Helix Terms of Service

Version 1.0. Effective date: 3 September 2026.

In plain English

This summary is here to help you read the terms. The numbered sections are what applies.

• Helix is a data-exchange service for businesses. Producers upload datasets; consumers download them under access the producer grants.
• These terms are the contract. There is nothing else to sign: the Service is offered online, and you enter this agreement by using it and subscribing.
• We provide the service as it is, on a best-effort basis. We do not promise uptime, and we do not promise the service will be free of errors.
• Keep your own copy of everything you upload. Helix is an exchange, not a backup.
• Dataset contents are encrypted, but we hold the encryption keys, so we can technically access them. We only do so to operate, secure and support the service, or when the law requires it.
• We never send your datasets to any AI service, and we never use them to train AI. We use AI tools to run and market Helix; those tools do not receive your data.
• You pay through Stripe at the prices shown at helix.tools and at checkout. You can cancel at any time. After you cancel, your account is read-only for 14 days; then your dedicated storage is destroyed and your datasets are deleted. We keep billing and audit records.
• Our liability to you is limited to the fees you paid us in the three months before the problem arose.
• The laws of British Columbia, Canada apply.

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

1.1 Who "we" are. The service is operated by Helix Systems Inc., a British Columbia company, doing business as "Helix" ("Helix", "we", "us"). "Helix Tools" is a trade name for the same business.

1.2 What "the Service" is. The helix.tools website, the customer portal at portal.helix.tools, the Helix API, the Helix SDKs and command-line tools, the Helix MCP server, the marketplace, and any related documentation and support.

1.3 Business use only. The Service is offered to businesses and other organisations, not to consumers. By using it you confirm that you are at least 18, that you are acting for an organisation ("your organisation"), and that you have authority to accept these terms for it. "You" means your organisation and every person who uses its account.

1.4 Accepting these terms. You accept these terms when you create an account, sign in, invite a user, or otherwise use the Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1.5 Your users. You are responsible for everyone who uses your account, including people you invite and any software or AI agent you connect to it, and for what they do.

2. Your account

2.1 Sign-in. We sign you in with a link sent to your email address. Whoever controls that mailbox controls your account. Keep it secure and tell us at once about any unauthorised access.

2.2 Accurate information. Give us accurate registration and billing details and keep them current.

2.3 Activation. We may review a new account before activating it, may require a valid payment card first, and may decline or delay activation.

3. The Service, as it is

3.1 Best effort. We provide the Service as it is and as available, using our best efforts. We do not commit to any level of uptime, throughput, response time or support response time. We may carry out maintenance at any time.

3.2 Changes. We may change, limit or withdraw any feature. Where a change would materially reduce what you get, we will try to give you 30 days' notice by email.

3.3 Limits. We may apply technical limits — for example on object size, concurrent transfers, request rates and the lifetime of download links — to protect the Service.

3.4 Previews. Features marked beta, preview or experimental come with no commitment at all and may be withdrawn without notice.

4. Your data

4.1 Ownership. You own the datasets and other content you upload to the Service through your account ("your data"). You give us a licence to store, copy, transmit and process your data only as needed to provide the Service to you and your authorised consumers, to keep the Service secure, and to comply with law. We claim no other rights in it.

4.2 Keep your own copy. The Service is an exchange, not an archive or a backup. Keep your own copy of everything you upload. We are not responsible for any loss of data that you did not keep elsewhere.

4.3 Your responsibilities. You must have the right to upload and share your data, and it must not be illegal, infringing, malicious or harmful. If your data contains personal information about anyone, you are responsible for having a lawful basis to collect and share it and for any notices or consents required; we process it only on your instructions, as your service provider, under section 13.

4.4 What we can see. Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We hold the encryption keys, so we can technically access dataset contents. We do not access, use or disclose dataset contents except (a) to operate, secure and troubleshoot the Service, (b) to provide support you ask for, (c) to enforce these terms or investigate abuse, (d) when the law requires it, or (e) with your permission. Current versions of our SDKs encrypt every dataset before upload. We recommend always using the latest SDK version.

4.5 No AI on your data. We do not send your data to any AI model or AI service, and we do not use it to train, tune or improve any AI model. We use AI tools to operate and market Helix — for example to draft marketing material and to research enquiries — and those tools do not receive your data. A message you send us through our website contact form or by email is not "your data" under this section; our Privacy Policy explains how we may use an AI model to research such an enquiry. If we ever offer a feature that applies AI to your datasets, it will be off unless you turn it on, and we will tell you what it does and where your data goes before you do.

4.6 Deletion. Section 11 explains what happens to your data when your account closes.

5. Using other people's datasets

5.1 Access is granted by the producer. You can access a dataset only when its producer has approved you, invited you, or sold you a marketplace subscription. Access ends when the producer withdraws it, when a subscription ends, when your account is suspended, or when we must end it.

5.2 Use as the producer allows. Your use of a dataset is governed by whatever the producer has agreed with you. Unless the producer tells you otherwise, you may use the data within your organisation and may not resell, sublicense or redistribute it. Helix is not a party to that arrangement.

5.3 No warranty on datasets. We do not inspect dataset contents. We make no promise about any dataset's accuracy, completeness, legality, safety or fitness for any purpose. Questions and disputes about a dataset go to its producer.

5.4 Download links. Download links are time-limited and issued to your account. Do not share them. Every download counts toward your plan's allowance.

6. Fees and billing

6.1 Prices. Plan fees, included allowances, overage rates and any fee changes are shown at helix.tools/#pricing and at checkout. The amount shown at checkout is what you pay.

6.2 Payment. Fees are billed through Stripe to the card on file. A card is required to start. Amounts are in the currency shown at checkout and exclude taxes, which you must pay where they apply.

6.3 Free trial. Self-serve plans begin with the free trial shown at signup. Your card is validated but not charged during the trial. When the trial ends your paid subscription starts automatically unless you cancelled first.

6.4 Billing period. Plans are billed monthly or annually, as you choose at signup, and renew automatically until cancelled.

6.5 Usage above your allowance. Usage beyond your plan's included allowance is charged at the published overage rates, up to a monthly total of twice your plan fee. When you reach that cap, further downloads pause until your next billing period. You may opt out of overage billing; then downloads pause at your included allowance and you are never charged overage.

6.6 Price changes. We will give at least 30 days' notice by email before changing a plan fee, allowance or overage rate. A change to a monthly plan takes effect after that notice; a change to an annual plan takes effect at its next renewal. You may cancel before the change takes effect.

6.7 Failed payments. If a payment fails, Stripe retries it. After the third failed attempt we suspend your account: dataset access and downloads pause until the outstanding amount is paid, and resume when it is. If it stays unpaid, we may close the account under section 11.3.

6.8 No refunds. Fees are non-refundable except where these terms or the law say otherwise. Cancelling stops future charges; it does not refund the current period, monthly or annual.

7. Marketplace

If you sell datasets:

7.1 You set the price of each dataset you list. Buyers pay through Stripe. To be paid you need a Stripe Connect account in good standing; payouts go there. We deduct our platform fee, at the rate published at helix.tools/#pricing, from each payment and pay the rest to you.

7.2 You are the seller. You are responsible for the dataset, for your right to sell it, for any taxes on your earnings, and for the terms you give buyers. Helix runs the exchange and is not the seller.

7.3 If you change a price, the new price applies to new buyers; existing subscribers keep their price until they cancel.

7.4 You may delist a dataset at any time. Existing paid subscriptions run to the end of their current period and then end. A dataset cannot be deleted while paid subscriptions are active.

7.5 We may remove a dataset at any time if we believe it breaks these terms or the law, infringes anyone's rights, or creates a security or legal risk. If we do, we cancel its paid subscriptions, refund buyers the unused part of their current period, and reverse the matching part of your payout.

If you buy datasets:

7.6 Marketplace subscriptions are billed monthly through Stripe at the price shown at checkout, separately from your plan. They renew until cancelled.

7.7 You may cancel at any time. Access continues to the end of the paid period and no further charges are made. There are no refunds, except the pro-rata refund in 7.5.

7.8 The dataset is the producer's. Section 5 applies to it.

7.9 We may suspend the marketplace, or any listing, at any time.

How marketplace payments work, for sellers and buyers:

7.10 We collect each buyer's payment as the producer's limited payment collection agent. A buyer's payment to us settles what the buyer owes the producer for that period, even before we have paid the producer. Producers are paid through Stripe Connect; by setting up that account a producer also accepts the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which it enters into with Stripe.

7.11 If a buyer's payment is refunded, reversed or lost to a chargeback, the producer owes us the matching amount, including any processor fee on it. We may deduct it from the producer's payouts or hold back payouts to cover it; if payouts do not cover it, the producer pays us on request. This applies after the producer stops selling and after these terms end.

7.12 Marketplace prices exclude taxes. Any sales tax the law requires on a marketplace sale is added to the price the buyer pays and is collected and remitted by whichever of us the law makes responsible for it; where that is the producer, section 7.2 applies.

8. Software: SDKs, command-line tools, API and MCP

8.1 Licence. We license you to use our SDKs, command-line tools, API and MCP server only to use the Service, for as long as these terms apply to you. Each SDK carries its own licence file: the Python SDK is open source under the MIT licence; the Go and TypeScript SDKs are proprietary and may not be copied, modified or redistributed beyond what their licence allows. Nothing here gives you rights to our source code or to use our software apart from the Service.

8.2 On your systems. These tools run on your systems with credentials you provide. They send us what is needed to operate the Service — requests, and the outcome of uploads and downloads — and nothing else. You are responsible for the machines and credentials you use them on.

8.3 Agents and MCP clients. If you connect an AI agent or an MCP client to your account, it acts as you and you are responsible for what it does. What your own AI tools see through Helix is under your control, not ours. We may revoke their access at any time.

8.4 Don't. Do not reverse engineer the Service, probe or test its security without our written permission, scrape it, bypass its limits, or interfere with it.

9. Acceptable use

You must not use the Service to break any law, to infringe anyone's rights, to upload or distribute malicious code, to send spam, to share account credentials, to harm or overload the Service, or to gain access you have not been granted. We may suspend an account that does any of these.

10. Security, support and access to your account

10.1 Security. We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect the Service, including encryption in transit and at rest, access controls and logging. No system is perfectly secure and we do not guarantee that the Service cannot be breached.

10.2 Tell us. Report any security incident affecting your account to contact@helix.tools without delay.

10.3 Support. Support is by email at contact@helix.tools on a best-effort basis.

10.4 Our access to your account. Our staff may access your account, including viewing it as you would, to provide support, to investigate problems or abuse, or as the law requires. That access is logged.

11. Ending the agreement

11.1 You can cancel at any time from your account settings. When you cancel, your account becomes read-only for a 14-day grace period. During that period you may download anything you want to keep, and you may reactivate the account if a valid card is on file.

11.2 After the grace period we close the account: we archive a final billing and usage summary, destroy your dedicated storage and resources, and delete your datasets. Deletion cannot be undone. We remove or redact personal details from your account record and keep the records described in section 12.

11.3 We may suspend or end your access immediately if you break these terms, if fees remain unpaid after the retries in section 6.7, if your account creates a security or legal risk, or if the law requires it. We may also end the Service or your account for any other reason on 30 days' notice by email.

11.4 Closing your account also ends your marketplace listings and subscriptions.

11.5 Sections 4.2, 5.3, 7.11, 12, 13 and 14 to 18 survive the end of these terms.

12. What we keep after you leave

We keep billing and payment records, usage records, the audit trail of which accounts accessed which datasets and when, and the final account summary, for at least seven years, for legal, tax, accounting and security purposes. Our Privacy Policy explains this in more detail.

13. Personal information: our Privacy Policy, and our data processing terms

13.1 Our Privacy Policy at helix.tools/privacy.html explains how we handle personal information about you and your users.

13.2 Personal information inside your datasets. If your data contains personal information about anyone, you are the organisation responsible for it and we are your service provider. The following are our data processing terms. There is no separate data processing agreement.

(a) Instructions. We store, transfer and delete your data only to provide the Service as described in these terms and as you direct through the Service. We do not use it for any other purpose.

(b) Confidentiality. Only people who need access to operate, secure or support the Service can access your data, and they are bound to keep it confidential.

(c) Security. We protect your data with the measures described in section 10.1 and in our Privacy Policy. On request we will give you a written description of them.

(d) Sub-processors. We use the service providers named in our Privacy Policy to host and run the Service. We will update that list before adding a provider that would hold your data; if you object, you may cancel.

(e) AI. Section 4.5 applies: your data is not sent to any AI model or AI service.

(f) Requests and incidents. If someone asks us about their personal information in your datasets, we will refer them to you and help you respond where we reasonably can. If we become aware of a breach of security affecting your data, we will tell you without undue delay and share what we know.

(g) Deletion. When your account closes we destroy your datasets and dedicated storage as described in section 11.2 and keep only the records listed in section 12.

(h) Legal requests. If we receive a legal request about your data, we will refer it to you where the law allows.

14. No warranties

The Service, our software and every dataset are provided as they are and as available. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all warranties and conditions, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, uninterrupted or error-free operation, or that data will not be lost or corrupted. We are not responsible for third-party services such as Stripe or our cloud providers.

15. Liability

15.1 What we are not liable for. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, consequential, special, incidental or punitive loss, or for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, data or use, however arising, even if we were told it was possible.

15.2 Cap. To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for everything arising out of or connected with the Service is limited to the fees you paid us in the three months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

15.3 What the law does not let us exclude is not excluded. Nothing here limits liability for fraud or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

15.4 Your indemnity. You will defend and indemnify us against any third-party claim, loss or cost (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your data, your use of the Service, your breach of these terms, or the acts of your users and agents.

16. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. For a material change we will give at least 30 days' notice by email to your account address. Using the Service after the change takes effect means you accept it; if you do not, cancel before then. A change does not affect rights or obligations that accrued before it took effect; changes to fees follow section 6.6.

17. General

17.1 Law and courts. These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of British Columbia in Vancouver have exclusive jurisdiction.

17.2 Assignment. You may not transfer these terms without our written consent. We may transfer them to an affiliate or to a successor to the business on notice to you.

17.3 Whole agreement. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us about the Service and replace any earlier terms. There is no separate signed agreement: the Service is offered online, as it is, and the contract between us is formed by your use of it and your subscription. If any part is unenforceable, the rest stands. Not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.

17.4 Events beyond our control. Neither of us is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

17.5 Notices. Notices to us go to contact@helix.tools. Notices to you go to your account email address.

17.6 Export and sanctions. You must comply with the export-control and sanctions laws that apply to your use of the Service and your data. You confirm that neither your organisation nor anyone who owns or controls it is on a sanctions list maintained by Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or the United Nations, and that you are not located in a country or region under comprehensive sanctions. We may suspend or end your access if we believe this is no longer true.

17.7 Language. These terms are written in English.

17.8 Before incorporation. If Helix Systems Inc. has not been incorporated when you accept these terms, you agree that the company may adopt these terms once it is incorporated and that, as section 20(8) of the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) allows, no person who entered into these terms on the company's behalf is personally liable under them.

18. Contact

Helix Systems Inc., doing business as Helix Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada contact@helix.tools · https://helix.tools