Civic Action Toolbox — Terms of Service

Reviewed and approved by Planet Detroit on August 19, 2026. This

document is under review by our legal counsel (Lawyers for Reporters);

if that review results in changes, we will update this page and note

the new date here.

Effective date: August 19, 2026

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

The Civic Action Toolbox ("the Toolbox," "the Service") is a web application at app.civicactiontoolbox.org that helps newsrooms build embeddable "civic action boxes" — collections of upcoming public meetings, comment periods, elected officials, and community organizations matched to a news article — for publication on their own sites.

The Service is operated by Planet Detroit, a nonprofit environmental newsroom based in Detroit, Michigan ("Planet Detroit," "we," "us"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between Planet Detroit and you — the newsroom, organization, or individual using the Service ("you," "your," "customer").

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you're signing up on behalf of a newsroom or organization, you confirm you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms.

If you have questions about anything here, email us at hello@civicactiontoolbox.org. We're a small nonprofit team and we answer our email.

2. Accounts

You sign in to the Service through MuckRock Accounts (an OpenID Connect provider), or, during our interim period, via email magic links. You're responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for activity that happens under your account. Tell us promptly at hello@civicactiontoolbox.org if you believe your account has been compromised.

Your organization's workspace ("tenant") is separate from every other customer's. Members of your organization can see your team's content and activity; no other customer can.

3. Plans, billing, and cancellation

The Service offers three tiers:

• Free — $0/month. Includes up to 50 AI article analyses per calendar month, national civic data, and embeddable output.
• Pro — $150/month. Adds bulk data upload, team collaboration, analytics, and 200 AI analyses per month.
• Newsroom Partner — $300/month (or $200 per seat for institutional bulk arrangements). Adds managed scraper setup and maintenance, state data packs, unlimited AI analyses, advanced analytics, and white-label styling.

Details of what each tier includes are listed on our pricing page and may evolve over time.

Payment. Paid plans are billed monthly through Stripe. Payment details are handled by Stripe; we never see or store your full card number. You can update your payment method, view invoices, and cancel at any time through the Stripe Customer Portal linked from your account.

Cancellation. You can cancel anytime. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you keep access until then. We don't offer prorated refunds for partial months, but if something has gone wrong on our end, contact us and we'll work it out reasonably.

Price changes. If we change pricing for a plan you're on, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice before the new price applies to your subscription.

4. Your content and your license to us

You own your content. Article text you submit for analysis, civic action box drafts you create, and local data you enter (meetings, organizations, comment periods, and similar) remain yours.

Our license to it. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive license to host, store, process, and display your content solely as needed to provide the Service — for example, sending article text to our AI provider for analysis, storing your drafts, and rendering your published boxes. This license ends when the content is deleted from the Service, except for backup copies that expire on their normal schedule. Our AI provider operates under commercial terms that prohibit training models on customer content, and we do not train, fine-tune, or otherwise develop AI models using your content.

Your responsibility for it. You confirm that you have the rights to submit the content you submit, and that it doesn't infringe anyone else's rights or violate any law.

5. AI analysis and third-party civic data — an honest disclaimer

The Toolbox uses AI (via the Anthropic API) to suggest civic actions, officials, meetings, and organizations relevant to an article. It also draws on third-party and government data sources, including Congress.gov, OpenStates, Regulations.gov, Regulations-related agency sites, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and government websites.

AI suggestions and third-party data can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Meetings get rescheduled, officials change, and AI makes mistakes. The Service is designed around editorial review: an editor at your newsroom reviews and approves every box before publishing. You are responsible for verifying the accuracy of anything you publish. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of AI outputs or third-party civic data.

6. Acceptable use

Use the Service for building civic engagement tools for journalism. Don't:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose or to submit unlawful, defamatory, or infringing content;
• attempt to circumvent, game, or abuse AI analysis caps (for example, by creating multiple accounts to evade the free-tier limit);
• resell, sublicense, or white-label access to the Service itself, except as expressly included in your plan (Partner white-label styling covers the embed's appearance, not resale of Service access);
• probe, scrape, or attempt to access another customer's data or workspace;
• interfere with the Service's operation, or use it to build a directly competing product by systematically extracting our data or features;
• misrepresent your identity or your organization.

We may throttle, suspend, or terminate accounts that violate these rules. Where practical, we'll warn you and give you a chance to fix the problem first.

7. Reader-facing embeds

Boxes you publish on your site include features that interact with your readers: link redirects that log clicks, an impression beacon, and an optional reader response form. These are described in our Privacy Policy. You are responsible for your own site's privacy disclosures to your readers, including disclosing embedded third-party functionality if your privacy policy or applicable law requires it. Our embeds are built to be privacy-respecting: no cookies, no device fingerprinting, and no reader accounts or cross-site identifiers. One exception, so you can disclose it accurately: link clicks and response-form submissions record the reader's browser user-agent string, used only to keep automated traffic (crawlers and preview bots) out of your engagement counts. It is not combined with any other data and is not used to identify or profile readers.

8. Availability

We work hard to keep the Service up, but we're a small nonprofit and the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without an uptime guarantee or service-level agreement (SLA) — except as separately agreed in writing for Newsroom Partner customers. Published embeds are designed to fail gracefully: if our servers are unreachable, the impression beacon fails silently and does not break your page.

We may modify, add, or retire features. If we retire something significant that you rely on, we'll try to give reasonable notice.

9. Termination, data export, and deletion

By you: cancel anytime via the Stripe Customer Portal (paid plans) or by contacting us (free plan).

By us: we may suspend or terminate your account for material violation of these Terms, non-payment, or if we discontinue the Service. Except in urgent cases (security, legal compliance, abuse), we'll give you notice and a chance to cure first.

Your data on the way out: on request, we will provide an export of your content (drafts, local data, and your analytics) in a reasonable machine-readable format, and we will delete your account data. See the Privacy Policy for retention details. Requests go to hello@civicactiontoolbox.org.

10. Copyright / DMCA

We respect intellectual property rights and expect users to do the same. If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our copyright agent at hello@civicactiontoolbox.org (subject line "DMCA Notice") including: identification of the copyrighted work, the location of the allegedly infringing material, your contact information, a good-faith statement that the use is unauthorized, a statement under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate and you're authorized to act, and your physical or electronic signature. We may remove material and, for repeat infringers, terminate accounts.

11. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• The Service is provided without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
• Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenues, or data, even if advised of the possibility.
• Planet Detroit's total liability arising out of or relating to the Service is capped at the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim (which, for free-tier users, may be $0).

Some jurisdictions don't allow certain exclusions; in those places, these limits apply to the maximum extent permitted.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify Planet Detroit against third-party claims arising from content you submit or publish through the Service or your violation of these Terms — limited to reasonable costs and damages actually incurred. We'll notify you promptly of any such claim and cooperate reasonably in the defense. This is intended as a mutual-good-faith provision between peer organizations, not a trap.

13. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we'll notify you — by email to your account address and/or a notice in the app — at least 14 days before the changes take effect. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms. If you don't agree, cancel before the changes take effect.

14. Governing law and general provisions

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Courts located in Michigan have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes, though we'd genuinely rather resolve any disagreement by talking first.

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect. These Terms plus the Privacy Policy (and any separately signed agreement, such as a Partner SLA, which controls where it conflicts) are the entire agreement between us regarding the Service. Our failure to enforce a provision isn't a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a reorganization or transfer of the Service (for a nonprofit, e.g., a fiscal sponsorship change), with notice to you.

15. Contact

Planet Detroit · Detroit, Michigan hello@civicactiontoolbox.org