Terms of Service

1. This agreement

These terms are a contract between you and Bill Chan, an individual doing business as "Staq" in New York, New York ("Staq", "we", "us"). They cover the Staq iOS app and the website trystaq.app (together, the "service"). By creating an account, reserving a username or using the service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

Two other documents are part of this agreement: the Medical Disclaimer, which is incorporated here by reference, and the Privacy Policy, which explains what we do with your information.

2. Who can use Staq

You must be at least 18 years old. By using the service you confirm that you are, that the date of birth you give us is true, that you can enter into a binding contract, and that you are not barred from using the service under any law that applies to you. We do not allow anyone under 18 to use Staq and we close accounts that belong to minors.

3. Your account and username

• You sign in with your phone number and a one-time code, plus a second sign-in method (Apple, Google or email). Give us accurate information and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for everything that happens under your account. Keep your phone, your phone number and your sign-in methods under your control, and tell us promptly at support@trystaq.app if you think someone else has access.
• One person, one account. Do not create an account for someone else, share an account, or open a new account after we have closed one.
• Your username must not impersonate another person, brand or organization, infringe anyone's rights, or be offensive. We may refuse, reclaim or change a username for any of those reasons, or if an account has been inactive for a long time.
• A username reserved on this website is held as a courtesy for the phone number that reserved it. A reservation is not property, it cannot be sold or transferred, and we may release or refuse one, for example where it was reserved with a number that is not yours or where it matches someone else's name or trademark.

4. What Staq is, and is not

Staq is a tool for keeping track of the supplements and other products you take, for looking up information about products, ingredients and published research, and for sharing what you take with other people.

• Staq is information and tracking. It is not medical advice, and it is not a medical device, a pharmacy, a clinic or a healthcare provider. Using Staq does not create a doctor-patient relationship with anyone.
• Staq does not sell any product. We do not sell, supply, ship or prescribe supplements, peptides or anything else, and we do not tell you where to buy them.
• What other users post is their own experience and opinion. It is not advice from Staq and we do not verify it.
• Staq does not promise any outcome from any product.

The Medical Disclaimer sets this out in full and is part of these terms. You agree that your decisions about what you put in your body are your own, made with a clinician where appropriate, and not made in reliance on Staq.

5. Your content

"Your content" means anything you add to the service: your profile, your staq, your check-ins, posts, photos, comments, lists, ratings and reports.

You own it

You keep ownership of your content. You give Staq a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display, adapt (for example resizing a photo or generating a summary), and distribute your content, and to let our service providers do the same, only in order to operate, show, secure and improve the service. That licence ends when your content is deleted from the service, except that copies may persist in backups for a time and that other users may have already seen or copied what you shared.

Other people will see it

Staq is a social service. Your profile, your staq, your posts, comments, lists and follows are visible to other signed-in users, and changes to your staq are posted to the feed automatically. The Privacy Policy lists exactly what is visible. Do not put anything in Staq that you are not willing for other users to see.

Your promises about it

You confirm that:

• you have the right to post your content and to grant the licence above, including for any photo, text or trademark in it;
• your content does not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, privacy or publicity rights, and any person who can be identified in a photo has agreed to it being posted;
• your content is truthful about your own experience, and if you have any connection to a brand or seller you mention (you work for them, they pay you, they gave you free product) you say so clearly in the post;
• your content follows the rules in section 6.

You are solely responsible for your content. We do not endorse it and we are not obliged to monitor it, although we may.

6. Rules

You must not post, send or do any of the following on Staq:

• Harassment, bullying, threats, hate speech, or content that attacks people for who they are.
• Sexually explicit content, nudity, or graphic violence.
• Anything that sexualizes, exploits or endangers a minor.
• Content that encourages self-harm, disordered eating or dangerous behaviour.
• Buying, selling, trading or sourcing. Do not offer to sell or supply any supplement, peptide, hormone, drug or controlled substance, do not ask where to get one, and do not post vendor names, links, discount codes or contact details for that purpose.
• Medical advice and disease claims. Do not tell another person what they should take or at what dose, do not present yourself as a medical professional unless you are one, and do not claim that any product treats, cures or prevents a disease.
• Instructions for making, compounding or injecting a drug in a way that puts people at risk.
• Spam, scams, undisclosed advertising, fake reviews, or fake engagement.
• Impersonating a person, a brand or Staq.
• Someone else's private information, including their health information, without their permission.
• Anything that infringes someone's intellectual property.
• Anything illegal where you are or where we are.

You also must not:

• scrape, crawl or bulk-download the service, its catalog, its scores or other users' content, or use them to train a machine-learning model;
• access the service by any means other than the app and this website, probe or bypass its security, or interfere with how it runs;
• reverse engineer the app except where the law gives you that right regardless of this clause;
• use the service to build a competing product;
• create accounts by automated means, or evade a suspension or ban.

7. Reporting, blocking and enforcement

Reporting

To report a post or a comment, open the menu on it (the three dots) and choose Report. To report a person, do the same from their profile. You pick a reason: Spam, Harassment or bullying, Harmful or dangerous advice, Misinformation, or Other, and you can add a note. To report anything else, or to follow up on a report, email support@trystaq.app with the username and, if you can, a screenshot. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first.

We check for reports at least once every 24 hours, and we act on them as soon as we have read them.

Blocking

You can block someone from their profile, or from the menu on any post or comment. A block runs both ways: you and they stop being able to see each other's profile, posts and comments, any follow between you is removed, and neither of you can follow the other again while the block stands. Unblocking does not restore a follow. The person is not told. Your blocks are listed in Settings, under Blocked accounts, and you can undo one there.

What a block does not do. It does not hide your staq — someone you have blocked can still see the products you list — and blocked accounts can still appear in search results. If you need more than blocking gives you, email support@trystaq.app.

What we may do

We may remove or hide any content, and suspend or permanently close any account, at any time and without notice, if we believe these terms have been broken, if the law requires it, or if we believe it is necessary to protect users or the service. Serious violations, including anything involving a minor, threats, or selling drugs, lead to immediate and permanent removal.We close the accounts of repeat offenders. We may also report illegal content to law enforcement.

If you think we removed your content or closed your account by mistake, email support@trystaq.app and a person will review it.

8. Automated moderation

The text of every post is checked automatically by an AI model before or shortly after it appears. If the model judges that a post breaks the rules, the post is hidden automatically, without a person reviewing it first. Automated systems make mistakes in both directions: they can hide a post that was fine, and they can miss one that was not. A post appearing on Staq does not mean we have approved it. Section 7 explains how to ask for a human review.

9. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you believe something on Staq infringes your copyright, send our designated agent a written notice containing:

1. your physical or electronic signature (or that of someone authorized to act for you);
2. the copyrighted work you say has been infringed;
3. the material you say is infringing and where it is on Staq, with enough detail for us to find it (a username, a link or a screenshot);
4. your name, address, telephone number and email address;
5. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law;
6. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act for the owner.

Designated agent: Bill Chan, Staq, 225 Cherry St, New York, NY 10002. Email support@trystaq.app, subject "Copyright". Phone +1 617-459-7155.

If we remove your content after a notice and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you may send the agent a counter-notice containing your signature, the material removed and where it was, a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification, your name, address and telephone number, and your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if you are outside the United States, any district where Staq may be found) and to accept service from the person who sent the original notice. We may restore the material 10 to 14 business days after a valid counter-notice unless the complaining party tells us it has filed a court action.

We close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe. Knowingly making a false claim in a notice or counter-notice can make you liable for damages.

10. Products, brands and trademarks

Staq's catalog describes products made by other companies. Product names, brand names, logos, label images and product photographs belong to their respective owners. They appear on Staq only to identify the products being described. Staq is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any brand shown, and showing a product is not an endorsement of it by us.

Catalog information is compiled from product labels, public label databases such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health Dietary Supplement Label Database, retailer listings and brand websites. It can be incomplete, out of date or wrong. Manufacturers change formulas without notice. Always read the label on the product in your hand.

If you make or sell a product and something about it on Staq is wrong, see Support, for brands and manufacturers. We correct errors when we are told about them and shown the correct information.

11. Scores, grades and rankings

Staq shows scores, grades, bands such as "Okay" or "Great", evidence grades and rankings for products, ingredients and staqs. These are Staq's opinions. They are produced by applying our own methodology to two kinds of input: what a product's label says (its ingredients, their forms and amounts, and how fully the label discloses them) and published research on those ingredients. A StaqScore also looks at how the products in a staq fit together: what they cover, how they are dosed and timed against published reference values, and how they combine.

• A score is not a statement of fact about any company or product, not a laboratory test result, and not a measure of what a product will do for you. Staq does not test products.
• Scores depend on the data behind them and may contain errors. They change when the data or the methodology changes.
• A score, grade or ranking is not medical advice. See the Medical Disclaimer.
• If you believe a score rests on wrong information, tell us through Support. When the underlying information is corrected, the score is recalculated.

12. AI-generated content

Parts of Staq are written by AI models, including the starter staq and the reasons given for each item in it, staq summaries, plain-English summaries of published studies, and search keywords. AI-generated content can be wrong, incomplete or out of date, and it can sound confident when it is wrong. It is not reviewed by a clinician before you see it. Where Staq links a source, such as the original study, read the source. Do not rely on AI-generated content to make a decision about your health.

13. Text messages

We send two kinds of text message:

• Sign-in codes. When you sign in, we text a one-time passcode to the number you enter. You receive one message each time you request a code.
• Launch notice. If you leave your number on this website to reserve a username or to get your fixes, you agree that we may text that number to tell you Staq has launched and how to claim what you saved.

Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving texts from that number, and HELP for help; you can also email support@trystaq.app. If you reply STOP you will no longer receive sign-in codes by text and will not be able to sign in with your phone number until you reply START. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. Agreeing to receive texts is not a condition of buying anything. We do not share your phone number or your text-message consent with third parties or affiliates for marketing purposes.

14. Our property and your licence

The service, including the app, this website, the Staq name and logo, the design, the catalog as a compilation, the scores and the methodology behind them, belongs to Staq or its licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws. Subject to these terms, we give you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the app and to use this website for your own non-commercial purposes. All rights not expressly given to you are reserved.

If you send us ideas or feedback, you agree that we may use them without restriction and without owing you anything.

15. Ending your account

You may stop using Staq at any time, and you may ask us to delete your account as described in the Privacy Policy. We may suspend or close your account, or stop offering the service in whole or in part, at any time. Sections 4, 5 (the licence, to the extent described there), 9 to 12, and 16 to 21 continue to apply after your account ends.

16. No warranties

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, Staq disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. Without limiting that, we do not warrant:

• that catalog information, labels, doses, scores, grades, research summaries or AI-generated content are accurate, complete or current;
• that any product contains what its label says, or is suitable for you;
• that anything another user posts is true;
• that the service will be uninterrupted, secure or free of errors, or that your content will never be lost.

Some places do not allow some of these disclaimers, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

17. Limit of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Staq, and anyone who works for or with Staq, will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits or goodwill, or for any personal injury or illness, arising from or related to the service, a product you learned about through the service, or anything another user said or did, even if we have been told such damage was possible.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of US $100 and the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.

These limits apply to every kind of claim, whether in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability or anything else, and they apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose. Some places do not allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

18. Indemnity

To the extent the law allows, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Staq, and anyone who works for or with Staq, from any claim, loss, liability and expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your content, your use of the service, your breach of these terms, or your violation of any law or of anyone's rights.

19. Disputes and arbitration

Talk to us first

Before either of us starts a formal proceeding, the one with the complaint must send the other a written notice describing the claim and what it wants. Send yours to support@trystaq.app with the subject "Notice of dispute"; we will send ours to the contact details on your account. We will both try in good faith to resolve it for 60 days. Any limitation period is paused during those 60 days.

Binding individual arbitration

If that does not resolve it, you and Staq agree that any dispute arising from or relating to these terms or the service will be resolved by binding arbitration, and not in court, except as set out below. The arbitration will be run by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, by a single arbitrator. It may be held by video or telephone, on written submissions, or in person in the county where you live. Fees are allocated under the AAA's consumer rules; if you cannot afford your share, we will consider a request to pay it. The arbitrator may award any relief a court could award to you individually. The U.S. Federal Arbitration Act governs this section. The arbitrator decides all issues except those this section reserves for a court.

No class actions

You and Staq may each bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not combine more than one person's claims and may not award relief to anyone who is not a party. If a court decides that this paragraph cannot be enforced for a particular claim or remedy, that claim or remedy (and only that one) is severed and must be brought in court, and the rest stays in arbitration.

Exceptions

Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead of arbitration. Either of us may go to court to seek an injunction to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property. Nothing here stops you from bringing an issue to a government agency.

Your right to opt out

You can opt out of arbitration and the class-action waiver. Email support@trystaq.app within 30 days of first accepting these terms, with the subject "Arbitration opt-out", your name, your username and the phone number on your account. Opting out does not affect any other part of these terms or your use of Staq.

Jury waiver, governing law and courts

To the extent the law allows, you and Staq each waive the right to a jury trial. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and by the Federal Arbitration Act. Any claim that is not subject to arbitration must be brought in the state or federal courts located in New York County, New York, and you and Staq consent to those courts, except that a small claims case may be brought where you live. If you live somewhere whose law gives you the right to sue at home or under local consumer law, this paragraph does not take that away.

Time limit

To the extent the law allows, a claim must be started within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred.

20. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. When we do, we will post the new version here with a new effective date, and if the change is material we will tell you in the app or by message before it takes effect. If you keep using the service after a change takes effect, you accept it. If you do not agree, stop using the service. A change to section 19 does not apply to a dispute that either of us had already given notice of, and you may reject a change to section 19 by emailing us within 30 days of it being posted, in which case the previous version of that section continues to apply to you.

21. General

• Whole agreement. These terms, the Medical Disclaimer and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Staq about the service and replace any earlier agreement about it.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, that part is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force, subject to what section 19 says about the class-action waiver.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a term, that is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours, for example to a company formed to operate Staq, or to a successor in a merger or sale. If that happens, "Staq" in these terms means that company.
• No third-party rights, except as section 22 provides for Apple.
• Export and sanctions. You may not use the service if you are in a country under a U.S. government embargo or on a U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Notices. We may give you notice in the app, by text message, or by email if we have your address. Send notices to us at the address in section 23.
• Headings are for convenience and do not affect meaning.

22. Terms required by Apple

This section applies when you use the app obtained from Apple's App Store.

• Who the agreement is with. These terms are between you and Staq only, not Apple. Staq, not Apple, is solely responsible for the app and its content.
• Scope of licence. Your licence to the app is a non-transferable licence to use it on any Apple-branded products that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions, except that the app may be accessed and used by other accounts associated with you through Family Sharing or volume purchasing.
• Maintenance and support. Staq is solely responsible for any maintenance and support of the app. Apple has no obligation to provide either.
• Warranty. Staq is solely responsible for any warranty for the app, to the extent not effectively disclaimed. If the app fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any, for the app. To the maximum extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty are Staq's responsibility, subject to these terms.
• Product claims. Staq, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the app or your possession or use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar laws.
• Intellectual property claims. If a third party claims that the app, or your possession and use of it, infringes its intellectual property rights, Staq, not Apple, is solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of that claim.
• Legal compliance. You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. government embargo or that the U.S. government has designated a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Third-party terms. You must comply with any third-party terms that apply when you use the app, such as your mobile carrier's data agreement.
• Third-party beneficiary. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms. When you accept them, Apple has the right, and is deemed to have accepted the right, to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

23. Contact

Questions, complaints or claims about the app or these terms:

Bill Chan, doing business as Staq
225 Cherry St, New York, NY 10002
support@trystaq.app
+1 617-459-7155