Reading Lobster — Terms of Service

DRAFT v0.6 — 2026-07-22 — for lawyer review, not published. v0.5 plain-language rewrite + credit model update (spec: docs/credit-system-spec.md): credits section in §3 (monthly allowance expires, purchased packs never do, annual pays out monthly), §5 additions (cancellation vs refund, failed payments, consumption-data consent for Apple refund requests, withdrawal), §12 credit-price change rule, §14 credits on account deletion. Placeholders marked [⚠️ …]. Liability and AI clauses drafted to survive German AGB content control (§§ 305 ff. BGB); lawyer to verify wording — in particular the consumption-data consent and the included-vs-purchased credits framing. Section 13 kept close to established German case-law phrasing on purpose.

Effective date: [⚠️ set at publication]

1. Who we are, what this is

These Terms govern your use of the Reading Lobster iOS app, the readinglobster.com website, and the related APIs and connector services (together, the "Service"). The operator:

Anastasiia Kirzhanova (sole trader), Am Kutscherhaus 6, 12555 Berlin, Germany, hello@readinglobster.com ("we", "us").

By creating an account or using the Service you accept these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Who can use it

You must be at least 16 years old to use the Service. By registering you confirm this. If you are under 18, please make sure a parent or guardian agrees to your use of a paid subscription.

3. The Service

Reading Lobster helps you learn German by reading. You can read curated texts, import your own texts (paste, file, URL, or photo), listen to AI-generated audio narration, get AI-generated sentence translations and vocabulary cards, practice vocabulary, and generate AI reading stories at your level.

Free and Pro. The free tier includes the curated text catalog; which features are free of charge is shown in the app. Reading Lobster Pro (subscription) adds text imports, audio narration, AI stories, and a monthly credit allowance.

Credits. Paid AI actions — importing your own texts, generating vocabulary cards and AI stories, audio narration — consume credits. The credit price of an action is shown in the app before you run it; if your balance is not sufficient, the action is not started. Allowance and pack sizes are described in the app at purchase and may change for future billing periods (Section 12).

Included credits. A Pro subscription includes a monthly credit allowance that refreshes on your personal renewal day, aligned with your subscription's billing cycle. Unused included credits expire at the end of each subscription month and do not roll over. A new monthly allowance is granted only for periods covered by a successful subscription payment. The annual subscription is billed once per year and provides its allowance in the same monthly portions — not as a single yearly amount available up front.

Purchased credits. Top-up packs are separate one-time purchases. Purchased credits never expire: they carry over between months, are spent only after the included allowance, and remain usable even after your subscription ends. Credits are tied to your account, cannot be transferred, and have no cash value except where the law requires otherwise.

Fair use. Every AI action costs us real money; that is why allowances exist. Automated, scripted, or shared-account usage designed to get around allowances is not permitted.

4. Your account

Keep your sign-in method secure and your account to yourself. One account per person. You are responsible for activity under your account unless it results from our fault.

5. Subscriptions, payment, cancellation

Subscriptions and top-ups are sold as in-app purchases through Apple's App Store. Apple handles payment, renewal, cancellation, and refunds under Apple's terms:

• Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel in your App Store account settings, at least 24 hours before the renewal date.
• A free trial converts into a paid subscription unless you cancel before the trial ends. If a trial includes a credit allowance, it is granted once for the whole trial period; the next allowance follows with your first paid period.

Prices, including VAT, are shown in the App Store before purchase. If we change subscription prices, the change applies from your next billing period, and Apple informs you in advance as required.

Cancellation. Cancelling stops future renewals; it does not shorten the period you already paid for. If you cancel an annual subscription, your access and your remaining monthly credit portions continue until the end of the paid year. Cancelling does not by itself create a refund claim against us.

Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, Apple retries it, and your access may continue during Apple's grace period. A new monthly credit allowance follows only once the payment succeeds (Section 3).

Refunds and consumption data. Refund requests for App Store purchases are made to and decided by Apple (reportaproblem.apple.com). So that Apple can assess a request fairly, you consent that we report to Apple, at Apple's request, information about your use of the purchase concerned — in particular whether the service was delivered, what share of the purchased credits or of your subscription allowance you have already used, whether free sample content was available to you, and the status of your account. This information goes only to Apple and only in connection with a refund request; details are in our Privacy Policy.

Withdrawal. Statutory withdrawal rights (including the EU 14-day right) for App Store purchases are exercised through Apple, which obtains your consent to immediate performance at the time of purchase.

6. Your content

It stays yours. Texts you import and content generated for you remain yours. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive right to store and process this content solely to provide the Service to you (hosting, translating, voicing, card generation, sync), including processing through the AI providers named in our Privacy Policy. This right ends when you delete the content or your account, except for short-lived backups.

Your responsibility. Import only content you are legally allowed to use this way: content you created, content in the public domain, or copies permitted for private use under applicable law (in Germany, § 53 UrhG). Do not import content that is unlawful or infringes third-party rights, and do not use imported content commercially through the Service. We do not review your imported texts; responsibility for them is yours.

Your library is private. Your imported texts are visible only to your account. Reading Lobster is not a platform for publishing or sharing content with the public or other users.

Uploaded files. Source files and photos you upload for import are deleted from our servers promptly after text extraction, at the latest within 30 days [⚠️ post-extract deletion not yet implemented — blocker, see README]. The extracted text stays in your library.

7. Copyright complaints (notice and takedown)

If you believe content stored through the Service infringes your rights, email hello@readinglobster.com with: (a) the work concerned, (b) the allegedly infringing material, (c) your contact details, and (d) a statement that you believe in good faith the use is unauthorized and that you are entitled to act for the rightsholder. We process substantiated notices promptly and diligently, with removal or a reasoned rejection, in line with Art. 16 of the EU Digital Services Act and, for US rightsholders, the DMCA. The affected user is informed and may respond. Repeated infringement leads to account termination.

8. AI-generated content

Translations, vocabulary cards, grammar notes, reading stories, and audio narration are generated by artificial-intelligence models (large language models and speech synthesis). What that means for you:

• Content may contain errors, inaccuracies, or unnatural phrasing despite our quality measures. It is learning material. It is not an authoritative reference, and it is not professional advice (legal, medical, financial, or other). Verify information that matters before relying on it.
• Audio narration uses licensed synthetic voices and, where technically supported, carries machine-readable marking identifying it as AI-generated. Exported materials are labeled as AI-generated. Do not remove or alter such markings.
• AI stories are generated from your prompt; you are responsible for the prompts you submit (Section 10 applies).

We keep improving prompts, models, and review mechanisms, but we do not warrant that AI output is complete, accurate, or fit for a particular purpose beyond language practice. Your statutory rights (Section 13) remain unaffected.

9. AI-assistant connector (optional)

You can connect your own AI assistant (for example Claude or ChatGPT) to your Reading Lobster library via our connector (MCP). If you do:

• Your assistant can read your learning profile (display name, level, interests, language and content preferences, and how much of your monthly AI allowance remains), a list of your texts, and a snapshot of your vocabulary. It can add new texts to your library.
• Your chats with your assistant never reach us. We receive only the requests your assistant sends through the connector, such as the finished text it submits.
• Your connector URL and token are secrets; anyone who has them can access the data above. You can revoke them in the app at any time. Your relationship with your AI-assistant provider, including their costs and terms, is your own.

10. Acceptable use

You must not: (a) use the Service for unlawful purposes or to process unlawful content; (b) attempt to access other users' data or probe, disable, or overload our systems; (c) resell, redistribute, or publicly perform audio generated from catalog texts, or use the Service to build a competing dataset or service; (d) circumvent usage allowances or access controls; (e) submit prompts intended to generate unlawful content, for example defamatory content or content infringing third-party rights.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that materially or repeatedly violate these Terms, after a warning where practicable.

11. Our content and IP

The app, the Reading Lobster brand, the design, the curated catalog texts, and the generated audio of catalog texts are protected. We grant you a personal, non-transferable license to use them within the Service for your own learning. Vocabulary exports (CSV, PDF, Markdown) of your own cards are yours to use in personal study tools.

12. Changes to the Service and these Terms

Reading Lobster is under active development; features will evolve. The Service may be temporarily unavailable (maintenance, updates, factors outside our control). We aim for high availability but cannot promise uninterrupted access. We may change these Terms or plan allowances for good reason: legal changes, security, substantial cost changes, new features. We announce material changes in the app or by email at least 30 days before they take effect; if you do not agree, you can cancel before the change applies. Changes do not retroactively affect the paid period you are already in. The same applies to credits: changes to allowance sizes or to the credit prices of individual actions take effect no earlier than your next billing period.

13. Liability and warranty

We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body, or health, under the German Product Liability Act, and to the extent of any guarantee we expressly gave.

For simple negligence we are liable only for breach of essential contractual obligations. These are obligations whose fulfillment makes proper performance of the contract possible at all and on whose fulfillment you may regularly rely, for example providing account access and storing your library. In that case our liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this type of contract.

For statutory defect rights regarding digital products, §§ 327 ff. BGB remain unaffected. Otherwise, any further liability is excluded. Nothing in these Terms limits rights that cannot be limited by agreement under applicable consumer law.

14. Termination

You can stop using the Service and delete your account, with all its data, in the app at any time. Deleting your account also deletes any remaining credits, including purchased top-up packs; they cannot be restored or paid out. Subscription billing follows Apple's cancellation rules (Section 5). We may terminate under Section 10, or discontinue the Service with reasonable advance notice of at least one month; any prepaid, unused period is then handled in accordance with statutory law (for App Store purchases, via Apple).

15. Governing law, disputes

German law applies, excluding its conflict-of-law rules and the UN Sales Convention. If you are a consumer habitually resident in another EU country, the mandatory consumer-protection provisions of that country remain unaffected. We are neither obliged nor willing to participate in dispute-resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (§ 36 VSBG).

16. Contact

Anastasiia Kirzhanova, Am Kutscherhaus 6, 12555 Berlin, Germany hello@readinglobster.com

Version 0.6 (draft, 2026-07-22). Prior versions: none published.