Terms of Service

• You own your code and your credential. Everything you ship runs through your GitHub and stays yours.
• Use the product to learn and build, not to harm others, game the level system, or break the law.
• We try to keep it running, but the service is provided “as is” — see the disclaimers below.
• Free is genuinely free. If we add paid plans for verified credentials or institutional features, we'll tell you what they cost before you pay.

By creating an account, or by using any part of Blacksmith Experience, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you're using Blacksmith on behalf of an organization — a school, bootcamp, or employer — you represent that you have the authority to bind that organization, and the terms apply to it as well as to you.

You must be at least 13 years old (16 in the European Economic Area) to use Blacksmith.

You're responsible for keeping your login credentials safe and for the activity on your account. Tell us promptly at hello@blacksmithexp.dev if you suspect any unauthorized access. We may suspend or close accounts that violate these terms or that we believe pose a security or integrity risk.

You agree not to:

• Use Blacksmith to do anything illegal, harassing, defamatory, or harmful to others.
• Misrepresent your identity, copy someone else's work as your own, or otherwise game the level / credential system.
• Probe, scan, or interfere with our infrastructure, or attempt to access data that doesn't belong to you.
• Reverse engineer the product or extract our internal prompts, agents, or models for redistribution.
• Send spam, run scrapers at unreasonable rates, or otherwise abuse the service.

We rely on this section to keep the credential meaningful. Breaking it is a fast path to your account being suspended and your credential being revoked.

You keep all rights to the code, repositories, messages, and other materials you bring into or create on Blacksmith (“your content”).

To run the product, you grant us a limited license to host, process, display, and route your content through the AI engineering team — for example, so reviewers can read your pull request, so standups can quote your last commit, and so observations can cite the specific PR that earned a level. This license exists only to deliver the service to you, and ends when you remove the content or close your account, except for backup and audit copies we keep for a limited time.

We don't use your code or messages to train third-party foundation models.

The Blacksmith product, brand, agents, prompts, designs, and the surrounding code are ours (or our licensors'). You may use the product as it's intended to be used — and that's it. You don't get a license to our trademarks, look-and-feel, or proprietary systems beyond what's necessary to use the service.

Feedback you send us is treated as non-confidential — we may use it to improve the product without owing you compensation. If you'd rather a specific piece of feedback stay confidential, just say so when you send it.

The L1–L5 credentials Blacksmith issues are tied to specific observations on your work — PRs, reviews, standup decisions. They are intended to be auditable on your GitHub.

We can revoke or withhold a credential at our discretion if we determine the underlying evidence was misrepresented, plagiarized, or otherwise dishonestly obtained. We may also publish anonymized, aggregated outcome statistics — your individual credential is only ever shared as you choose to share it.

Blacksmith is free to start. Some features — verified credentials, senior code help, institutional dashboards — may require a paid plan. If a plan applies to you, the price and billing terms will be shown clearly before you sign up.

Paid plans renew until you cancel. You can cancel at any time; you'll keep access through the end of the period you've already paid for. Refunds outside of the above are at our discretion and generally limited to unused, prepaid time.

Blacksmith connects to services like GitHub. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies, and your use of them is between you and them. We're not responsible for outages, changes, or actions taken by those services.

You can close your account at any time. We can suspend or terminate your account if you violate these terms, if your use poses a security or legal risk, or if we're required to do so by law. We'll try to give notice when we can, and you can request a copy of your data on the way out (see your rights in the Privacy Policy).

Sections that are meant to outlast your account — IP, disclaimers, liability limits, and governing law — survive termination.

Blacksmith is provided “as is” and “as available.” We don't promise the product will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit a specific purpose. We don't guarantee any specific career outcome from using it — the credential is real evidence of the work you did, not a job placement.

To the extent allowed by law, we disclaim all warranties not expressly given in these terms.

To the extent allowed by law, Blacksmith and its team won't be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or business interruptions. Our total liability for any claim arising out of or related to these terms is limited to the amount you paid us (if any) in the 12 months before the claim, or USD 100 — whichever is greater.

You agree to defend and indemnify Blacksmith against any third-party claim arising from your misuse of the product, your violation of these terms, or your violation of any law or third-party right. We'll cooperate in good faith and let you know promptly if a claim is made.

These terms are governed by the laws of the jurisdiction where Blacksmith is incorporated, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The specific jurisdiction and venue will be disclosed in our company information when applicable.

We'd rather solve disagreements without going to court. Before filing anything, you agree to contact us at hello@blacksmithexp.dev and give us 30 days to try to resolve it. If we still can't, the courts in our jurisdiction have exclusive authority — except where consumer law in your country requires otherwise.

Products change, and so do these terms. We'll post the new version with a fresh “last updated” date, and we'll announce material changes in-product and by email. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated terms. If you don't, you can close your account.

Legal questions or notices: hello@blacksmithexp.dev.

For everything else, our contact page will route you to the right person.