Terms of Service

1. Agreement and acceptance

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Ruby Appraisals ("Ruby Appraisals," "we," "us," or "our"), the operator of appraise-assist. By creating an account, signing in, connecting appraise-assist to your AI assistant, or otherwise using appraise-assist, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use appraise-assist.

If you are using appraise-assist on behalf of an appraisal firm or other organization, you represent that you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms, and "you" in these Terms refers to both you individually and that organization.

These Terms work together with our Privacy Policy, Data & Personal Information Handling page, Acceptable Use Policy, Professional Responsibility & Disclaimer, Third-Party Services page, Cancellation & Refund Policy, and Cookie Policy, which are part of this agreement by reference.

2. Who we are

appraise-assist is a product of Ruby Appraisals, a residential real-estate appraisal firm based in Colorado, USA. You can reach us at admin@appraise-assist.com. Our marketing site is appraise-assist.com; the tool library service itself is reached at mcp.appraise-assist.com.

3. What the service is and is not

appraise-assist is a plugin for an AI assistant — Claude, made by Anthropic, today, and ChatGPT, made by OpenAI, where supported — that organizes a residential appraiser's workflow. It is a tool library, not an appraisal service and not an AI model of our own. appraise-assist gives your AI assistant scripted steps, rules, playbooks, checklists and scripts to follow, in order, along a guided path we call "the wheel." The AI work itself — the conversation, the judgment calls, the narrative drafting — happens in your own account with your own AI provider; Ruby Appraisals runs no AI model on our side.

Our server, mcp.appraise-assist.com, runs deterministic scripts one step at a time — calculations, parsing, checks, and file generation. appraise-assist does not hand your files or your conversation to Ruby Appraisals wholesale; to run a given step, our server receives only the files and data that step needs, and only for the duration of that call (Section 7). Ruby Appraisals does not run an appraisal process on your behalf, host your AI assistant, or operate the AI model that does the work. We are not your AI provider; Anthropic and OpenAI are, under their own accounts and their own terms.

appraise-assist does not replace your professional judgment, your license, or your responsibility as the appraiser of record. See Section 14, "Professional responsibility," below.

4. Eligibility

appraise-assist is for professional use by licensed or trainee residential real-estate appraisers and the staff of their appraisal practice, located in the United States, using the service for their own appraisal work. You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use appraise-assist. By using appraise-assist, you represent that you meet these requirements.

5. Accounts and sign-in

You sign in to appraise-assist using Google sign-in. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account, for keeping your sign-in secure, and for telling us promptly at admin@appraise-assist.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission. You must give us accurate information when you sign up and keep it current. We may rely on anything done through your account as done by you.

6. Your responsibilities

When you use appraise-assist, you agree to:

• use it only for lawful, professional residential appraisal work, consistent with our Acceptable Use Policy;
• comply with USPAP, your state appraiser licensing requirements, and any lender, client, AMC, or GSE/agency requirements that apply to your work;
• keep your own AI-assistant account, your sign-in credentials, and your machine reasonably secure;
• review and independently verify everything appraise-assist's scripts, playbooks, and rules produce or help produce, before you rely on it, sign it, or deliver it to a client;
• confirm that each client, lender, or AMC engagement permits you to use an AI assistant and third-party tools on that assignment, and disclose that use where USPAP, your client, or an agency requires it; and
• not use appraise-assist to violate another person's rights, the law, or any agreement you have with a client, lender, or data provider.

7. Where your files go, and what we keep

Your appraisal files — MLS exports, orders, workfiles, photos, reports, export files, and any private library or wiki you build from your own past reports — reach our server only to the extent a given step needs them, in one of three ways: a file your AI assistant attaches and passes to our tool for that call; your own Google Drive workfile folder, if you choose to connect one and grant us access (we read the inputs that step needs and write the step's results back into that folder, and nothing else in your Drive); or a small local helper you install on your own computer, which sends that step's files from a folder there and saves the results back to it.

We process those files only for the duration of the call. Temporary working copies are deleted when the call ends — Ruby Appraisals does not keep your workfiles, reports, MLS data, photos, outputs, or your private library/wiki afterward. Your own folder, on your computer or in your connected Drive, is the only place they are kept.

The request itself — which tool or step was called, and the short parameters your assistant sent with it, such as a workfile name — does reach our server. Folder names often contain property addresses, so please do not put personal information in file or folder names. Our request logs are designed not to record file contents, but we cannot control what your assistant chooses to include in a request.

When you use your AI assistant with appraise-assist, your AI provider (Anthropic or OpenAI) processes your conversation and anything you share with it, under your own account with that provider and under that provider's own terms of service and privacy policy. We do not control, and are not responsible for, how your AI provider handles that processing.

Our own servers also handle: sign-in via Google (we receive the verified email; Google's own tokens are discarded once your email is verified, except where you connect a Google Drive folder, in which case we use Google-issued access only to read and write files in the folder you chose, on your behalf, during your calls), a hashed copy of the sign-in token we issue to your AI assistant, the beta/early-access list and waitlist emails, technical and security logs of requests to our service (IP address, time, which tool or step was requested, and errors), and your subscription status. See our Data & Personal Information Handling page and Privacy Policy for the full detail, and our Cookie Policy for cookies.

Appraisal files can contain personal information about borrowers, lenders, owners, and occupants. Our scripted steps try to remove or mask personal information before content is shared further, but this is best-effort only. We do not guarantee that all personal information will be detected or removed, and we do not guarantee complete privacy. You decide what you put into your AI assistant and into any tool, and you are responsible for not sharing information you are not allowed to share, and for complying with your own confidentiality obligations — including USPAP confidentiality, your lender or client agreements, and applicable privacy laws such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) where they apply to you.

8. License to use the tool library

Subject to these Terms and your paid subscription (where one is required), Ruby Appraisals grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use appraise-assist's tool library — its scripted steps, rules, playbooks, checklists, and scripts — for your own residential appraisal practice.

You may not:

• resell, sublicense, rent, lease, or otherwise make appraise-assist available to any third party as a standalone product or service;
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to extract the source code or underlying methods of our hosted service, or circumvent any access or rate limits;
• scrape, crawl, or systematically extract data, rules, or content from appraise-assist or its hosted service; or
• use appraise-assist, or anything learned or copied from it, to build, train, or improve a competing product or service.

Where appraise-assist's local helper component is used, you may install and run that helper on your own computer as part of using the service; that is how that part of the service works. This license ends automatically if you breach these Terms, and in any case when your subscription ends or we terminate it under Section 18.

9. Our intellectual property

appraise-assist's playbooks, rules, scripts, the wheel, and all related documentation, together with the appraise-assist and Ruby Appraisals names, logos, and branding, are the intellectual property of Ruby Appraisals (or its licensors) and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Except for the limited license granted in Section 8, we reserve all rights in appraise-assist and do not grant you any other rights by implication, estoppel, or otherwise. We claim no ownership of your files, your reports, your private library or wiki, or the outputs you produce using appraise-assist; those remain yours.

10. Feedback

If you send us feedback, suggestions, or ideas about appraise-assist, you grant Ruby Appraisals a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to use that feedback for any purpose, without any obligation to compensate or credit you. We will not use your feedback to train an AI model.

11. Fees, billing, cancellation and refunds

During early access, appraise-assist is $20 per month (US dollars) per appraiser: each subscription covers one person, signing in with their own account. Subscriptions are offered through Stripe; once you subscribe, a "Cancel or manage your subscription" link appears on appraise-assist.com for you to cancel yourself, with no need to contact us. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current paid month; you keep access until then.

If we have not yet onboarded you, you can get a full refund on request. Once you've been onboarded, refunds are available for billing errors, and otherwise are at our discretion. We may change prices with notice before your next billing period.

This is a summary. The full policy, including what "onboarded" means and how to request a refund, is at our Cancellation & Refund Policy, which is part of these Terms.

12. Beta / early access

appraise-assist is currently offered as an early-access, beta service. Features may change, be limited, or be unavailable at any time, and we do not guarantee any particular level of uptime or availability.

If we decide to discontinue appraise-assist, we will tell subscribers by email, stop all renewals, and keep the service available to you through the end of the period you have already paid for. Discontinuing the service does not by itself entitle you to a refund for that period, since you keep access through the end of it.

13. Third-party services

appraise-assist's scripted steps may call third-party data sources on your behalf — county assessor and public-record websites, a construction-cost data service we license, and mapping/geocoding services — as well as the MLS export files you provide, your AI provider (Anthropic or OpenAI), our payment processor (Stripe), and our account sign-in provider (Google). Each of those providers' own terms and privacy policies apply to your use of their services, and we are not responsible for them. See Third-Party Services for details.

14. Professional responsibility

appraise-assist does not perform appraisals, does not give valuation opinions or professional advice, and does not replace your judgment as the appraiser. Its outputs — calculations, adjustments, narratives, checks, and export files — are drafts and aids that may contain errors. You must review and verify everything, and you are solely responsible for the appraisal, the report, and compliance with USPAP, your state licensing requirements, and any lender, client, or GSE/agency requirements (including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, VA, and FHA) that apply to your work.

appraise-assist is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic, OpenAI, a la mode, CoreLogic/Cotality, any MLS, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, VA, FHA, or any other government agency. See our full Professional Responsibility & Disclaimer for more detail; it is part of these Terms.

15. No warranties

appraise-assist is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, or that appraise-assist will be error-free, uninterrupted, accurate, or secure. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Ruby Appraisals disclaims all such warranties.

16. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Ruby Appraisals will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of appraise-assist, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Ruby Appraisals' total liability for any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or appraise-assist will not exceed the total fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $100 if you paid us nothing in that period.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations on liability, so some of the limitations above may not apply to you; in that case, our liability will be limited to the fullest extent permitted by law. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, willful misconduct, or any liability that cannot be limited under Colorado law.

17. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Ruby Appraisals and its owners, employees, and contractors from any claim, liability, damage, loss, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to: your use of appraise-assist; your data, files, and any personal information contained in them; and the appraisal reports and other work product you produce, deliver, or sign, whether or not appraise-assist assisted in producing them.

18. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to appraise-assist, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms, fail to pay fees due, or if we reasonably believe your use poses a risk to appraise-assist, other users, or any third party. You may stop using appraise-assist, or cancel your subscription, at any time as described in Section 11. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 7–22) will survive.

19. Changes to the service and to these terms

We may change, add to, or remove features of appraise-assist at any time, consistent with Section 12. We may also update these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will give you notice by email or by posting a notice on our site. Your continued use of appraise-assist after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

20. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that is not resolved informally under Section 21 will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Colorado, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

21. Informal dispute resolution first

Before filing any claim against Ruby Appraisals, you agree to first contact us at admin@appraise-assist.com and describe the dispute, and to give us 30 days to try to resolve it informally. We will do the same before pursuing a claim against you. Most disagreements can be solved this way, and we would rather solve it than litigate it.

22. Severability, entire agreement, assignment, and no waiver

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest of the Terms will remain in full effect, and the unenforceable provision will be interpreted to best accomplish its original purpose within the limits of the law.

These Terms, together with the policies linked throughout this page, are the entire agreement between you and Ruby Appraisals about appraise-assist, and replace any earlier agreements or understandings about it.

You may not assign or transfer these Terms, or your account, without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms, without your consent, in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets.

If we do not enforce a provision of these Terms on one occasion, that is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.

23. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email us at admin@appraise-assist.com.