LEGAL
Terms of Service
These terms are the agreement between you and Illumination Labs LLC for using Stewart. We have tried to write them in plain language rather than in the defensive fog these documents usually come in.
The three things that matter most: Stewart is read-only and can never move your money. The financial information it shows comes from your banks through a third party and can be delayed or wrong, so do not make a decision that matters without checking with your bank. And Stewart’s reminders are a helpful nudge, not a guarantee — the responsibility for your bills, your home, and your car stays yours.
1. Agreeing to these terms
By creating an account or using Stewart, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.
You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a contract. Stewart is offered in the United States and we make no claim that it is appropriate elsewhere.
2. What Stewart is
Stewart is a personal assistant for three parts of your life: your money, your home, and your car. It connects to accounts you choose, organises what it finds, and reminds you about things that are coming due.
What Stewart is not
- It is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Budgets, categories, projections, and net-worth figures are organisational tools. They are not a recommendation to do anything, and we are not your financial adviser, broker, or accountant.
- It is not a bank and it does not move money. Every connection is read-only. Stewart cannot make a payment, a transfer, or a trade, and there is no feature in the product that could.
- It is not a system of record. Your bank’s statement is the truth. Stewart is a convenient view of it.
- It is not a mechanic or a home inspector. Maintenance schedules are based on general intervals and the information you give us, not on an inspection of your actual property or vehicle.
3. Your account
- Give us accurate information and keep it current. Stewart’s output is only as good as what it is told.
- Keep your sign-in credentials to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly at contact@getstewart.app if you think someone else has access.
- A household can have more than one member. Anyone you add to your household can see and change that household’s data. Add people accordingly.
4. Connecting your accounts
When you connect a bank, card, or investment account, you authorise us to access and store that account’s information on your behalf through our data provider, and you confirm that you have the right to do so for that account.
The same applies to connecting a vehicle. You confirm you own it or are authorised to connect it.
Those connections are also governed by the provider’s own terms and privacy policy, which you accept when you use their connection flow. Your bank’s agreement with you continues to apply as well.
You can disconnect any institution at any time from its account page, which ends our access at the source. See the Privacy Policy for exactly what happens to the data.
5. The accuracy of what you see
This is the most important limitation in these terms, so it is not buried in the warranty section.
Stewart displays information that comes from your financial institutions through a third-party provider. That information can be delayed, incomplete, or wrong. Balances may not reflect transactions that have not posted. Connections break, and a bank can go hours or days without delivering an update. Categorisation is automated and will sometimes be mistaken.
Do not rely on Stewart alone for a decision that matters. Check your bank before you act on a balance. The same applies to vehicle mileage, which is read periodically rather than continuously and may be out of date.
6. Reminders and messages
Stewart sends reminders by text, email, and in the app according to the settings you choose. Delivery is not guaranteed. Messages can be delayed, filtered, or dropped by carriers and mail providers, and we do not control any of that.
Treat reminders as a helpful nudge, not as a safety net. Missing a bill, a maintenance interval, or a warranty deadline remains your responsibility.
If you turn on text messages you consent to receive them at the number you give us. Message frequency depends on the reminders you enable, and message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to stop all of them, or START to resume. We honour STOP immediately regardless of your in-app settings.
7. Connecting an AI assistant
Stewart can be connected to an AI assistant you authorise, so you can ask it about your own data. If you do that, that assistant can read and change your Stewart data on your behalf, and what it then does with that data is governed by its provider’s terms, not ours.
This only ever happens because you set it up, it is limited to your own household, and you can revoke it at any time. We are not responsible for what a third-party assistant you authorised does with access you granted it.
8. Acceptable use
Please do not:
- Connect an account you do not own or have permission to access.
- Try to break, overload, probe, or reverse-engineer the service.
- Access another household’s data, or attempt to.
- Use Stewart to break the law, or to build a competing product from its data.
- Scrape or bulk-extract data through automated means beyond normal use.
Good-faith security research is welcome and is not a violation of this section. Tell us at contact@getstewart.app and we will not pursue you for reporting something responsibly.
9. Price
Stewart is currently free to use. If we introduce a paid plan we will tell you before it applies to you, and you will be able to decline and stop using the service.
10. Our content, and yours
Stewart—the software, design, and name—belongs to Illumination Labs LLC. These terms do not transfer any of it to you; you get permission to use the service, nothing more.
Your data stays yours. We claim no ownership of the financial, home, or vehicle information in your account. You grant us only the permission we need to operate the service for you — to store it, process it, and show it back to you. We do not sell it and we do not use it for advertising.
11. Ending it
You can leave at any time, by deleting your account in Settings. That revokes our access to your connected accounts and permanently erases your data, as described in the Privacy Policy.
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that we are legally required to close, or that poses a risk to the service or to other users. Except where the law or an emergency prevents it, we will tell you why and give you a chance to retrieve your information.
We may also discontinue Stewart. If we do, we will give reasonable notice so you can export or record anything you want to keep.
12. Disclaimers
Stewart is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, that it will be free of errors, that reminders will arrive, or that information obtained from your financial institutions or vehicle will be accurate, complete, or current.
13. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, Illumination Labs LLC will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or missed payments, arising from your use of Stewart.
Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars.
Some states do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.
14. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify Illumination Labs LLC against claims arising from your misuse of the service, your breach of these terms, or your connecting an account you were not entitled to connect.
15. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.
16. Resolving a dispute
Please talk to us first. Most problems are a misunderstanding or a bug, and we would rather fix it than argue about it. Email contact@getstewart.app describing the issue and what you would like done. Neither of us may start a formal proceeding until 30 days after that notice, so there is a real chance to sort it out.
Arbitration
If we cannot resolve it informally, you and Illumination Labs LLC agree that any dispute relating to Stewart or these terms will be settled by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, administered under the Federal Arbitration Act. Arbitration is less formal than a lawsuit: there is no jury, a neutral arbitrator decides, and review by a court is limited. An arbitrator can award the same individual relief a court could.
Arbitration will take place in Texas, or by phone or video, or wherever else we both agree.
What this does not cover
- Small-claims court. Either of us may bring an individual claim there instead, if it qualifies.
- Urgent relief. Either of us may ask a court for an injunction to stop misuse of intellectual property, unauthorised access, or a breach of security, without waiting for arbitration.
- Regulators. Nothing here stops you raising a complaint with a government agency.
Individual claims only
You and Illumination Labs LLC agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, or representative action. Both of us waive the right to a jury trial. If this paragraph is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — is severed and heard in court.
You can opt out, and it costs you nothing
You may decline arbitration entirely. Email contact@getstewart.app with the subject “Arbitration Opt-Out” and your account email, within 30 days of first accepting these terms. That is all it takes. We will confirm, nothing else about your account changes, and disputes will then be heard in the state or federal courts located in Texas, to whose jurisdiction both of us consent.
If we later change this section, you get a fresh 30 days to opt out of the change.
17. Changes
We may update these terms. If a change meaningfully affects your rights we will tell you directly and update the effective date above, rather than relying on you to notice. Continuing to use Stewart after a change means you accept the updated terms.
18. The rest
- If a provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force and that provision is narrowed to the minimum extent necessary.
- Not enforcing something once does not waive the right to enforce it later.
- You may not transfer these terms. We may, as part of a merger or acquisition, and we will tell you if that happens.
- These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about Stewart.
19. Contact
Illumination Labs LLC
contact@getstewart.app