Terms of Service

§ 1 Scope and provider

WhyVault is provided by Ohrlaf GmbH, Reichholz 1, 87634 Obergünzburg, Germany, registered with the Local Court (Amtsgericht) Kempten under HRB 16681, represented by its managing director Kilian Wimmer ("we"). You can reach us at hello@whyvault.io.

These Terms of Service apply to your ("you") use of WhyVault – the website whyvault.io, the app at app.whyvault.io and MCP access at mcp.whyvault.io. They apply to consumers and businesses alike, unless a rule applies to only one of these groups.

Deviating or additional terms of yours apply only if we expressly agree to them.

You buy the Pro subscription through Stripe (§ 5). The purchase is additionally governed by the terms of Stripe or Link shown to you at checkout.

§ 2 What WhyVault provides

WhyVault is a hosted store for notes in Markdown (your "vault"). You write your notes in the web app and can connect AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) – by signing in (OAuth) or with a personal access key.

Connected assistants can read your notes and, if you allow it, write them. Deleting is not possible via MCP. Every change is saved as a version and can be restored; deleted notes go to the trash first. You can export your vault as a zip of Markdown files at any time.

• Free: free of charge, up to 20 notes of your own (notes from the template don't count), one vault.
• Pro: paid, unlimited notes.

The exact scope of each plan is described in the pricing overview on whyvault.io at the time you book.

AI assistants are not part of our service. WhyVault itself does not run AI models on your content. We give no warranty for answers, summaries or changes produced by an assistant. Your use of an assistant is governed by your contract with its provider (e.g. Anthropic or OpenAI).

We strive to keep WhyVault available at all times but do not guarantee any specific availability. Where possible, we schedule maintenance for low-traffic times and announce longer interruptions in advance.

We keep developing WhyVault and may change features where this is reasonable for you and the core of the service remains: storing, reading, editing and exporting notes and connecting assistants.

§ 3 Registration and account

To use WhyVault, you create an account with your email address. You sign in via a link we email to you; you can also set a password. The contract for the Free plan is concluded when you confirm your email address.

You must be of legal age and have full legal capacity. Each account belongs to exactly one person and is not transferable. Accounts must not be created by automated means.

Keep your credentials secret: your password, sign-in links and access keys for assistants. If you suspect unauthorized access, revoke the affected access keys and connections in the app immediately and let us know.

You decide which assistants you connect and whether they may only read or also write. Whatever a connected assistant does in your vault is done on your behalf – you are responsible for it as for your own changes. The history lets you trace and undo every change.

§ 4 Your content

Your notes and files belong to you. All rights in them remain with you.

You grant us a simple, non-transferable right to store, copy and display your content to the extent necessary to operate WhyVault – for example for versions, backups, export and handing content to assistants you have connected. This right ends with the contract.

We do not use your content to train AI models or for advertising, and we do not sell it. We only look at it if you ask us to (e.g. for support), if we are legally required to, or if it is necessary to stop a specific abuse.

In particular, you may not:

• store or distribute unlawful content or infringe the rights of others, such as copyright or personality rights;
• upload malware or use WhyVault for spam or attacks on other systems;
• load WhyVault with automated requests beyond the usual extent or circumvent security measures.

If you violate these rules, we may block the affected content, stop connections and, in serious cases, terminate the contract (§ 9).

You can export your vault at any time – on the Free plan too, and even if you have more notes than your plan allows.

§ 5 Pro subscription, prices and payment

Pro costs €9.99 per month or €99 per year. All prices include statutory VAT. The price shown to you when you book applies.

We sell the Pro subscription through Stripe Managed Payments. Stripe is the seller (reseller) of the subscription; you pay via Link, a Stripe service. Stripe calculates VAT, issues invoices, collects payments and handles refunds and payment disputes. We provide the Pro features in WhyVault.

The subscription runs for one month or one year and renews automatically for the same period unless you cancel beforehand. Stripe collects the amount at the start of each period.

You can cancel at any time, effective at the end of the current billing period – in your profile in the app, in Stripe's customer portal or at link.com. Pro stays active until then. In the customer portal you can also switch between monthly and yearly billing; the difference is prorated.

When Pro ends, for example after cancellation or if a payment fails permanently, your account moves to the Free plan. Nothing is deleted: you can keep reading, editing and exporting all notes. If you are above the Free limit, you just can't create new notes until you are below it again or book Pro.

§ 6 Right of withdrawal

As a consumer, you generally have a statutory right to withdraw from contracts concluded online within 14 days.

When you buy the Pro subscription, Stripe is your contractual partner for the purchase. Stripe informs you about your right of withdrawal during checkout and handles withdrawal and refunds. You'll find the details in the terms of Stripe or Link and in your order confirmation.

You can end the Free plan at any time without notice by having your account deleted (§ 9).

§ 7 Liability

We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, for fraudulently concealed defects and where we have given a guarantee.

On the Pro plan, we are liable for slight negligence only if we breach an essential contractual obligation – an obligation whose fulfilment makes proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely. Liability is then limited to the damage typical for the contract and foreseeable.

The Free plan is free of charge. There – apart from the cases in the first paragraph – we are liable only for intent and gross negligence, in line with the statutory rules for services provided free of charge (§§ 521, 524, 599, 600 German Civil Code).

We are not liable for content and actions of AI assistants you connect unless the damage results from a fault of WhyVault.

Otherwise, our liability is excluded. These rules also apply to our employees, representatives and vicarious agents.

§ 8 Backups

We save every change as a version and take reasonable precautions against data loss. There is, however, no complete protection.

So please make your own backups regularly, for example with the export. For data loss we caused through slight negligence, we are liable only for the effort that would have been needed to restore the data from such a backup.

§ 9 Term and termination of the account

The contract for your account runs for an indefinite period. You can end it at any time. Until you can delete your account yourself in the app, email us at hello@whyvault.io or post@ohrlaf.com. Cancel a running Pro subscription first as described in § 5.

We may terminate the Free plan with one month's notice by email.

Either party may terminate without notice for good cause. For us, good cause exists in particular if you seriously or, despite a warning, repeatedly violate § 4, abuse WhyVault or endanger other users or our systems.

Before we terminate, we give you the opportunity to export your data – except in serious cases where this cannot reasonably be expected of us.

§ 10 Changes to these terms

We may change these terms if laws, case law or our offering change. We announce changes by email at least six weeks before they take effect.

You can object to the changes until they take effect. If you don't object, they are deemed accepted; we will point this out explicitly in the announcement. If you object, either party may terminate the contract as of the date the change takes effect.

Changes to the main services or to prices only apply if you expressly agree to them.

§ 11 Final provisions

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, this choice of law applies only insofar as it does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the country in which you have your habitual residence.

If you are a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising from this contract is Kempten (Allgäu), Germany.

We are neither obliged nor willing to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.

The contract language is German. Only the German version of these terms is binding; the English version is a translation for your information.

If any provision of these terms is invalid, the rest of the contract remains valid. The invalid provision is replaced by the statutory rules.