Terms of Service

1. Introduction

Welcome to ToolPool.Garden. These Terms of Service (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between you and IllumAlign LLC, operator of the ToolPool.Garden platform (the "Platform," "we," "us," or "our"). They govern your access to and use of our website, services, and applications.

By creating an account, signing below, or otherwise using the Platform, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by every part of these Terms. If you do not agree, you may not use the Platform.

A separate Liability Waiver covers the risks of lending, borrowing, and teaching. We present it to you before you create or join your first pool, and you must sign it before you do either. It binds you in addition to these Terms.

If you use the Platform on behalf of a company or other organization, "you" includes both you and that organization, and you represent that you are authorized to act for the organization and to bind it to these Terms, and that you accept these Terms on its behalf.

2. Description of the Service

ToolPool.Garden is a venue that helps people who already trust one another organize the lending and borrowing of tools and the sharing of skills. Members form private "pools," list tools and skills into the pools they belong to, and coordinate borrows and teaching through a structured one-on-one chat.

We are a peer-to-peer facilitator only. We are not a party to any loan or teaching arrangement, not a lender, not a borrower, not a renter, not a teacher, not an employer, and not an agent of any user. We do not own, inspect, store, deliver, test, certify, repair, or insure any tool, and we do not conduct, supervise, or certify any teaching session. Every arrangement to lend, borrow, host, or use a tool, or to teach or learn a skill, is made directly and solely between the users involved, at their own discretion and risk.

The Platform is under active development. We may add, change, suspend, or discontinue any feature or part of the Platform at any time, and we may offer some features on a preview or experimental basis; such features may be less reliable and may be changed or removed without notice.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to hold an account. You represent that the birth date you provided at registration is accurate; accounts found to belong to people under 18 are removed without notice. You also represent that you have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms and that your use of the Platform does not violate any law that applies to you.

The Platform is offered only in the United States. You must live in the United States to hold an account, and you represent that you do. We do not offer the Platform to people who live anywhere else, and we do not direct it to them. If you move outside the United States you must stop using the Platform, and you may delete your account from your settings. We may suspend or terminate an account we believe belongs to someone living outside the United States.

You also represent that you are not located in, and do not ordinarily reside in, any country or region subject to comprehensive United States sanctions or embargoes, that you are not named on any United States restricted-party or sanctions list, and that you will not use or access the Platform in violation of United States export-control or sanctions laws.

4. Your Account

To use most features you must register for an account and provide accurate, current, and complete information. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, for keeping your password confidential except where the next paragraph allows you to share it, and for notifying us immediately of any unauthorized use.

You may not sell or transfer your account, and you may not give the password of a personal account to anyone else. An organization may hold an account of its own and give the password to the people it authorizes, which is how a group lists the equipment it owns collectively instead of putting it under one member's name. Everyone who holds that password must meet the eligibility requirements in section 3, and the organization is responsible for everything done under the account.

You agree to receive operational and legal communications from us, such as account-status notices, regardless of your notification preferences.

5. Pools

A pool is a private trust circle, not an open marketplace. Pool admins control their pool's settings, location, membership, invites, and billing, and may remove members. The pool's creator is its first admin. When an admin invites someone to a pool, the admin represents that the invitation is lawful, that no deception was used to induce the person to join, and that the person is at least 18 years old.

We do not supervise pools and are not responsible for the conduct of any pool, its admins, or its members. Joining or remaining in a pool is your choice, and you are responsible for your own conduct within it.

6. Listing Tools and Skills; Borrowing and Teaching

Tool owners decide what to list, into which of their pools a tool appears, to whom they reveal their identity, and whether to lend. Borrowers decide what to request and whether to accept an owner's terms. Nothing commits until both sides agree.

Skill listings work the same way for teaching. A member may list a skill they are willing to teach; learners decide what to request. The teacher decides into which pools the skill appears, to whom they reveal their identity, and whether, where, and how to teach. We do not verify that anyone is competent to teach or to safely learn anything, and every teaching session is arranged and conducted solely between the users involved, at their own discretion and risk.

The discussion checklist inside each chat is a prompt to help both sides set expectations before a borrow. It is not legal advice, not a contract drafted by us, and not a guarantee that any topic has been adequately addressed. We do not enforce, witness, or stand behind the terms two users agree to.

7. Anonymity and the Reveal

Tool and skill owners are anonymous to a requester until the owner chooses to reveal their identity in a chat. A reveal covers only the tool, skill, or request the chat concerns; the owner's tools and skills otherwise stay anonymous to that requester unless the owner reveals on those too, and the owner may hide their identity again on any listing where they revealed it.

We do not verify the real-world identity, background, skill, criminal history, or trustworthiness of any user, revealed or anonymous. You must not rely on the Platform to vet anyone.

8. Fees and Subscriptions

Each pool that has 20 or more members, or 250 or more listings (tools, skills, and requests counted together), is funded by a flat recurring monthly subscription of $4.99, charged to a single designated subscriber, who must be an admin of that pool. A pool that stays under both of those is free for as long as it stays that size, and every pool's first month is free. The fee does not change with the size of the pool: those counts determine only whether a pool is charged, not how much. A subscriber may transfer the subscription to another admin of the same pool, and it may fail over to another admin if the subscriber leaves.

The subscription is a recurring charge to the subscriber's own payment method; we hold no pooled or prepaid balance, and no one other than the designated subscriber pays for a pool. If a charge fails, the subscription enters a short grace period during which the pool keeps working, and the pool is then paused until the subscription is restarted.

Payments are handled by our third-party payment provider (currently Stripe or Dodo Payments), which acts as the merchant of record. Any applicable taxes are added at checkout and are your responsibility. Charges are non-refundable except at our sole discretion. You may cancel the subscription at any time through the provider's billing portal; cancellation stops future charges and takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

We are a for-profit company and pools are private groups, not charities. A subscription payment is not a charitable donation and is not tax-deductible.

9. Payments and Refunds

Payments are processed by a third-party payment provider (currently Stripe or Dodo Payments), which acts as our merchant of record. By placing a payment you agree to that provider's terms, and we are not liable for issues arising from the payment transaction itself. No raw card data is ever stored on our servers; we hold only the customer and payment references supplied by our payment provider.

Refunds, when issued at all, are issued only by platform staff at our sole discretion. There is no self-service refund. We may change our pricing on at least 30 days' notice through the Platform or by email.

10. Your Content

You retain ownership of the text and images you upload, such as tool and skill listings, photos, profile details, reviews, and messages ("Your Content").

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, back up, reproduce, adapt, publish, and display Your Content in order to: operate, maintain, and improve the Platform; keep it safe, which includes moderating content, investigating reports, and detecting and preventing fraud and abuse; comply with the law, respond to legal process, resolve disputes, and enforce these Terms; and promote the Platform. We sublicense Your Content only to the service providers who help us operate, host, and deliver the Platform, and only for these purposes.

The promotional part of that license is a release: you agree that we may use Your Content, and the name, username, and likeness that appear in it, in screenshots, demonstrations, presentations, and marketing material, in any medium, without further notice, approval, or payment. This does not change your anonymity between users on the Platform itself, and you may ask us to stop using a particular piece of Your Content promotionally, which we will honour on a going-forward basis.

You are solely responsible for Your Content and represent that you have the right to post it. We may remove content, and disable served images, at any time, particularly to take down material that is reported, unlawful, or in breach of these Terms.

This license lasts for as long as Your Content is on the Platform, and it survives the deletion of your account for the content that is meant to outlive it: the reviews you wrote and the messages you sent remain visible to the people they concern, attributed to a "Deleted user" rather than to you. It also survives for as long as Your Content remains in our routine backups, and for any copy we must keep to comply with the law or to resolve a dispute.

If you send us ideas, suggestions, or other feedback about the Platform, you agree that we may use it without restriction and without compensation to you, and that doing so gives you no right, title, or interest in the Platform or in the feedback.

11. Reviews and Ratings

Reviews must be honest and based on a genuine interaction. A review is shown on a profile without its author's name, whichever role they wrote in, but you must not place identifying information about another person in the body of a review: the system withholds an account name and cannot scrub review text.

We do not arbitrate the fairness of reviews between users, though platform staff may remove reviews that violate these Terms.

12. Acceptable Use

You agree not to misuse the Platform or help anyone else do so. In particular, you agree not to: breach or circumvent any law, regulation, or third-party right; provide false or misleading account, pool, tool, or skill information; harass, threaten, defame, stalk, or endanger anyone; lend, borrow, list, or teach anything illegal; misrepresent a tool's condition or your own experience or qualifications, including your ability to teach a skill; use a tool without the experience and protective equipment a reasonable person would require; sub-lend a borrowed tool; evade a removal; scrape or copy data without our written permission; probe, attack, reverse-engineer, or interfere with the Platform, except as the security-testing paragraphs below allow; or introduce malware.

Security testing of any kind requires our prior written permission. If you want to look for security problems in the Platform, email [email protected] describing what you want to test and how, and wait for our written approval before you begin. Any approval we give covers only the scope, the accounts, and the period we agree to in writing, may be withdrawn at any time, and does not authorize you to access, alter, or publish another user's data. Testing without approval, or outside its scope, is a material breach of these Terms and may also violate applicable law.

We do not operate a bug bounty program. Neither an approval to test nor a report you send us entitles you to a reward, fee, or other compensation, and no approval is an offer to buy the results. We may choose to pay for a report; any such payment is discretionary, is decided by us case by case, and is not promised by these Terms. Withholding a vulnerability, or threatening to publish or sell it, in order to obtain payment or any other concession from us is a material breach of these Terms. The Acceptable Use Policy sets out the rules that apply while you test and how to report what you find.

Our Acceptable Use Policy and Prohibited Items list, published on the Platform, describe these obligations in more detail and are incorporated into these Terms by reference. Listing, lending, or borrowing an item on the Prohibited Items list is a material breach of these Terms.

Abusive, harassing, or threatening behavior toward our staff or other users is a material breach of these Terms and may result in immediate termination.

13. Intellectual Property

The Platform and its original content, features, and functionality (excluding Your Content) are and remain the exclusive property of IllumAlign LLC and its licensors, and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Our name, logo, and trade dress may not be used without our prior written consent.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Platform in accordance with these Terms.

14. Copyright and Trademark Complaints

We respect the intellectual property of others and expect users to do the same. Our designated agent for copyright-infringement notices, registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, is: Designated Copyright Agent, IllumAlign LLC, 141 Traction St #2238, Greenville, SC 29611, phone (864) 305-3909, email [email protected]. If you believe material on the Platform infringes your copyright, send our designated agent a notice that includes: (1) identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed; (2) identification of the material you claim is infringing and information reasonably sufficient to let us locate it; (3) your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address; (4) a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; (5) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on the owner's behalf; and (6) your physical or electronic signature.

When we receive a valid notice we will remove or disable access to the identified material and make a reasonable attempt to notify the user who posted it. That user may send us a counter-notification meeting the requirements of 17 U.S.C. § 512(g); if we receive one, we may restore the material after ten business days unless the complaining party first informs us that it has filed a court action seeking to restrain the alleged infringement.

We apply a similar process to complaints that material on the Platform infringes a trademark; a trademark notice should also state the basis of your rights, such as a registration number and the jurisdiction of registration.

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

15. Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery

We do not tolerate intimate images shared without consent. If you are an identifiable individual depicted in an intimate visual depiction published on the Platform without your consent (including a depiction that was digitally created or altered to appear to be you), you, or someone authorized to act for you, may ask us to remove it by emailing [email protected] with enough information for us to locate the material, a good-faith statement that it was published without your consent, and enough information for us to contact you.

Consistent with the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act, we will remove reported material within 48 hours of receiving a valid request and will make reasonable efforts to identify and remove identical copies of it. We may also remove other reported material that uses an identifiable person's name, image, or likeness in violation of that person's rights or of these Terms.

16. Data Security and Privacy

We take the security of your data seriously and use modern technical and organizational safeguards, including encryption in transit and at rest and hashed passwords. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

To operate the Platform, keep it safe, enforce these Terms, and comply with the law, we may access, review, and process the content and communications you submit through the Platform, including chat messages, for purposes such as moderation, investigating reports, and detecting fraud, spam, and abuse. By using the Platform you consent to this access and processing. We do not access private communications except for these purposes or as otherwise permitted or required by law.

Our collection and use of personal information are described in our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. We do not sell your data.

17. Data Processing Agreement

Where applicable data-protection laws govern personal data processed through the Platform, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), our Data Processing Agreement governs the roles and obligations of the parties with respect to that data. The Data Processing Agreement is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

The Data Processing Agreement is offered as-is, by incorporation into these Terms. We do not yet sign individually negotiated data-processing agreements, HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, or similar dedicated compliance agreements, though we may offer them in the future. Unless and until such an agreement is in place with you, you must not use the Platform to process data that requires one: for example, protected health information.

18. Confidentiality

Each party agrees to use any non-public information disclosed by the other only as needed to use or provide the Platform, and to protect it with at least reasonable care. This obligation does not apply to information that was already known, becomes public through no fault of the receiving party, is independently developed, or is rightfully received from a third party.

19. Termination

You may stop using the Platform and delete your account at any time. Account deletion erases your personal information in line with our Privacy Policy and applicable law.

To the extent permitted by law, we may suspend, disable, or terminate your access to all or part of the Platform at any time, with or without cause and with or without notice. Obligations that accrued before termination survive it, and so do the sections of these Terms that by their nature should continue: section 10 (Your Content, to the extent described there), section 18 (Confidentiality), sections 21 through 23 (Disclaimers, Limitation of Liability, and Indemnification), and sections 25 and 26 (Governing Law and Dispute Resolution).

20. Violations and Enforcement

We may, but are not obliged to, investigate suspected violations of these Terms. Where we believe a violation has occurred we may, at our sole discretion and without notice, suspend or terminate accounts, disable pools, remove content, withhold a reveal, report activity to law enforcement, and pursue any remedy available to us.

21. Disclaimers; No Warranties

The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free.

We make no warranty whatsoever about any tool, user, pool, loan, or interaction reached through the Platform. The Platform is under active development and we do not guarantee that any reported issue will be fixed.

Some jurisdictions, including New Jersey, do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation or exclusion of certain damages. If those laws apply to you, some or all of the disclaimers and limitations in these Terms may not apply to you, and you may have additional rights.

22. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, IllumAlign LLC and its members, officers, and staff will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any injury, death, property damage, theft, or loss arising out of a loan, a teaching session, the use of any tool, or your use of the Platform.

Our total aggregate liability for any claim relating to the Platform will not exceed the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim and twenty United States dollars. Nothing in this section limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law.

The Liability Waiver you sign separately and additionally governs risks arising from tools, loans, teaching sessions, and physical use of the Platform. These protections are cumulative: nothing in this section limits the Liability Waiver, and where the two overlap the provision most protective of IllumAlign LLC applies.

23. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless IllumAlign LLC and its members, officers, and staff from every claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, cost, and expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of your use of the Platform, your tools, your loans, your teaching or learning of a skill, Your Content, or your breach of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.

24. Changes to These Terms

We may revise these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change, the version date changes and you will be asked to review and sign the current Terms again, on a full-page screen, before continuing to use the Platform. Continued use after a revision requires a fresh signature.

25. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Subject to the arbitration section below, you consent to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Greenville County, South Carolina.

26. Dispute Resolution and Binding Arbitration

You and IllumAlign LLC agree to resolve any dispute or claim relating to these Terms or the Platform through final and binding arbitration on an individual basis, rather than in court, except that either party may bring a qualifying individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may bring an individual claim for infringement or misuse of intellectual property in a court described in the Governing Law section. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.

Before either of us starts an arbitration or a lawsuit, we agree to try to resolve the dispute informally first. The party raising the dispute must send the other a written notice describing the dispute and the relief sought: to us, at [email protected] or the mailing address in the Contact section; to you, at the email address on your account. For sixty days after the notice is received, both parties will make a good-faith effort to resolve the dispute, including by a phone or video conference if either party asks for one, and neither party may start an arbitration or a lawsuit before that period ends. Any statute of limitations is paused during those sixty days.

The arbitration will be conducted before a single neutral arbitrator agreed on by both parties. It is deliberately not administered by any arbitral institution: if the parties cannot agree on an arbitrator within 30 days of a written arbitration demand, either party may ask a court of competent jurisdiction in Greenville County, South Carolina to appoint one under 9 U.S.C. § 5. The arbitrator will set fair procedures consistent with due process, including a reasonable exchange of information, and may award any relief a court could award to the individual claimant. The seat of the arbitration is Greenville County, South Carolina; hearings may be conducted remotely or on written submissions where the arbitrator finds that fair. We will pay the arbitrator's fees and the costs of the arbitration to the extent they exceed the filing fees you would have paid to bring the same claim in court, unless the arbitrator finds the claim frivolous. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

You and IllumAlign LLC each agree that claims may be brought only in the claimant's individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, or representative proceeding, and the arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding. This section is not legal advice; consult a professional to understand its effect.

You may opt out of this arbitration section entirely. To do so, email [email protected], or write to the mailing address in the Contact section, within 30 days after you first accept a version of these Terms that offers this opt-out, stating your name, the email address on your account, and that you decline this arbitration agreement. Opting out is free and takes effect when we receive your notice. It has no effect on your account, your access to the Platform, or any other part of these Terms (including the class and representative action waiver and the Governing Law section), and it binds both of us: neither you nor IllumAlign LLC may require the other to arbitrate a dispute.

If a dispute proceeds in court rather than in arbitration (because you opted out, because the claim is one this section allows in court, or because a court finds part of this section unenforceable), you and IllumAlign LLC each waive the right to a trial by jury to the fullest extent permitted by law, and the jurisdiction and venue provisions of the Governing Law section apply.

The Platform itself does not adjudicate, mediate, or resolve disputes between users.

27. Third-Party Services

The Platform relies on and may link to third-party services that we do not control. We are not responsible for the content, policies, or practices of any third party, and your use of a third-party service is governed by that party's terms.

28. Consumer Rights and Notices

Nothing in these Terms excludes, limits, or waives any right or protection that applicable law grants you as a consumer and does not allow to be excluded, limited, or waived. Because the Platform is offered only to people who live in the United States (see section 3), these Terms are written around United States federal and state law. If you use the Platform from outside the United States despite that requirement, the Governing Law and Dispute Resolution sections still apply, except where mandatory consumer protections of the place you live provide otherwise.

If you are a California resident, you may report complaints to the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210, in accordance with California Civil Code § 1789.3.

29. General Provisions

These Terms, together with the Liability Waiver, the Privacy Policy, the Data Processing Agreement, and the Acceptable Use Policy (including its Prohibited Items list), are the entire agreement between you and us and supersede all prior agreements on their subject matter. You may not assign your rights or obligations without our consent; we may assign ours, for example in a merger or sale of assets.

If any provision is found unenforceable, it will be limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest will remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

30. Contact Us

Questions about these Terms may be sent to [email protected]. The mailing address for IllumAlign LLC is 141 Traction Street #2238, Greenville SC 29611-4725.