Terms of using Chronicle

The agreement

By creating an account or using Chronicle, you agree to these terms and the Privacy commitment. If you do not agree, do not create an account or submit stories, signals, reports, invitation requests, or other material.

You must provide accurate account information, use only an account you are entitled to use, and keep your password and invitation code private. Chronicle may limit or end access when an account is used to harm people or the archive.

Your words remain yours

You retain ownership of the stories and reflections you write. You are responsible for having the right to submit them and for the people and details you choose to include.

When you publish, you give Chronicle the permission it needs to host, display, preserve, curate, process, and make that story discoverable within the archive. That permission includes creating metadata and embeddings, placing the story in relevant doorways or shared reads, and showing it on eligible public reading surfaces without an author name or profile.

This permission is for operating Chronicle. It does not transfer ownership of your words to Chronicle.

Drafting and publishing

• Drafts are private. Reflection and privacy-review tools may process a draft only when you ask to use them.
• Publishing is your choice. The review step shows the story and reflections that will enter the archive before you publish.
• Published stories stand on their own. Readers meet the story without an author name, profile, email address, or a public link to your other stories.
• You keep story-level controls. You may edit, unpublish, or delete your own story later, subject to an active steward hold described below.

Publishing makes a story readable to Chronicle members and, when it has the required consent and steward designation, to signed-out readers. Do not publish information you do not want readers to find in the story itself.

Writing and reading with care

Do not submit material that you do not have the right to use, that impersonates another person, deliberately exposes someone's private identifying information, threatens or harasses, exploits, deceives, or breaks the law. Do not use account access, invitation requests, marks, echo notes, or reports to spam, manipulate, or target another person.

Marks and echo notes are quiet reader-to-author signals. They are not public comments, and the reader's identity is not shown to the author. Reports are private reader-to-steward messages; the author does not receive the report text or the reporter's identity. Use each path for its intended purpose and write as though a real person will receive the words.

Stewardship and moderation

Chronicle may review reports, curation choices, recently published stories, and signals that were held by automated checks. A steward may withdraw a story from reading surfaces, restore it, review a report, or approve or decline a request using the controls already present in the service.

When a story is withdrawn, Chronicle tells its author the reason and provides the available review path. The author is not told which steward acted. A steward sees the story and words needed to make a decision, not the identities of the author, reporter, or reader.

Chronicle may remove material or restrict access when reasonably needed to protect people, the archive, or the service. It may also decline to publish or feature material that does not fit the archive's purpose.

Historical and seeded records

Chronicle may include historical or seeded record material placed by the operator under a documented rights and stewardship process. Such material is not represented as the work of a current member, is not controlled through a member account, and may be withdrawn or restored under its own custody process.

Limits of the service

• Chronicle is provided as available. It does not guarantee uninterrupted access, error-free processing, or that every feature will always remain the same.
• Chronicle is not an emergency, crisis, medical, mental-health, or safety service. Contact an appropriate local service when immediate help is needed.
• This plain-language covenant describes Chronicle's current service. It is not legal advice.
• Chronicle aims to preserve stories with care, but it does not promise permanent availability of any story or of the archive itself.
• Account and data deletion is handled by a verified operator request today; there is no self-serve account deletion control. The practical limits of that process are described in the Privacy commitment.

Changes to this covenant

Chronicle may update these terms as the service changes. A material change will appear here with a new effective date. Continued use after an update means the updated terms apply from that date.