Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of Storykept (“Storykept”, “we”, “us”). Storykept is operated from Austria; the operator's full legal and contact details are in our Impressum. By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use Storykept.

What Storykept is

Storykept is a voice-first app for capturing and preserving personal and family stories. You record a memory by voice or text; an AI assistant transcribes it, asks gentle follow-up questions, helps shape it into a readable story, and can read it back to you aloud. It also recognises the people, places, and dates your stories mention to tag and organise them and to build a family tree. Family members can contribute to the same story so it grows over time.

Beta service

Storykept is currently offered as a beta. Features may change, break, or be removed, and the service is provided “as is” without warranties of any kind. We work hard to protect your recordings (see below), but during beta you should keep your own copy of anything irreplaceable.

Who can use it

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. If you record or upload a story that features a child — for example a grandchild's first words — you confirm you are that child's parent or guardian, or that you have their parent or guardian's agreement. By inviting another person to record (for example a parent or grandparent), you confirm you have their agreement to record and store their story.

Your account

You are responsible for keeping your login secure and for activity under your account. You can sign in with Google or with an email address and password. Use a strong, unique password; if Google sign-in is available to you, it is generally the safer option. Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without permission.

Actions taken through a correctly signed-in session are treated as yours until you tell us otherwise. We are not responsible for access to your stories that results from your login details being lost, shared, re-used from another service that was breached, or obtained by phishing — but we will always help you regain control. If you email us at hello@storykept.app to report a compromised account, we will promptly suspend access, end active sessions, and help you secure it. We will never ask for your password by email.

Your content stays yours

You own the recordings, transcripts, and stories you create. You grant us only the limited permission needed to run the service for you — to store your content, transcribe and process it with the AI providers listed in our Privacy Policy, and show it to the family members you choose to share it with. This permission exists solely so we can provide the service, lasts only as long as we host your content, and ends when you delete it.

We do not sell your content, and we do not use it to train AI models. Your original audio recordings are never altered — AI-cleaned and edited versions are kept as separate copies alongside the original.

How we protect your stories

We protect your content with measures appropriate to how personal it is: encryption in transit and at rest, EU-based storage for your recordings, access controls that limit every request to your own family circle, and security review as part of how we build. No online service can promise that a breach is impossible. If a security incident occurs that is likely to put your data at risk, we will inform you without undue delay and tell you what happened, what data was involved, and what we are doing about it, as required by EU data-protection law.

Your export is also your safety net: we encourage you to download your own copy of your stories from time to time, so that no failure of ours can ever take your family's stories from you. See Keeping & exporting your stories below.

Recording other people

Storykept lets you record audio. Recording another person's voice without their knowledge is unlawful in many places, including all-party-consent regions of the United States and under EU and Austrian law.

So, before recording anyone other than yourself, you agree to tell every participant they are being recorded and get their agreement first. If a child is being recorded, you confirm you have their parent or guardian's agreement. You are responsible for obtaining these consents and for following the recording and privacy laws that apply to everyone in the recording. Where we show a recording notice or consent prompt, it is there to help you — it does not transfer this responsibility away from you.

When you record or upload a story that includes other people, you confirm you have the rights, consents, and permissions needed to do so — including for their voice, image, likeness, and any personal details the story contains.

Sharing stories & share links

Storykept is private by default. You can also create a share link that lets anyone who has it read a specific story, including its audio, without signing in. A share link is unlisted but not access-controlled: anyone who obtains the link can open the story, and may be able to save, copy, or pass it on. Only create a share link for a story you are comfortable making effectively public.

You can revoke a share link at any time from the story's settings; revocation stops any new access, but we cannot retrieve copies that were already viewed or downloaded while the link was active. You are responsible for ensuring everyone featured in a shared story is comfortable with it being shared.

When you invite someone into your family circle or send them a recording or share link, you are choosing to give them access. What an invited member does with stories they can legitimately see — including saving or re-telling them — is between you and them. You can remove a member or revoke a link at any time to stop future access.

Acceptable use

Storykept is a private place for your family's stories, but it is not a venue for unlawful or abusive material. You agree not to record, upload, or share content that:

• sexually exploits, endangers, or abuses a child (we report this to the authorities — see below)
• depicts non-consensual sexual conduct, or shares intimate images of a person without their consent
• facilitates or threatens serious violence, terrorism, or human trafficking
• harasses, stalks, bullies, defames, or exposes the private information of a real person
• is hate speech or unlawful discrimination targeting people for who they are
• is otherwise illegal — fraud, trafficking, or instructions for serious crimes
• infringes another person's copyright, trademark, voice, image, or likeness without their permission
• impersonates another person or organisation
• contains malware, or is used to scrape, reverse-engineer, overload, or gain unauthorised access to the service
• resells or commercially exploits the service, or your stories on it, without our written permission

Because your vault is private, we rely on you to keep it lawful. We may suspend or remove accounts that break these rules.

Illegal content & reporting

Your vault is private by default. We do not pre-screen, review, or monitor the content you store, and you should not assume that we do. We may — but are not obliged to — review content where we have a good-faith reason, such as providing support, complying with the law, or responding to a report.

If you believe content on Storykept is illegal or breaks these terms — including something shared with you through a share link — email privacy@storykept.app with the link or details and a description of the problem. Once we have actual knowledge of illegal content, we will act promptly to remove or disable access to it, in line with the EU Digital Services Act's notice-and-action requirements.

Child sexual abuse material is the one thing we act on without waiting: we remove it on detection and report it to the relevant authorities.

Copyright & takedown

Stories often include photos, letters, music, or other material. You must have the right to upload anything you add. If you believe content on Storykept infringes your copyright, email privacy@storykept.app with: the work concerned, the link to the infringing content, your contact details, a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised, and a statement that your notice is accurate. We remove infringing content and may disable repeat infringers' accounts.

AI assistance

Storykept uses AI to transcribe speech, to help structure and polish your stories, to recognise and tag the people, places, and dates they mention, and to read them aloud in a single neutral narrator voice. AI can make mistakes — transcripts, tags, polished text, and narration may contain errors. You can always read and edit what the AI produces, and the original recording remains untouched as the source of truth.

We do not use your recordings, transcripts, or photos to train AI models, and we will never create a voice clone or synthetic likeness of you or anyone in your stories. The read-aloud narration uses a single neutral narrator voice, never a recreation of your or anyone else's actual voice. That is a permanent commitment, not a setting. To provide AI features we send your content to vetted providers acting as our processors; how that works, and who they are, is set out in our Privacy Policy.

Subscriptions & payments

Storykept offers a free plan and paid subscription plans. Payments are processed by our payment provider, Stripe, which acts as the merchant of record for paid subscriptions — Stripe is the seller on record for the transaction and handles billing, applicable taxes (such as VAT), receipts, and payment compliance on our behalf. Prices, billing periods, renewal terms, and any applicable taxes are shown clearly before you pay. Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel, which you can do at any time from your billing settings; cancelling keeps your plan until the end of the period you have already paid for.

Physical books and gift booklets are personalised goods. Storykept is the seller of record for those orders, Stripe processes the payment, and our print partner Lulu receives the book files and delivery address needed to print and ship them. We show the book price and shipping before you pay; once a personalised print order has been submitted to the printer, cancellation options may be limited, except where consumer law gives you additional rights.

We offer a 14-day money-back guarantee on your first payment. Full details of refunds, cancellations, and gift purchases are in our Refund Policy. Your statutory consumer rights, including any right of withdrawal under EU law, are unaffected by these terms.

Keeping & exporting your stories

You can export your stories and recordings at any time from your settings. Preserving your stories is the whole point of Storykept, so if we ever had to wind the service down, we would give you clear notice and a way to download everything first.

We recommend keeping your own downloaded copy of anything irreplaceable. Your export right is also your safety net — a copy in your hands means no failure of ours, technical or otherwise, can take your family's stories from you.

After you're gone

Storykept is built to outlast its users, so it matters what happens to your vault after you die. Where the feature is available, you may name a legacy contact who can be given access to, or an export of, your vault after your death, on reasonable proof. If you have not named one, we will respond to verified requests from your estate in line with the inheritance law that applies. Note that EU data-protection law does not, by itself, protect the personal data of people who have died — this clause is how we try to honour your wishes anyway.

Ending your use

You can delete your account at any time from your settings. When you do, we delete your data as described in our Privacy Policy. We may suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly breach these terms. We may also temporarily suspend an account or a feature when we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect you, your family circle, or other users — for example while investigating suspected unauthorized access — and we will restore access as soon as it is safe.

Liability

To the extent permitted by law, Storykept is provided without warranty during beta and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss.

Storykept runs on reputable infrastructure and service providers (listed in our Privacy Policy). We choose and configure them carefully and remain responsible to you under data-protection law for the providers we use. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for loss caused solely by a failure of third-party infrastructure that occurred despite that careful selection and configuration.

Where our liability can lawfully be limited, our total liability to you for any claim is capped at the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim or €100.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under Austrian law, including liability for death or personal injury, for intentional or grossly negligent conduct, or under mandatory consumer-protection or data-protection law. Your statutory rights are unaffected.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the service grows. If we make a material change, we will notify you in the app or by email. Continuing to use Storykept after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by Austrian law, without prejudice to the mandatory consumer protections of the country where you live. Questions? Email hello@storykept.app.