TextShelf

Terms and Conditions

Last updated: October 13, 2026 (what changed)

TL;DR: TextShelf does not claim ownership over material submitted through its service, and does not sell users' personal information. The following terms clarify who is responsible if problems arise in the course of using our service.

Please read these terms and conditions carefully before using our service. By accessing or using TextShelf services you agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. If You disagree with any part of these Terms and Conditions then you may not access the Service.

Table of Contents


Who we are and what these Terms cover

These Terms and Conditions are the agreement between you and TextShelf LLC, 1025 Connecticut Ave NW Ste 615, Washington, DC 20036 ("TextShelf", "We"). They govern the TextShelf web service at textshelf.com (the "Service") and set out the rights and obligations of everyone who uses it. The TextShelf app for Mac is licensed separately, under Apple's standard end-user licence agreement; our Privacy Policy covers both products.

Your access to and use of the Service is conditioned on your acceptance of and compliance with these Terms and Conditions. They apply to all visitors, users and others who access or use the Service. The Privacy Policy is part of these Terms: it says what We collect, which outside services receive it, and how to delete it.

A few words We use throughout: a shelf is a submissions process run on the Service, such as a contest, a reading period, a grant cycle, a journal's queue, or a client's project. Material is anything You upload or write on the Service: files, text, reviews, highlights, comments. An organizer runs a shelf; a reviewer is someone an organizer invites to read; an entrant submits to a shelf.

Who may use the Service

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. If You are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree to these Terms on Your behalf. If You use the Service for an organization, You confirm that You are authorized to bind it to these Terms, and "You" includes that organization.

If You Review

What You read on a shelf is confidential. Do not copy, share, publish, or quote it outside the review, and do not upload it to any outside tool or AI service unless the shelf's rule for readers' AI assistants allows Yours, and then only as far as it allows. Use it only to do the review You were invited to do, and delete any copies You made when the organizer's process ends. The organizer may have further rules for You.

If You Run a Shelf

A shelf is Your process, not ours. TextShelf is not the sponsor, judge, or administrator of any contest, call, or review You run. You are responsible for its rules, eligibility, fees, prizes, judging, results, and taxes, and for complying with the laws that apply to it, including contest, sweepstakes, and consumer-protection laws where Your entrants live.

You decide what rights entrants keep, and You must state it clearly. Unless Your shelf's rules say otherwise, entrants keep every right to what they submit.

Entrants' names, email addresses, and files are theirs. Use them only to run Your shelf and to tell entrants about it. Do not sell them, add them to a mailing list without consent, or keep them longer than Your process needs. If You download entries, the same rules follow the copy. If the privacy law that applies to Your organization treats You as the controller of that data and TextShelf as its processor, write to us about data-processing terms.

You are responsible for the people You invite. Give reviewers access only to what they need, and remove it when they are done.


Plans and Payment

Plans

The Free plan costs nothing and needs no card. Paid plans are billed once a year, in advance, through our billing service, Stripe, by card or by invoice. Each plan takes in a set number of submissions a year and includes a set amount of storage; the current numbers are on the pricing page. When a plan's submissions or storage for the year are used up, the Service refuses new submissions on its shelves until You move up a plan or the year turns over. We never bill for use beyond Your plan.

Renewal and cancellation

A paid plan renews each year on the date You bought it, at the then-current price, until You cancel. You may cancel from Your account page or by contacting TextShelf. Cancelling stops the next renewal; Your plan runs to the end of the year You paid for, and then Your shelves return to the Free plan's limits.

Billing

You shall provide Stripe with accurate and complete billing information. Prices do not include any taxes that apply where You are, which We add where the law requires.

If a payment fails, Stripe retries it and We tell You. If it stays unpaid, the plan ends and Your shelves return to the Free plan's limits.

Fee Changes

TextShelf may change the price of a plan. A new price applies to You from Your next renewal, and We tell You at least 30 days before it does, so that You can cancel first.

Your continued use of a paid plan after a price change takes effect constitutes Your agreement to pay the new price.

Refunds

Except when required by law, paid plan fees are non-refundable.

Certain refund requests may be considered by TextShelf on a case-by-case basis and granted at the sole discretion of TextShelf.


AI-Powered Features

Third-Party AI Processing

Certain TextShelf features for organizers use a third-party artificial intelligence service (currently Anthropic Claude): setting up a shelf from a call-for-submissions document You upload, and suggesting feedback phrases from Your shelf's guidelines and scoring criteria. When You use these features, only that material is transmitted to the service. TextShelf does not send works submitted to a shelf to AI services. TextShelf selects AI providers that do not use customer data to train their models.

Readers' Own AI Assistants

Each shelf that takes submissions states, before anyone submits to it, whether its organizers may use an AI assistant of their own on its work, and a shelf of its members' own work states whether its members may: none; one that marks passages as evidence for the shelf's criteria, labelled as the assistant's; or one that also drafts scores, which count only once a person adopts them. The organizer who runs the shelf sets that rule, is responsible for following it, and must have the right to set it. Work keeps the rule it arrived under: a shelf can tighten its rule at any time, and loosening it applies only to work submitted afterwards. TextShelf's own tools hold to each shelf's rule. TextShelf cannot stop a person copying text into another service; these Terms bind everyone who reads on a shelf to its rule.

No Training on Your Data

Your documents and submitted material are not used to train any AI models. The AI provider processes material on demand. TextShelf keeps what a feature produces as part of Your shelf (for example, the settings and phrases You accept), a parsed setup document for up to seven days, and a record of each AI request, which may include a short excerpt of it, for as long as Your account exists.

AI Output Disclaimer

AI-generated shelf settings and suggestions are automated outputs and should not be relied upon as professional assessments, legal advice, or the sole basis for editorial, academic, or business decisions. TextShelf makes no warranty regarding the accuracy, completeness, or fitness of AI-generated content for any particular purpose. Human review of AI outputs is strongly recommended.

Usage Limits

Shelf setup from a document is available on paid plans. TextShelf reserves the right to adjust usage limits with 30 days' notice.

Acceptable Use

AI features are intended for human-initiated document review and analysis. Automated, scripted, or bulk programmatic access to AI features is prohibited without prior written consent from TextShelf. TextShelf reserves the right to throttle or suspend AI feature access if it determines, in its sole discretion, that usage is abusive, excessive, or not consistent with normal human-initiated use.

Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)

Organization plan subscribers may configure their own AI provider API keys. When using Your own API key, You are solely responsible for all associated costs billed by the AI provider, compliance with the AI provider's terms of service, and the security of Your API key. TextShelf is not liable for charges incurred through Your own API key.

Your Own Storage Bucket

Organization plan subscribers may connect their own S3-compatible storage bucket for a shelf's files. When You do, You are responsible for the bucket's availability, its costs, and who can reach it. TextShelf is not liable for files stored in Your own bucket.


User Accounts

You are responsible for safeguarding the password that You use to access the Service and for any activities or actions under Your account, whether You sign in with a password or with Google or Apple sign-in. You can add two-factor sign-in to Your account from Your account page.

You agree not to disclose Your password to any third party. You must notify Us immediately upon becoming aware of any breach of security or unauthorized use of Your account.

You may not use as a username or shelf name the name of another person or entity or that is not lawfully available for use, a name or trademark that is subject to any rights of another person or entity other than You without appropriate authorization, or a name that is otherwise offensive, vulgar or obscene.

The API

Accounts on a paid plan can create access tokens on the account page and use the Service's API with them, for their own shelves and within the limits We set. You are responsible for everything done with Your tokens. Do not scrape the Service or use the API to collect other people's Material in bulk. We may suspend a token whose use is excessive or harms the Service; We try to warn You first, but if its use is causing an outage We may cut it off without notice.


Submitted Material

What You Submit Stays Yours

You keep every right to Your Material. We claim no ownership of it. You are responsible for the Material You upload, including its accuracy and its legality.

So that the Service can work, You give TextShelf a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, convert, display, and transmit Your Material, only as needed to run the Service for You and for the shelf You submit to: to show it to that shelf's organizers and the reviewers they authorize, to render and search it, to include it in the exports those people make, and to keep it until it is deleted. The licence ends when the Material is deleted, except for copies of its record in database backups, which expire within 30 days. We never use Your Material to train a model, to advertise, or for any purpose of our own.

You represent and warrant that: (i) the Material is Yours (You own it) or You have the right to submit it, and (ii) submitting it on or through the Service does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person, or any agreement You are under.

Content Restrictions

TextShelf is not responsible for the content of any material uploaded by the Service's users.

You may not transmit any Material that is unlawful, threatening, libelous, defamatory or otherwise objectionable. Examples of such objectionable Material include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Infringing on any proprietary rights of any party, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of publicity or other rights.
  • Unlawful or promoting unlawful activity.
  • Spam, machine – or randomly – generated, constituting unauthorized or unsolicited advertising, chain letters, any other form of unauthorized solicitation, or any form of lottery or gambling.
  • Containing or installing any viruses, worms, malware, trojan horses, or other Material that is designed or intended to disrupt, damage, or limit the functioning of any software, hardware or telecommunications equipment or to damage or obtain unauthorized access to any data or other information of a third person.
  • Impersonating any person or entity including TextShelf and its employees or representatives.
  • Violating the privacy of any third person, including by uploading another person's personal information beyond what a shelf's process needs.

TextShelf reserves the right, but not the obligation, to, in its sole discretion, determine whether or not any Material is appropriate and complies with this Terms, refuse or remove this Material. TextShelf can also limit or revoke the use of the Service if You upload or distribute such objectionable material through the Service. As TextShelf cannot control all content posted by users and/or third parties on the Service, you agree to use the Service at your own risk. You understand that by using the Service You may be exposed to content that You may find offensive, indecent, incorrect or objectionable, and You agree that under no circumstances will TextShelf be liable in any way for any content, including any errors or omissions in any content, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of your use of any content.

Keep Your Own Copy

We back up the Service's database and keep those backups for 30 days. Uploaded files are stored once, in our storage provider's bucket or, for a shelf whose organization has connected its own storage bucket, in that bucket, and are not in those backups.

We work to keep files safe, but We do not guarantee against loss or corruption, and You acknowledge that TextShelf has no liability related to the integrity of submitted material or the failure to restore it to a usable state.

If you submit material on TextShelf, you agree to maintain a complete and accurate copy of any submitted material in a location independent of the Service.


Intellectual Property Infringement

We respect the intellectual property rights of others. It is Our policy to respond to any claim that material uploaded on the Service infringes a copyright or other intellectual property infringement of any person.

If You are a copyright owner, or authorized on behalf of one, and You believe that the copyrighted work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement that is taking place through the Service, You must submit Your notice in writing to the attention of our copyright agent, via the TextShelf contact form or by email to admin@textshelf.com. Include in Your notice a detailed description of the alleged infringement.

You may be held accountable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) for misrepresenting that any Content is infringing Your copyright.

DMCA Notice and DMCA Procedure for Copyright Infringement Claims

You may submit a notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by providing our Copyright Agent with the following information in writing (see 17 U.S.C 512(c)(3) for further detail):

  • An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright's interest.
  • A description of the copyrighted work that You claim has been infringed, including the URL (i.e., web page address) of the location where the copyrighted work exists or a copy of the copyrighted work.
  • Identification of the URL or other specific location on the Service where the material that You claim is infringing is located.
  • Your address, telephone number, and email address.
  • A statement by You that You have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
  • A statement by You, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in Your notice is accurate and that You are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

You can contact our copyright agent via the TextShelf contact form or by email to admin@textshelf.com. Upon receipt of a notification, TextShelf will take whatever action, in its sole discretion, it deems appropriate, including removal of the challenged content from the Service.

If We remove Your Material after a notice, We tell You, and You may send Us a counter-notice with the information 17 U.S.C. 512(g)(3) requires. If the person who sent the notice does not tell Us within 10 business days that they have filed a court action, We may restore the Material.

We close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe.


Intellectual Property

TextShelf and its features and functionality are and will remain the exclusive property of TextShelf and its licensors.

The Service is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of the United States and of other countries.

Our trademarks and trade dress may not be used in connection with any product or service without the prior written consent of TextShelf.

Your Feedback to Us

"Feedback" means suggestions, ideas, or comments You send Us about the Service. It does not include Your Material. You assign all rights, title and interest in any Feedback You provide TextShelf. If for any reason such assignment is ineffective, You agree to grant TextShelf a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, worldwide right and license to use, reproduce, disclose, sub-license, distribute, modify and exploit such Feedback without restriction.

Links to Other Websites

Our Service may contain links to third-party web sites or services that are not owned or controlled by TextShelf.

TextShelf has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third party web sites or services. You further acknowledge and agree that TextShelf shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such web sites or services.

Ending Things

You. You may delete Your account at any time from Your account page. The Privacy Policy says what that deletes. Download anything You want to keep first.

Us, one account. We may suspend or close an account at any time, without liability to You, including for breaking these Terms, putting other people or the Service at risk, or not paying. Where it is practical, We tell You first and give You a chance to fix the problem. On closure, Your right to use the Service ends at once.

Us, the Service. If We ever shut TextShelf down, We give every account at least 90 days' notice by email, keep the shelf exports working through that period, and refund the unused part of any paid year.

We may change or retire individual features at any time. Where a feature an open shelf relies on changes, We tell its organizers.

Your Responsibility for What You Run and Upload

If someone other than TextShelf brings a claim against TextShelf because of Your Material, a shelf You run, or Your breach of these Terms or of the law, You will defend TextShelf against it and pay the damages, settlements, costs, and reasonable legal fees that result. We will tell You about the claim promptly, give You reasonable help at Your expense, and let You control the defence and the settlement, except that You may not settle in a way that admits fault on our part or binds us without our written consent. We may take part with our own lawyers at our own cost.

Limitation of Liability

Notwithstanding any damages that You might incur, the entire liability of TextShelf and any of its suppliers under any provision of this Terms and Your exclusive remedy for all of the foregoing shall be limited to the amount actually paid by You through the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose, or 100 USD if You haven't purchased anything through the Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall TextShelf or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, loss of data or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, loss of privacy arising out of or in any way related to the use of or inability to use the Service, third-party software and/or third-party hardware used with the Service, or otherwise in connection with any provision of this Terms), even if TextShelf or any supplier has been advised of the possibility of such damages and even if the remedy fails of its essential purpose.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or limitation of liability for incidental or consequential damages, which means that some of the above limitations may not apply. In these states, each party's liability will be limited to the greatest extent permitted by law. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes any liability that the law does not allow Us to limit or exclude.


"AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" Disclaimer

The Service is provided to You "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and with all faults and defects without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, TextShelf, on its own behalf and on behalf of its licensors and service providers, expressly disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise, with respect to the Service, including all implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and warranties that may arise out of course of dealing, course of performance, usage or trade practice. Without limitation to the foregoing, TextShelf provides no warranty or undertaking, and makes no representation of any kind that the Service will meet Your requirements, achieve any intended results, be compatible or work with any other software, applications, systems or services, operate without interruption, meet any performance or reliability standards or be error free or that any errors or defects can or will be corrected.

Without limiting the foregoing, neither TextShelf nor any of TextShelf's providers makes any representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied: (i) as to the operation or availability of the Service, or the information, content, and materials or products included thereon; (ii) that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free; (iii) as to the accuracy, reliability, or currency of any information or content provided through the Service; or (iv) that the Service, its servers, the content, or e-mails sent from or on behalf of TextShelf are free of viruses, scripts, trojan horses, worms, malware, timebombs or other harmful components.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain types of warranties or limitations on applicable statutory rights of a consumer, so some or all of the above exclusions and limitations may not apply to You. But in such a case the exclusions and limitations set forth in this section shall be applied to the greatest extent enforceable under applicable law.

Governing Law

The laws of the District of Columbia, United States, excluding its conflicts of law rules, shall govern this Terms and Your use of the Service. Your use of the Service may also be subject to other local, state, national, or international laws.


Disputes Resolution

If You have any concern or dispute about the Service, You agree to first try to resolve the dispute informally by contacting TextShelf. If We cannot resolve it that way, the dispute goes to the state or federal courts in Washington, DC, and You agree to their jurisdiction.

For European Union (EU) Users

If You are a European Union consumer, you will benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you are resident in. If You are an organization in the EU or the UK that needs data-processing terms, write to Us.

United States Federal Government End Use Provisions

If You are a U.S. federal government end user, our Service is a "Commercial Item" as that term is defined at 48 C.F.R. §2.101.

United States Legal Compliance

You represent and warrant that (i) You are not located in a country that is subject to the United States government embargo, or that has been designated by the United States government as a "terrorist supporting" country, and (ii) You are not listed on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.


Severability and Waiver

Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable or invalid, such provision will be changed and interpreted to accomplish the objectives of such provision to the greatest extent possible under applicable law and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

Waiver

Except as provided herein, the failure to exercise a right or to require performance of an obligation under this Terms shall not effect a party's ability to exercise such right or require such performance at any time thereafter nor shall be the waiver of a breach constitute a waiver of any subsequent breach.

Translation Interpretation

These Terms and Conditions may have been translated if We have made them available to You on our Service. You agree that the original English text shall prevail in the case of a dispute.


Changes to These Terms and Conditions

We reserve the right, at Our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time. If a revision is material We will make reasonable efforts to provide at least 30 days' notice prior to any new terms taking effect. What constitutes a material change will be determined at Our sole discretion.

By continuing to access or use Our Service after those revisions become effective, You agree to be bound by the revised terms. If You do not agree to the new terms, in whole or in part, please stop using the website and the Service.

Changes on October 13, 2026

Each shelf now states its rule for readers' own AI assistants, and these Terms say how that rule works (Readers' Own AI Assistants). A reviewer may use an assistant only where the shelf's rule allows it. Every shelf, and every piece of work submitted before this change, keeps the rule it had: no assistants. What TextShelf itself sends to an AI service did not change: never submitted work.

Changes on October 11, 2026

We corrected this page to match what TextShelf does. The Subscriptions section described daily, weekly and monthly billing and a free trial; TextShelf has one Free plan and paid plans billed once a year, so the section now says that, and what happens when a plan's year is used up. It said that submitted entries were regularly backed up; our database is backed up, and uploaded files are not, so it now says to keep your own copy. It said to close an account by no longer using it; you can delete it from your account page. We named the company and its address, said which product these Terms cover, made the Privacy Policy part of them, set a minimum age, and wrote out our email address.

We also added what was missing. Organizers now read that a shelf is theirs, not ours, and what they owe their entrants. Reviewers read that what they see is confidential. The licence You give Us says what the Service actually does with a file, no more. "Ending things" separates closing one account from shutting the Service down, which now comes with 90 days' notice, working exports, and a refund of the unused part of a paid year. There is a section on Your responsibility for what You run and upload, a counter-notice procedure for copyright claims, a venue for disputes, and a note on the API.

Parts of these Terms are adapted from the 37signals open-source policies and the Common Paper Cloud Service Agreement, both under CC BY 4.0.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about these Terms and Conditions, write to us at admin@textshelf.com or via our contact form.

TextShelf LLC · 1025 Connecticut Ave NW Ste 615, Washington, DC 20036