Promises, written to be read.

These terms are the agreement between you and Emberkeep. We have written them to be actually read. Where most terms of service protect a company from its users, ours start from what we owe you: your words are yours, we guard them, and we deliver them only the way you asked.

Emberkeep lets you create messages (written, voice, and video) and a life story, to be delivered to people you choose after your passing has been confirmed by stewards you appoint. Until that day, everything you create is private to you, except what you explicitly choose to share while living.

Emberkeep is currently in beta. It is free during this period and features may change. Delivery is fully active: if your passing is confirmed by your stewards, your words will be delivered. As an added safeguard while we are in beta, every steward-confirmed release receives a final internal review and approval by a person at Emberkeep before anything is delivered. This extra step ends at full launch.

Emberkeep is not a will, trust, or estate-planning instrument, and nothing here has legal effect on your property or affairs. It carries your words, not your assets. For legal matters, please work with a qualified professional.

Emberkeep is also not an emergency or crisis service. If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988 (in the US) to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. A person is there any time, day or night.

You must be at least 18 to create an account, provide accurate information, and keep your password safe. You are responsible for what happens under your sign-in. If you believe your account was accessed by someone else, reset your password immediately; doing so signs out every device.

You own every word, recording, and image you put into Emberkeep. You give us only the narrow permission we need to operate the service: to store your content (encrypted), process it (for example, preparing a video you asked us to edit), and deliver it to the people you designated, when you designated. We never sell your content, train on it, or use it for advertising.

Delivery depends on the stewards you appoint confirming your passing through our verification process. We designed this process to be careful, with multiple confirmations, a reversible hold, and a crisis-first safety net, but it depends on people. You are responsible for choosing stewards you trust and keeping their contact details current. We cannot guarantee that stewards will act, or act promptly.

Release always requires at least two people: a majority of your main stewards, and never fewer than two confirmations. Backup stewards you name are a standby circle: if your main stewards cannot be reached within a day of the first confirmation, your backups are automatically given the ability to confirm or pause. If, after two days, fewer than two people have confirmed, or if your stewards disagree about whether you have passed, your account is held for internal review: a person at Emberkeep verifies the situation directly, and nothing is delivered until that review is complete.

So that internal review can actually protect you, you authorize Emberkeep, whenever a passing is reported, to verify it through reasonable means: contacting your stewards, family, and contacts; requesting documentation such as a death certificate, an obituary, or a funeral notice from them; and consulting public records and published sources. We use this authority only to confirm or rule out a reported passing, never for any other purpose.

Here is our commitment: when your passing is confirmed, we deliver your words to the people you chose, using every contact detail you gave us, and we do not quietly give up. If a keepsake goes unopened, we send gentle reminders over the following weeks, across every channel we have for that person, and unreached deliveries are escalated for human review. Your keepsake links do not expire.

And here is what we ask you to acknowledge: some things are outside anyone's control, including ours. We cannot guarantee delivery when a recipient's email address or phone number has changed, been abandoned, or been reassigned to someone else; when their inbox filters our message to spam or their carrier blocks it; when the contact details you gave us contain an error or were never kept current; when a recipient chooses not to open, respond to, or acknowledge what was left for them; when stewards do not act, cannot be reached, or are themselves no longer living; when your passing cannot be confirmed through the process you configured; when a court order, estate dispute, or legal restriction prevents us from acting; when a recipient's technology cannot display the message formats you recorded; or when internet infrastructure, power, telecommunications networks, or the third-party services every online product depends on fail in ways beyond our reasonable control, including natural disasters and similar events.

The single most important thing you can do to protect your own delivery is simple: keep your contacts, stewards, and their details current while you live. We build the safeguards; you keep the map accurate. Together that is a promise worth trusting.

Use Emberkeep to harass, threaten, or harm anyone, including messages designed to wound rather than to comfort; impersonate another person; upload content you have no right to; attempt to break, probe, or overload the service; or falsely confirm a passing. We may suspend or close accounts that do these things; it protects everyone else's words.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings; deletion is immediate, permanent, and includes your stored media. We can end or suspend the service with reasonable notice, and if we ever wind down, we will give you a real opportunity to export your words first.

Emberkeep is provided as-is during the beta. To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you is limited to the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before a claim (during the free beta, that is zero). Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit.

These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the state in which Emberkeep is organized. If a dispute arises, we will try honest conversation first: hello@emberkeep.io. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stands.

We may update these terms as the service grows. For meaningful changes we will notify you by email or in the app before they take effect; continuing to use Emberkeep after that means you accept the updated terms.