Terms of Service

Who these terms are with

These terms apply between you and Emerging Freelancer ([sole trader / registered company and number]). “I” means me; “you” means the person or business engaging me.

A project is governed by these terms together with the written scope for that project. Where the two disagree, the written scope wins — it is the document describing your actual job.

How a project is agreed

• Nothing is binding until there is a written scope and you have accepted it. Prices published on this site — currently from $120 to $500 — are starting points for the scope described, not quotes for your project.
• The scope states what is being built, what it connects to, what is deliberately excluded, the timeline and the price.
• If the scope changes, we agree the change and its cost in writing before I act on it. I will not do extra work and invoice you for it afterwards, and I will not absorb significant extra work silently.

Payment

Needs your input: Your actual payment terms — the advance percentage, when the balance falls due, and any late-payment interest. The wording below is a reasonable default for freelance work, not a decision I can make for you. The advance figure comes from advancePercent in src/lib/legal.ts, so changing it there updates this page and the Refund Policy together.

• An advance of 50% is payable before work starts; the balance is due on delivery, before handover of credentials and source files.
• Invoices are payable within 14 days.
• Prices exclude any taxes, duties or payment-processor fees that apply to you.
• Third-party running costs — model usage, telephony, hosting, platform subscriptions — are yours and are billed by those providers directly, not by me.
• If a project is cancelled, the advance is refunded in full before work starts and drawn down against completed stages afterwards. The Refund & Cancellation Policy sets out the stages and the arithmetic.

What I am responsible for

• Delivering what the written scope describes, working with reasonable skill and care.
• Telling you promptly if something will be late, when I know — not at the deadline.
• Providing written documentation and a handover session as part of every project.
• Honouring the post-launch support period stated in your scope.

What you are responsible for

Most delays on projects like these come from this side, so it is worth being explicit:

• Providing content, access and decisions within a reasonable time. Timelines assume responses within about five working days; longer gaps move the delivery date.
• Having the right to give me the access you give me, and the rights to any content, data or branding you supply.
• Accounts and subscriptions with third-party platforms, in your own name. I work inside your accounts rather than holding your business inside mine.
• Reviewing the work during the project and during any agreed review window. Sign-off is deemed given if a delivery goes 14 days without a response.

Who owns the work

• On full payment, you own the deliverables made specifically for you — the configurations, workflows, prompts, designs and custom code described in your scope.
• I keep ownership of anything pre-existing: my own libraries, boilerplate, tooling and general know-how. You get a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use those as part of your deliverables.
• Third-party components keep their own licences, which pass to you on their own terms.
• Until you have paid in full, the deliverables remain mine.
• I may describe the work in general terms as a portfolio piece. I will not publish your data, screenshots of your systems, or your name without your written agreement.

AI systems: what I can and cannot promise

This matters more here than in ordinary software work, so it is stated plainly rather than buried.

• AI models are probabilistic. An assistant can produce an incorrect or unexpected response even when it is correctly built. I design scope boundaries and human handoffs to contain that, and I test against realistic scenarios, but I cannot guarantee that a model will never produce a wrong answer.
• You remain responsible for what your business says to its customers, including through a system I build. Where that matters — pricing, policies, regulated advice — the agreed design is that the assistant escalates to a person rather than answering.
• I make no guarantee of business outcomes. Nothing I build comes with a promised number of leads, bookings, conversions, revenue or hours saved, and no such figure is claimed anywhere on this site.
• Third-party platforms change. Models are deprecated, APIs change and pricing moves. Keeping a system working through those changes is maintenance, not a defect, unless it falls inside your support period.

Support and defects

Every project includes a support period stated in your scope — 7, 14 or 30 days depending on the package. During it, I fix defects: places where the delivered work does not do what the scope says it does, at no extra cost.

New features, changes of mind, and breakage caused by third-party changes or by edits made by someone else are not defects. They can be quoted separately or covered by a maintenance arrangement.

Confidentiality

I treat your business information, data and credentials as confidential, and will not share them beyond what a project requires. I am happy to sign your NDA before we discuss anything sensitive. The same obligation applies to anything I share with you.

Limits of liability

Needs your input: Liability caps are the clause most worth a lawyer’s eye, and what is enforceable depends on where you and your clients are. The cap below is conventional for freelance work but is a starting point.

• My total liability for any project is limited to the fees you paid me for that project.
• I am not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, lost business, lost data or reputational harm.
• Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.
• You are responsible for keeping your own backups of your systems and data.

Ending a project

Either of us may end a project in writing. What happens to money is in the Refund & Cancellation Policy. On termination I hand over everything produced and paid for, and remove my access to your systems.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [Your City and Country], and its courts have jurisdiction over any dispute. If you are a consumer rather than a business, this does not remove rights you have under the law of your own country.

Before anyone goes near a court, I would rather talk. Most disagreements on projects this size come from an unclear scope, and are cheaper to fix by rereading it together.