyond their reasonable control, including acts of God, war, civil unrest, governmental action, or failures of third-party infrastructure providers, provided that the affected party notifies the other promptly and uses reasonable efforts to mitigate the impact.
16.6 Language
These Terms are written in English. If translated into another language, the English version prevails in case of conflict.
17. Contact
Questions about these Terms should be directed to: