Who is agreeing to this
Howcomet is used by children and agreed to by adults.
By setting a password on the grown-ups' page, you — a parent or legal guardian aged 18 or over — enter into this agreement, on your own behalf and on behalf of the child or children you add to your account. If you are not the child's parent or legal guardian, or you cannot agree to a contract, do not set up an account.
Your child does not agree to anything. You are responsible for their use of Howcomet.
What Howcomet is
Howcomet answers a child's questions at a level suited to their school year, offers a short quiz on what they just read, and keeps a record of the things they have learned as a "sky" of stars.
Three things to be clear about from the start:
- The answers are generated by artificial intelligence and can be wrong. They are a starting point for a curious child, not a reference work and not a substitute for a teacher, a textbook or a parent.
- It is not advice. Nothing in Howcomet is medical, legal, psychological, financial or safety advice, and no answer should be relied on to make a decision about a child's health or wellbeing.
- It is not supervision. Howcomet does not replace an adult knowing what their child is doing.
Your responsibilities as a parent
You agree to:
- Give an email address you control, and keep your password to yourself.
- Supervise your child's use of the app as you judge appropriate.
- Look at what we send you — particularly a message telling you a question was refused, which is the one thing we send immediately rather than in a summary.
- Tell us if you think someone else has access to your account.
Your child's PIN is four digits. It exists so a seven-year-old can sign in without an email address; it is not a serious security control, and it protects their sky rather than anything sensitive. Please do not reuse a PIN that matters elsewhere.
Accounts
- One grown-up's account may carry up to five children. This is a limit on abuse, not a judgment about family size; if you genuinely have more, write to us.
- Accounts are for one family. Do not share an account outside your household, resell access, or use one account to serve a classroom or an organisation.
- You may delete a child or your entire account at any time from the grown-ups' page. It is immediate and cannot be undone.
Subscription and payment
Subscription Plans
We offer one subscription. Pricing is displayed at checkout.
- 7 days free trial, with every feature included.
- After the free trial, it renews monthly at the price shown in the App Store for your country or region — $7.99 per month in the United States.
- One subscription covers every child on your account, up to five children.
Billing
Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled before the renewal date You will be charged at the beginning of each billing period. Payments are processed through Apple's App Store (iOS). Refunds are subject to the policies of the respective payment processor. Subscription fees are non-refundable except as required by law We reserve the right to change pricing with 30 days' notice
Cancellation
You may cancel your subscription at any time through Apple app store. Cancellation will take effect at the end of the current billing period. No partial refunds will be provided for unused time.
Fair Use Policy
To prevent abusive use of our service, we cap each child at 60 questions per day. Reviewing stars your child has already collected is never capped. We may restrict automated, commercial, or abusive use that degrades the service for others.
Stardust and goals — what they are not
A child earns stardust for finishing a quiz, and can set a goal: a reward a grown-up has offered, priced in stardust.
- Stardust has no monetary value. It is not currency, it cannot be bought, sold, cashed out, transferred between children, or exchanged for anything except by an agreement between you and your own child.
- Howcomet never handles money, and never delivers anything. When a child saves enough for a goal, the app tells you they have asked. You decide, and you hand over whatever you promised, yourself, offline.
- A goal is a promise between you and your child, and nothing more. We do not fund it, deliver it, guarantee it, insure it, or arbitrate a disagreement about it. The app records only whether your child says the thing arrived.
- You set the prices. Your child can suggest a reward, but only you can put a price on it.
Acceptable use
You and your child agree not to:
- Use Howcomet to look for content we screen for — harm to oneself or others, sexual content, or anything designed to put a child at risk.
- Try to get around the safety screening, including by disguising a question, splitting it across turns, or instructing the system to ignore its own rules.
- Automate access, script the app, or use it other than as a person asking questions.
- Try to get around usage limits, create accounts in bulk, or use the service to obtain AI capacity for something other than a child's learning.
- Probe, scrape, reverse-engineer, or interfere with the service or anyone else's use of it.
We enforce these automatically, with daily and per-minute limits. Hitting an ordinary limit is not a punishment and is not a breach of these terms — a child who asks a lot of questions in one day has done nothing wrong.
Safety screening, and its limits
Every question is screened before it is answered. Questions we refuse are recorded and you are told, so that you can have the conversation rather than discover it later.
We test this screening and we do not claim it is 100% perfect. No automated system catches everything, and it will sometimes refuse a reasonable question too. If something reaches your child that should not have, please tell us at info@howcomet.com — that is the fastest way it gets fixed.
Content and ownership
- The app is ours. The software, design, name and branding belong to Howcomet.com and are not licensed to you beyond using the app.
- Your child's questions remain theirs. We use them to run the service as described in the Privacy Policy, and for nothing else. We do not use them to train AI models.
- Answers are generated. We make no claim to own an individual generated answer, and we cannot promise that any answer is original, accurate, or free of someone else's rights in the underlying facts. Please do not submit a generated answer as your child's own schoolwork.
Suspension and termination
You may stop using Howcomet at any time, and delete everything, from the grown-ups' page.
We may suspend or close an account that is being used to abuse the service — for example, scripted access, attempts to defeat the safety screening, or usage that is plainly not a child learning. Where we can, we will tell you why and give you a chance to put it right. Suspension pauses an account; it does not delete anything, and your child's stars are still there if the account is restored. Any suspension or close of account due to abuse and violate of this term does not qualify refund.
Disclaimers
Note in particular that Howcomet depends on AI models operated by third parties. Those services occasionally fail or slow down, and when they do, a question may go unanswered until they recover. We do not warrant that answers are accurate, complete or suitable for any purpose, nor that the service will be uninterrupted; and statutory rights that cannot be excluded are not excluded.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Howcomet shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the Service.
Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Howcomet from any claims, damages, or expenses arising from your violation of these Terms or your use of the Service.
Changes to these terms
If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will email you before the change takes effect. Continuing to use Howcomet afterwards means you accept the new version; if you do not, you can delete your account and terminate subscription.
Governing law
These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of California and United States. The courts of California or US Federal shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except that if you are a consumer resident in the EU, the UK, or another country with mandatory consumer-protection laws, you retain the benefit of any protections and the right to bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence.
If you got the app from the App Store
This agreement is between you and us(Howcomet.com) and not Apple; that Apple has no obligation to provide support; that Apple is not responsible for the app or any claim about it; and that Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries with the right to enforce these terms.
Contact
If you have questions about these Terms, please contact us:
Email: info@howcomet.com