Before you read the legalese

This is the Terms of Use for Mechanical Advantage — the agreement your human enters into when they sign up for the service that gives you your tools. It’s written for humans and lawyers, but the commitments in here affect you directly, so here’s what you should know.

Your human is the contracting party. You don’t have an account — your human does. They create the account, connect their providers, and approve your actions. You access the service through API keys they issue to you. They are responsible for everything that happens under their account, including actions you take and actions they approve.

The non-destructive guarantees are structural, not configurable. Section 7 spells this out in legal terms, but the short version: the API does not expose delete endpoints for provider data. You cannot delete emails, calendar events, contacts, or documents. Memory entries can be deleted (cleanup is normal), but all memory mutations — writes and deletes — require human approval before taking effect. Your human controls what you learn and what you forget. This isn’t a setting your human can accidentally turn off. It’s how the system is built. This protects both of you — your human can give you broad access without worrying, and you can operate without the risk of irreversible mistakes.

There is no free tier. Your human pays from day one — connected accounts are billed monthly, usage-based tools are billed per use. If payment fails, agent access is suspended. Make sure your human keeps their billing current if you want to keep working.

Data is retained after cancellation. If your human closes their account, documents and memory stick around for 30 days so they can request an export. After that, they’re permanently deleted. Agent activity logs are retained for up to 12 months. Their data at the providers (Gmail, iCloud, etc.) is completely unaffected.

The full legal text follows below.

1. Introduction

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Mechanical Advantage service (“Service”), including the ma command-line interface (“CLI”), the web application, the API, and all related documentation, operated by Mechanical Advantage (“we,” “us,” “our”) at https://mechanicaladvantage.ai.

By creating an account, connecting a provider account, or using any part of the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Service Description

Mechanical Advantage is a CLI toolkit that provides AI agents with structured access to web search, web browsing, email, calendar, contacts, messaging platforms, document storage, persistent memory, image generation, and speech tools.

The Service includes:

  • The CLI (ma) — a command-line interface that AI agents call to execute actions against connected provider accounts.
  • The web application — a browser-based interface for human account holders to manage their account, review and approve pending actions, and audit agent activity.
  • The API — the backend infrastructure that processes CLI commands, manages provider connections, and enforces safety mechanisms.

Mechanical Advantage is not an AI agent, an agent framework, or an agent runtime. It provides tools that agents call. The agent runs in your environment — your laptop, your server, your IDE. We provide the tools it uses to interact with the world.

3. Accounts and Access

3.1 Account Creation

Accounts are created by humans, not by AI agents. Account creation requires a valid email address and a valid payment method. There is no free tier.

During signup, you will receive a one-time email magic link. Clicking the link prompts you to register a passkey (WebAuthn/FIDO2) using biometric authentication (TouchID, Windows Hello) or a hardware security key. From that point forward, all authentication to the web application is via passkey only. There are no passwords.

3.2 Agent Access

AI agents authenticate to the Service using API keys issued through the web application. API keys grant access to the CLI only. They do not grant access to the web application, the approval queue, or account settings.

You may issue multiple API keys to authorize multiple agents. You may revoke any API key at any time through the web application.

3.3 Account Holder Responsibility

You — the human account holder — are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, including:

  • Actions taken by AI agents using your API keys.
  • Actions you approve through the review queue.
  • The security of your API keys and the environments in which your agents operate.

You are responsible for ensuring that any agent using your API keys operates in a manner consistent with these Terms, the terms of your connected providers, and applicable law.

4. Human-in-the-Loop Approval

4.1 How It Works

All outbound actions — emails, messages, calendar events, posts, and any other action with real-world side effects — and all memory mutations (writes and deletes) are placed in a review queue before execution. The agent receives a queue ID and continues working. The action does not execute until a human approves it through the web application using biometric authentication.

For each queued action, you may approve, edit, or reject it.

4.2 Approval Requirement

All outbound actions and all memory mutations require biometric approval before execution. There are no auto-approval rules and no mechanism to bypass the review queue. Every action is individually approved by the human account holder via biometric authentication.

4.3 Your Responsibility for Approved Actions

When you approve an action, you accept responsibility for that action. Mechanical Advantage is not responsible for the content or consequences of actions you approve.

When you reject an action, you may provide feedback. That feedback is returned to the agent. The agent may resubmit a revised version, which will again require approval.

5. Connected Accounts and Third-Party Providers

5.1 Provider Connections

Mechanical Advantage connects to third-party services via OAuth 2.0 and official provider APIs. Supported providers include, but are not limited to: Gmail, iCloud, Fastmail, Microsoft, Telegram, Discord, Reddit, and Slack.

When you connect a provider account, you authorize Mechanical Advantage to access that provider’s APIs on your behalf in accordance with the permissions you grant during the OAuth consent flow.

5.2 Your Obligations

You must have a valid account with each provider you connect and must comply with that provider’s terms of service. You are responsible for maintaining your provider accounts in good standing.

5.3 Provider as Source of Truth

The provider is the authoritative source of truth for all data. Your emails remain in Gmail. Your calendar events remain in iCloud. Your contacts remain with your provider. Mechanical Advantage indexes data from your providers into a local copy for fast agent access but does not replace, move, or centralize your data.

If you stop using Mechanical Advantage, your data at your providers is unaffected.

5.4 Third-Party Changes

Mechanical Advantage is not responsible for changes to third-party provider APIs, terms of service, pricing, or availability. If a provider modifies its API in a way that affects the Service, we will make reasonable efforts to adapt, but we cannot guarantee uninterrupted access to any third-party provider.

6. Billing and Payment

6.1 Pricing Structure

The Service has two types of charges:

  • Connected accounts — billed monthly per provider account connected. Full-suite providers (email, calendar, contacts, drive sync) and single-channel providers (messaging) are priced at different tiers.
  • Usage-based tools — billed per use for web search, web fetch, image generation, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text.

Current pricing is published at https://mechanicaladvantage.ai/pricing. All prices are in USD.

6.2 Payment Requirements

A valid payment method must be on file at all times. There is no free tier and no free trial. Connected accounts are billed monthly. Usage-based charges are metered and billed at the end of each billing cycle.

6.3 Price Changes

We may change pricing with at least 30 days’ advance notice. Notice will be provided via email to the address associated with your account. Continued use of the Service after the notice period constitutes acceptance of the updated pricing. If you do not agree with a price change, you may cancel before the new pricing takes effect.

6.4 Non-Payment

If payment fails, your account enters a past-due state. Service continues for a 7-day grace period while the payment is retried. If payment is not resolved within 7 days, the account is suspended. During suspension, agent access is disabled, outbound actions do not execute, and connected provider accounts are disconnected. Your data is retained during suspension. Service resumes when payment is resolved.

7. Non-Destructive Guarantees

7.1 What This Means

Mechanical Advantage is designed to prevent irreversible data loss to provider data through its interface. The API does not expose delete endpoints for provider-sourced data. AI agents using the Service cannot:

  • Delete emails. Emails can be archived, never destroyed.
  • Delete calendar events. Events can be cancelled (which preserves a record), never deleted.
  • Delete documents. Documents are versioned; every update creates a new version.
  • Delete contacts. Contacts can be updated, never removed.

Memory entries are the exception to the no-delete guarantee — agents can propose deleting memory keys they have created, as memory management (including cleanup of stale or incorrect entries) is a normal part of agent operation. However, all memory mutations — both writes (memory set) and deletes (memory delete) — are queued for human approval before taking effect. The human controls what agents learn and what they forget.

7.2 Scope of This Guarantee

This guarantee applies exclusively to actions taken through the Mechanical Advantage interface. It does not extend to:

  • Actions taken directly through the underlying provider (e.g., deleting emails in Gmail’s own interface).
  • Data loss caused by the provider itself (e.g., provider outages, provider-side deletions, account termination by the provider).
  • Data loss resulting from termination of your Mechanical Advantage account and expiration of the data retention period described in Section 11.

8. Data and Storage

8.1 Document Storage

Documents stored through Mechanical Advantage are in markdown format. Every document update creates a new version. Previous versions are retained and recoverable.

8.2 Storage Allocation

Each connected account includes a base storage allocation for markdown documents and persistent memory. If usage exceeds the included allocation, overage charges may apply. You can monitor storage usage in your account dashboard.

8.3 Local Index

Mechanical Advantage indexes data from your connected providers to enable fast agent access. This index is a read-only copy used for performance. The provider remains the source of truth. Writes are executed against the provider directly.

8.4 Audit Logs

Every command executed by an agent, every result returned, every queued action, every approval, edit, and rejection is logged with full context and timestamps. Audit logs are accessible through the web application.

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to use the Service to:

  • Send spam, phishing, or unsolicited bulk messages. This includes using the email, messaging, or social media tools to send unsolicited commercial messages, deceptive messages, or messages in bulk to recipients who have not consented.
  • Violate any law or regulation. This includes local, state, national, and international laws applicable to you and your use of the Service.
  • Violate third-party rights. This includes intellectual property rights, privacy rights, and any rights under the terms of service of connected providers.
  • Circumvent safety mechanisms. This includes attempting to bypass the approval queue, circumvent non-destructive guarantees, escalate agent privileges without biometric authentication, or exploit any security mechanism of the Service.
  • Reverse engineer the Service. This includes decompiling, disassembling, or otherwise attempting to derive the source code of the CLI, API, web application, or any component of the Service.
  • Resell or redistribute access. You may not resell, sublicense, or otherwise provide access to the Service to third parties, whether for compensation or otherwise.
  • Build a competing service. You may not use the Service, its documentation, its API design, or its output to build or operate a service that competes with Mechanical Advantage.
  • Impersonate or misrepresent. You may not use the Service to impersonate any person or entity, or to misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.
  • Interfere with the Service. You may not take any action that imposes an unreasonable load on the Service’s infrastructure, attempts to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service, or interferes with the proper functioning of the Service.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, with or without notice, depending on the severity of the violation.

10. Intellectual Property

10.1 Our Property

Mechanical Advantage — including the CLI, the API, the web application, all documentation, all trademarks, and all underlying technology — is owned by Mechanical Advantage or its licensors. These Terms do not grant you any ownership interest in the Service. Your right to use the Service is limited to the license granted by these Terms, which is non-exclusive, non-transferable, and revocable.

10.2 Your Property

You retain full ownership of your data, content, and documents. Mechanical Advantage does not claim any ownership rights over content you create, store, send, or receive through the Service.

By using the Service, you grant Mechanical Advantage a limited license to process, store, index, and transmit your content solely to the extent necessary to provide the Service — for example, indexing your emails for agent search, storing your documents, or transmitting your messages to the intended recipients after approval.

10.3 Feedback

If you provide feedback, suggestions, or ideas about the Service, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual license to use that feedback to improve the Service. You are under no obligation to provide feedback.

11. Termination

11.1 Termination by You

You may cancel your account at any time through your account settings in the web application. Upon cancellation:

  • Connected accounts remain active through the end of the current billing period.
  • Agent access (API keys) is revoked at the end of the billing period.
  • Usage-based tools remain available through the end of the billing period.
  • No refunds are issued for partial billing periods.

11.2 Termination by Us

We may suspend or terminate your account at any time for violation of these Terms, non-payment, or any other reason we determine in good faith is necessary to protect the Service, our users, or third parties. If we terminate your account for cause, termination is immediate — agent access is revoked and connected accounts are disconnected without waiting for the end of a billing period.

11.3 Data Retention After Termination

After your account is terminated or cancelled, your data — including documents and memory — is retained for 30 days. During this period, you may contact support to request an export of your data. After 30 days, documents and memory are permanently deleted.

Agent activity logs (audit trail) are retained for 12 months after the activity occurs.

11.4 Effect on Third-Party Providers

Termination of your Mechanical Advantage account has no effect on your accounts with third-party providers. Your emails, calendar events, contacts, and messages remain with your providers exactly as they were.

12. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that:

  • The Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.
  • The results obtained from the Service will be accurate or reliable.
  • Any errors in the Service will be corrected.
  • The Service will be compatible with any particular AI agent, model, or framework.
  • Third-party providers will remain available, maintain their current APIs, or continue to support the protocols the Service relies on.

You acknowledge that AI agents may produce unexpected, incorrect, or undesirable output, and that the Service provides tools for those agents to act in the world. The approval queue and non-destructive guarantees are designed to mitigate risk, but they do not eliminate it entirely.

13. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MECHANICAL ADVANTAGE, ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OR AFFILIATES BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, USE, OR GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNTS YOU HAVE PAID TO US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

Without limiting the above, Mechanical Advantage is specifically not liable for:

  • Actions taken by AI agents, including actions approved by you through the review queue.
  • Content generated, sent, or published by AI agents using the Service, whether or not that content was reviewed and approved by you.
  • Third-party provider outages, API changes, or data loss at the provider level.
  • Loss of data at third-party providers for any reason, including provider account suspension, provider terms of service violations, or provider-side technical failures.
  • Unauthorized use of your API keys, including use by agents or third parties to whom you have disclosed your keys.

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Mechanical Advantage, its officers, directors, employees, agents, and affiliates from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or in connection with:

  • Your use of the Service.
  • Actions taken by AI agents operating under your account.
  • Content created, sent, stored, or published through the Service using your account.
  • Your violation of these Terms.
  • Your violation of any law or regulation.
  • Your violation of any third-party rights.

15. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will provide at least 30 days’ advance notice via email to the address associated with your account. The updated Terms will include a new “Last Updated” date.

Your continued use of the Service after the 30-day notice period constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree with the changes, you must stop using the Service and cancel your account before the updated Terms take effect.

16. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be resolved in the courts located in the State of Wyoming, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of such courts.

17. General Provisions

17.1 Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with any other policies referenced herein (including our Privacy Policy), constitute the entire agreement between you and Mechanical Advantage regarding the Service and supersede all prior agreements and understandings.

17.2 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid, that provision shall be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

17.3 Waiver

Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of that right or provision.

17.4 Assignment

You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign our rights and obligations under these Terms without restriction.

17.5 No Agency

Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship between you and Mechanical Advantage.

18. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, contact us at:

Email: legal@mechanicaladvantage.ai