Terms of Service

§ 1 Scope and provider

WhyVault is offered by Ohrlaf GmbH, Reichholz 1, 87634 Obergünzburg, Germany, registered at 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 the MCP access at mcp.whyvault.io.

A consumer is any natural person who uses WhyVault predominantly neither for their trade nor their self-employed profession (§ 13 BGB); a business is anyone who uses WhyVault for such an activity (§ 14 BGB). Rules that only apply to one of these groups are marked as such.

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

You buy the Pro subscription from Link via Stripe Managed Payments (§ 5). Link's terms, shown to you at checkout, also apply to the purchase (https://link.com/terms).

§ 2 What WhyVault provides

WhyVault is a hosted store for notes in Markdown (your “vault”). You write and organise 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 token.

Connected assistants can read your notes and, if you allow it, create and change them. Deleting via MCP is not possible. 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 own notes (notes from the template don't count), 50 MB for attachments, one vault, all assistants.
• Pro: paid, unlimited notes, 10 GB for attachments.

The exact scope of the plans is described in the pricing on whyvault.io at the time of your booking. To prevent abuse, we limit technical operations such as writes by assistants (currently 30 per minute and connection) and simultaneous uploads.

AI assistants are not part of our service. WhyVault itself does not run AI models over your content. We give no warranty for answers, summaries or changes an assistant produces. Your use of an assistant is governed by your contract with its provider.

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

We keep developing WhyVault. We may make changes that don't put you at a disadvantage (such as new features) at any time. Other changes we only make for a valid reason – for example changed laws, security reasons or a provider discontinuing a function – if they cause you no additional costs and you are informed clearly and in good time. If such a change impairs your access to or use of WhyVault more than insignificantly, as a consumer you may end the contract free of charge within 30 days of being informed (§ 327r BGB). The core always remains: storing, reading, editing and exporting notes and connecting assistants.

§ 3 Conclusion of contract and account

To use WhyVault, you create an account: you enter your email address, agree to these terms and confirm your address via the link or code we send you. On confirmation, the contract for the Free plan is concluded between you and us. We do not store the contract text separately; you can view, save and print these terms here at any time.

The contract languages are German and English.

You must be at least 18 years old and have full legal capacity. Each account belongs to exactly one person and is not transferable. Accounts may not be created automatically.

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

You decide which assistants you connect and – for access tokens – whether they may only read or also write. What a connected assistant does in your vault happens 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, limited to the term of the contract, to store, copy and display your content to the extent necessary to operate WhyVault – for example for versions, backups, search, export and handing content to assistants you have connected.

We don't use your content to train AI models, don't use it for advertising and don't sell it. We only look at it if you ask us to (e.g. in support), if we are legally required to, or if it's necessary to fend off specific abuse or a malfunction.

In particular, you may not:

• store or distribute unlawful content or infringe third-party rights, such as copyright, trademark or personality rights;
• upload malware or use WhyVault for spam, phishing or attacks on other systems;
• burden WhyVault with automated requests beyond normal use, circumvent limits or security measures, or attempt to access other accounts;
• use WhyVault as a public file host or to distribute content to third parties.

If we learn of a violation, we may block affected content or stop connections as far as necessary and, in serious cases, terminate the contract (§ 7). We inform you about this where legally permitted and where it does not jeopardise the defence.

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 at the time of booking applies.

We sell the Pro subscription through Stripe Managed Payments. The seller (reseller) is Link, a Stripe service (“Sold through Link”). You conclude the purchase contract for the subscription with Link; Link calculates VAT, issues invoices, collects payments and handles withdrawals, refunds and payment disputes. We provide the Pro features in WhyVault; these terms apply to them.

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

You can cancel the monthly subscription at any time effective at the end of the current month. You can cancel the yearly subscription effective at the end of the first year; afterwards it renews for an indefinite period and you can cancel it at any time with one month's notice – we or Link refund the amount already paid for the time after the contract ends pro rata. Cancel in your profile under “Manage subscription” or at link.com. Pro stays active until the end.

In the customer portal you can 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 plan's limits, you just can't create new notes and attachments until you are below them again or book Pro.

Price changes for a running subscription only apply if you expressly agree. If you don't agree, the subscription continues at the previous price until the next possible cancellation date.

§ 6 Right of withdrawal

Pro subscription: Link is your contractual partner for the purchase. As a consumer you have a statutory right of withdrawal of 14 days. Link informs you about it at checkout and accepts your withdrawal; the details are in Link's terms (https://link.com/terms) and your order confirmation. If you write to us instead, we forward your withdrawal and help you with it.

If you start using Pro during the withdrawal period and then withdraw, a pro-rata amount may be charged for the time until the withdrawal if you expressly requested that the service start before the period ends.

Free plan: the Free plan is free of charge, and we process your data exclusively to provide WhyVault and fulfil legal obligations. There is therefore no statutory right of withdrawal for it (§ 312(1a) sentence 2 BGB). You can, however, end the Free plan at any time without notice by deleting your account (§ 7).

§ 7 Term, termination and deleting your account

The contract for your account runs for an indefinite period. You can end it at any time without notice: most easily by deleting your account yourself in your profile under “Delete account”, or by emailing us. A running Pro subscription ends immediately upon deletion; amounts already paid are not refunded pro rata – so cancel effective at the end of the period first if you still want to use the Pro you paid for.

We may terminate the Free plan with one month's notice by email, and the Pro subscription effective at the end of the respective billing period.

Either party may terminate without notice for good cause. Good cause for us 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 at least two weeks to export your data – except in serious cases where this cannot reasonably be expected of us.

When the contract ends, we delete your account and all content, unless we must keep it for legal reasons. Details are in the privacy policy.

§ 8 Backups

We save every change as a version, keep deleted notes in the trash and take reasonable precautions against data loss. Complete protection does not exist, however.

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

§ 9 Liability

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

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

The Free plan is free of charge. There – except in the cases of the first paragraph – we are only liable for intent and gross negligence, in line with the statutory rules for services provided free of charge.

We are not liable for content and actions of AI assistants you connect, unless the damage is based on a fault of WhyVault.

Otherwise our liability is excluded. These rules also apply to our employees, representatives and vicarious agents. As a consumer, your statutory rights for defects in digital products (§§ 327 et seq. BGB) remain unaffected.

§ 10 Use by businesses

If you use WhyVault as a business and store personal data of third parties (such as customers or employees), we process that data on your behalf. Our data processing agreement (DPA) applies, available at whyvault.io/dpa; it becomes part of this contract when you use WhyVault as a business.

You ensure that you may store the data in WhyVault and indemnify us against third-party claims based on your unlawful use – including reasonable costs of legal defence. This does not apply if you are not responsible for the infringement.

§ 11 Changes to these terms

We may change these terms if laws, case law, our providers or our offering change and the change does not unreasonably disadvantage you. We announce changes by email at least six weeks before they take effect and send you the new version.

If a change only concerns details of how the service is handled, you can object until it takes effect; if you don't object, it is deemed accepted – we point this out explicitly in the announcement. Changes to the main services, prices or the balance of service and consideration only apply if you expressly agree.

If you object or don't agree, either party may terminate the contract as of the change's effective date; until then the previous terms apply.

§ 12 Final provisions

German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, this choice of law only applies insofar as it does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the country where 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 German version of these terms is binding; the English version is a translation for your information.

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