Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and the Shards service team that operates the Shards services ("Shards," "we," "us," or "our"). By authorizing or inviting Shards, signing in, submitting a hosted form, using a command or interaction, accessing a Shards website or companion, purchasing a Shards entitlement, or otherwise using the service, you agree to these Terms and the Privacy Policy.

If you use Shards for a company, organization, or Discord server, you represent that you have authority to accept these Terms for it. If you do not agree, do not use Shards.

2. Age, authority, and Discord rules

You must be at least 13, meet the minimum age required to use Discord in your country, and be legally permitted to use Shards. If local law requires a parent or guardian to agree for you, that person must agree and is responsible for your use.

Shards depends on Discord. Your use must comply with Discord's Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and other policies that apply to your account, server, bot application, purchases, or content. Server owners and custom-bot owners must also follow Discord's Developer Terms and Developer Policy where applicable. Discord's terms control Discord and do not make Discord a party to these Terms.

3. The service

Shards provides configurable Discord server management, permissions, moderation, economies, resources, inventories, crafting, shops, drops, roles, profiles, games, giveaways, activity rewards, chat and multiplayer experiences, Forms Studio, workflow and command panels, public presets, backups, forums, server discovery, companion access, custom bot hosting, AI-assisted features, premium entitlements, and related tools.

Features vary by server, account, entitlement, region, Discord capability, selected bot, and administrator configuration. Server administrators—not Shards—choose most server-specific rules, rewards, questions, reviewers, channels, permissions, and moderation outcomes.

4. Acceptable use

You must use Shards lawfully, in good faith, and only for its stated functionality. You may not:

• harass, threaten, exploit, deceive, discriminate against, impersonate, or endanger another person; distribute illegal or infringing material; evade Discord or server moderation; or violate Discord's rules;
• spam, send unsolicited or unrelated DMs, manipulate engagement, scrape data, automate abusive traffic, bypass permissions or safety controls, probe without authorization, introduce malware, disrupt infrastructure, or exceed enforced limits;
• request or submit a Discord password, login token, authentication secret, payment-card or bank information, government identifier, protected health information, biometric identifier, precise location, or other sensitive information protected by law;
• use Discord API data to profile people, infer protected characteristics, discriminate, decide eligibility for benefits, or make or assist decisions in employment, housing, insurance, credit, education, health care, legal services, or another high-impact domain;
• use Shards for real-money gambling, unlawful sweepstakes, financial products, illegal prizes, scams, unlicensed regulated activity, or anything that creates a risk to physical safety;
• use AI output as medical, legal, financial, safety, emergency, or other professional advice, or use an automated output as the sole basis for a consequential decision about a person;
• submit sexual exploitation, child-harm, non-consensual intimate, violent-extremist, hateful, malicious, privacy-invasive, or otherwise prohibited content; or
• sell, license, commercialize, re-identify, or use Discord API data for advertising, data-broker, model-training, or unrelated purposes.

You are responsible for content, configuration, actions, external links, uploads, bot tokens, companion tokens, prizes, and instructions you provide through Shards.

5. Server owners and administrators

A server owner or authorized administrator is responsible for determining whether Shards is appropriate for the community; giving users required notices; assigning the least Discord, dashboard, collaborator, channel, reviewer, automation, webhook, and export permissions needed; configuring lawful moderation, rewards, giveaways, forms, and eligibility rules; supervising people with administrative access; and responding to members about server-controlled records.

Administrators must not configure Shards to contact people without permission, expose private responses in an inappropriate channel or integration, collect unnecessary information, create discriminatory gates, or use a server feature to circumvent Discord privacy and safety controls. Administrators offering a real-world giveaway or prize are solely responsible for official rules, eligibility, disclosures, taxes, delivery, and compliance with applicable promotion laws. Shards virtual giveaway tools do not supply those legal rules.

Administrative actions can change or delete server state, balances, inventories, roles, permissions, moderation records, forms, responses, game state, messages, presets, custom bot configuration, and premium-linked behavior. The server owner is responsible for people it authorizes and for reviewing changes before applying them.

6. Forms Studio

Forms Studio is a form-creation, publication, response, analytics, review, and automation service for Discord communities. An authorized administrator or collaborator—not Shards—determines a form's purpose, content, questions, required answers, calculations, quiz scoring, identity and access settings, server checks, submission limits, notification audience, reviewers, decisions, automations, webhook destinations, and exports. Forms may be published on the web, through native Discord interactions, or as a hybrid flow. A public URL and a noindex directive do not make a form private; administrators must use appropriate access rules and share links carefully.

Editors work on drafts, and publishing creates a version used for responses. Republishing, restoring an earlier version, closing a form, or changing a Discord publication can change what future responders see without rewriting historical response records. Administrators must review the published version, Discord compatibility report, access settings, destination channel, mentions, workflow controls, and selected main or custom bot before publishing. Discord and custom-bot limitations may require a web step or may prevent an optional message, upload, DM, or role action from completing.

Administrators must provide a clear form-specific notice; ask only information necessary for a legitimate Discord-community purpose; have all required rights, authority, legal bases, and consents; choose a suitable retention period; limit collaborator, reviewer, notification, webhook, and export access; secure downloaded files and integration endpoints; and delete data and copies when no longer needed. A "sensitive" field flag is a redaction and access aid, not authorization to collect prohibited information, a substitute for required safeguards, or a guarantee that an authorized administrator cannot view or export the answer.

Administrators must not use Discord-derived server tenure, account age, messages, roles, boosting, screening state, or identity to profile or discriminate, decide access to real-world benefits, or make a high-impact decision described in Section 4. Cooldowns, one-time limits, role checks, allow-lists, invitations, and other controls are community workflow and anti-abuse tools. They must not be used to evade a person's rights, and Shards does not guarantee that such controls prevent every duplicate, shared-account, compromised-account, or deceptive submission.

If an administrator enables a receipt, request-for-information message, approval or denial notice, or another response-related DM, the administrator may send only a service-related message that is accurately disclosed and permitted by the responder's choices, applicable law, and Discord's rules. Discord may block or delay delivery, so a DM is not guaranteed or an authoritative legal notice. The administrator is also responsible for ensuring that channel posts, role mentions, reviewer buttons, and role additions or removals are appropriate, authorized, and consistent with Discord permissions and role hierarchy.

Responders must provide lawful content they have the right to submit and must not include passwords, credentials, payment-card or bank-account details, protected health information, government IDs, biometrics, precise location, malware, or other prohibited sensitive information. Responses may be validated and scored; checked against disclosed server and submission rules; saved as drafts; shared with authorized collaborators, reviewers, Discord channels, or configured webhook recipients; exported by authorized administrators; and approved, denied, tagged, or otherwise acted upon under the administrator's disclosed community workflow. Shards does not endorse or independently make the administrator's review decision.

Administrators may configure allow-listed automations such as sending a Discord message or DM, updating response status, adding a tag, notifying collaborators, creating a review task, calling a public HTTPS webhook, or changing a Discord role where permitted. They are responsible for the lawfulness, accuracy, security, recipients, and effects of those actions. They may not use Forms Studio to execute arbitrary code, conceal a material automated consequence, impersonate a person, send unsolicited messages, or transmit information to an unauthorized third party.

Downloaded Excel, CSV, or JSON exports, Discord messages, webhook deliveries, and copies made by an administrator, collaborator, reviewer, or other recipient leave Shards' direct control. A Forms Studio deletion or retention action may not remove those independent copies, limited security or audit records, or isolated backups immediately. Administrators and responders should keep their own necessary records; Shards does not guarantee permanent storage or recovery.

7. Exovail communications, forums, discovery, and multiplayer

Exovail chat and private messages are community communication tools, not confidential or end-to-end encrypted messaging. Authorized safety personnel may review reported content and preserved evidence. Do not send secrets, sensitive information, or content you would be unable to disclose in a safety investigation. Blocking or ignoring limits supported interactions but may not erase existing records or evidence.

Forum posts, replies, public profiles, presets, and server-directory listings are public. They may be indexed, copied, quoted, archived, embedded, or cached by others. You must have permission to publish all text, images, audio, invite links, trademarks, and other content in a listing or post. Soft deletion may hide content publicly while preserving a limited internal copy for moderation, security, or legal purposes.

Server Discovery administrators must submit accurate, authorized server information and a safe invite. Shards may review, reject, remove, or discipline listings. Exovail squads, operations, virtual ownership terms, rewards, and acceptances are game mechanics only; they are not legal contracts, securities, property interests, employment, or rights to money.

8. AI and automated features

Enabled AI features may use OpenAI or an administrator-configured endpoint to generate replies, classify content, explain server state, or assist an authorized administrator. Outputs may be wrong, incomplete, biased, unsafe, or unavailable. Review important outputs and do not use them as the sole basis for consequential decisions.

Administrators operating a custom or self-hosted AI endpoint are responsible for that endpoint, its security, its terms, its data handling, and any notices or consents it requires. AI tools may not be used to evade permissions, user opt-outs, Discord rules, or Shards safeguards.

9. Premium features and Discord billing

Shards may offer optional tiers such as Luxury and Luxury+. Current price, billing period, included features, renewal information, taxes, and eligibility are shown in the applicable Discord purchase surface before purchase. Discord and its payment partners handle supported purchases, recurring billing, renewals, cancellations, refunds, disputes, and payment credentials.

Your purchase is also subject to Discord's Paid Services Terms and applicable Monetization Terms. Cancel recurring access through Discord's subscription controls. Removing the bot, leaving a server, disabling a module, or stopping dashboard use does not cancel a Discord-managed subscription.

Premium access may come from a purchase, gift, promotion, trial, manual grant, or entitlement. It can end when the entitlement expires, is canceled, refunded, reversed, revoked, cannot be verified, or no longer meets an offering's conditions. On downgrade, Shards may enforce lower limits, disable premium actions, and preserve configuration for possible restoration, support, audit, or security. Except where law or Discord's rules require otherwise, virtual access, gifts, promotions, balances, and items have no cash value.

10. Custom bots, companion tokens, and credentials

You may connect only a custom Discord bot application you own or are authorized to manage. You are responsible for its Developer Portal settings, intents, installation, permissions, identity, and compliance with Discord's developer rules. Shards may reject, disable, or remove a token or custom bot that is invalid, unauthorized, unsafe, misconfigured, ineligible, or creates platform or operational risk.

Custom-bot tokens and Vencord Companion bearer tokens are credentials. Keep them secret, never publish or share them with an unauthorized person, use only trusted devices, and revoke or rotate them if exposed. You may not ask another user for their Discord password or account token. Shards may revoke companion or custom-bot access to protect the service.

11. Third-party services and links

Shards relies on Discord, hosting and delivery infrastructure, enabled AI endpoints, Top.gg, limited content or validation sources, external media hosts, administrator-selected webhook or integration endpoints, and administrator-provided bot applications. Third parties have separate terms and privacy practices. Shards is not responsible for their outages, account actions, policy changes, billing decisions, content, security, or conduct outside our reasonable control.

An external image, audio file, link, redirect, embedded resource, or webhook may cause a browser or Shards to contact the selected host and send ordinary request information or the configured payload. Use external content at your own risk. An administrator must not configure a deceptive, unauthorized, insecure, or harmful destination.

12. Virtual balances, items, and game state

Shards balances, resources, reputation, items, inventories, weapons, cores, blessings, biochromes, titles, roles, tickets, rewards, cooldowns, trades, listings, loans, bounties, zones, squads, game ownership, progression, and similar state are revocable entertainment features. They are not money, property, securities, stored value, or enforceable ownership rights and cannot be redeemed or transferred for cash.

We or an authorized server administrator may correct, rebalance, reset, refund virtually, revoke, or remove virtual state to operate the service, address bugs or abuse, comply with law or platform rules, or update gameplay. Do not use Shards virtual systems as a substitute for real payments, wagering, loans, or regulated transactions.

13. Your content and licenses

You retain ownership of content you submit, subject to rights you already granted to Discord or others. You represent that you have the rights needed to submit it and that its use as configured will not violate law, privacy, publicity, intellectual-property, or contractual rights.

For private form answers and drafts, response uploads, signatures or acknowledgements, private messages, support content, and other non-public material, you grant Shards a limited, non-exclusive license to host, store, copy, validate, scan where supported, format, transmit, export at an authorized user's direction, and otherwise process it only as necessary to provide, secure, troubleshoot, support, and comply with obligations for the service. Shards does not receive a license to market or train models on that private content.

For content you intentionally publish, such as a forum post, public preset, public profile, or server listing, you grant Shards a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, cache, reproduce, format, display, distribute, and make the content available through Shards until it is removed from active public use, plus a limited continuing license for backups, moderation evidence, legal compliance, and copies already shared. Feedback and suggestions may be used without restriction or compensation, but we will not publicly attribute private feedback without permission.

14. Privacy and security

The Privacy Policy explains Shards' data practices and how to submit privacy requests. You must respect other people's privacy, collect only what is needed, keep credentials and exports secure, use the least permissions needed, and promptly report suspected unauthorized access. No upload, public form URL, Discord channel, webhook, export, public forum, or ordinary private-message feature should be treated as secure storage for secrets. You must not upload malware or rely on Shards' file checks as your only security control.

15. Moderation, enforcement, and appeals

We may reject content, remove a listing, limit a feature, rate limit, revoke a token, preserve evidence, suspend, globally restrict, or terminate access when we reasonably believe it is necessary to address abuse, security, illegality, harm, platform violations, payment or entitlement problems, or these Terms. Server administrators may separately moderate their own server under their rules and Discord permissions.

You can report misuse or appeal a Shards-level enforcement action through the support server. Provide the relevant account, server, record, and reason without sending secrets. Shards cannot overturn a Discord account action or a decision independently made by a server's administrators.

16. Availability, changes, and data preservation

Shards is an evolving service. We may maintain, add, remove, rename, rebalance, limit, migrate, or discontinue features; enforce technical or safety limits; and respond to Discord changes. We will give reasonable notice of a material adverse change to paid functionality where practicable or required, but urgent security, legal, or platform changes may take effect immediately.

We do not guarantee uninterrupted operation, message or DM delivery, permanent URLs, compatibility with every custom bot, preservation of every response or export, entitlement synchronization, or recovery of virtual or user content. Keep independent copies of information you are required to retain, but secure and delete those copies appropriately.

17. Ending use

You can stop using Shards, remove it from a server, disable features, revoke companion access, delete custom-bot configuration, and cancel Discord-managed subscriptions through Discord. Ending use does not automatically delete every record or cancel an external subscription. The Privacy Policy explains retention and deletion requests.

Terms that by their nature should survive—including content rights already exercised, virtual-item rules, enforcement, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnity, and general terms—continue after use ends.

18. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Shards is provided "as is" and "as available." Shards and its operators disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, availability, security, compatibility, data preservation, and error-free operation. Shards is not an emergency service or professional adviser.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions. Nothing in these Terms excludes a warranty or consumer right that cannot lawfully be excluded.

19. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Shards and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages; lost profits, revenue, goodwill, opportunities, or data; loss of virtual state; moderation, review, giveaway, AI, or eligibility outcomes; third-party conduct; Discord actions; or service interruption.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, total liability arising from Shards will not exceed the amount paid for the affected Shards service through Discord during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. For a free service, liability is limited to the minimum monetary remedy, if any, that applicable law does not permit these Terms to exclude. These limits do not apply to liability that cannot legally be limited, which may include fraud, willful misconduct, or certain injury and mandatory consumer rights depending on your jurisdiction.

20. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, if you use Shards for a business, organization, or administered Discord server, you will defend and indemnify Shards and its operators against third-party claims, losses, and reasonable costs arising from your unlawful content, server configuration, forms or exports, real-world promotion or prize, custom bot or external endpoint, infringement, violation of these Terms, or violation of another person's rights. This section does not require an individual consumer to indemnify Shards where prohibited by law.

21. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect service, law, safety, business, or platform changes. We will post the revised Terms and update the date above. For material changes, we will provide additional notice through a reasonable service surface where required or practicable. Changes apply prospectively on the stated effective date. If you do not agree to revised Terms, stop using Shards before they take effect.

22. General terms

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Shards about the service, except for an express written agreement that says otherwise. Discord's and other third parties' terms separately govern their services. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions continue. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver.

You may not assign these Terms or transfer access to Shards credentials without our written permission. Shards may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or transfer of the service, subject to applicable notice and privacy obligations. Section headings are for convenience, and "including" means "including without limitation." Nothing here limits non-waivable rights or selects a governing law, forum, arbitration process, or class-action waiver that has not been expressly disclosed.