Work Theory Terms of Use

Effective date: November 4, 2026 · Version: 5

These terms are an agreement between you and Work Theory Inc ("Work Theory", "we"), a Delaware corporation, 242 Newkirk Ave #7C, Brooklyn, NY 11230. They cover app.worktheory.ai, the Work Theory connector (at api.worktheory.ai), and everything else we provide (together, "Work Theory"). By creating an account or using Work Theory, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you use Work Theory for a business, you agree on its behalf and confirm that you have authority to do so.

1. What Work Theory is

Work Theory lets people invite others to help guide their AI agent.

Agent. One person's or one group's AI agent, as Work Theory holds it: its memories, its rules and its people. It works through the chatbot its people already use.
Client. An agent's clients decide who is in, which guides it has, and pay. An agent can have several clients.
Member. Someone else a client lets use the agent.
Guide. Someone invited to help guide an agent. A guide sets rules, reviews what the agent made, and answers the agent's questions.
Team. Guides who share one playbook. A guide on their own is a team of one. The team owner runs the team: invites guides, sets the team's fees and terms, and connects its Stripe account.
Playbook. What a team brings to every agent it guides: its rules and its lessons.
Engagement. A team guiding an agent, from the day a client agrees until it ends.
Work Theory admin. Work Theory's own people.

Guides teach agents. Agents do the work. Through Work Theory, a guide provides knowledge to the agent: rules, lessons, answers to its questions, and feedback on what it made. The agent does the work in the client's own chatbot, and tells the client whose guidance it used. A guide doesn't do the client's work through Work Theory. What a guide teaches reaches the client through the agent, which names the guide. Any work a guide does for a client outside Work Theory is between them, and these terms don't cover it.

Work Theory is a platform. We hold the knowledge base and pass it to your chatbot. We are not your advisor and not your agent:

We don't do your work, and we don't control what your chatbot does with what we pass it.
We don't employ or supervise guides, and we don't check their qualifications or what they teach.
Approving a team's public profile means only that it meets our rules for profiles. It is not an endorsement.
An agreement for guidance is between the team and the agent's clients, on the team's own terms. Fees are covered by the Platform Terms.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18, and at launch based in the United States.
At launch, Work Theory is by invitation. A client joins when a guide invites them. A guide joins when a Work Theory admin invites them.
You sign in with a code sent to your email address. There is no password. Keep that address secure: anyone who can read your email can sign in as you.
You can be in one team at a time, and a client or member of any number of agents. Nobody can guide their own agent through their own team.
Clients and team owners. The first person in an agent is its client, and the first person in a team is its team owner. Each can invite, remove and promote people. The last client of an agent, or of a team, can't be removed. An agent's clients decide which teams guide it. If an agent or a team belongs to a business, the business is responsible for what its clients do.
Anyone can leave an agent or a team, except its last client.

3. Your chatbot

You need your own account with a chatbot that works with the connector. Claude is the one we support at launch. Your use of your chatbot is governed by your agreement with its provider (Anthropic, for Claude). Work Theory isn't responsible for your chatbot.

Your agent can be wrong. It can misremember, misstate or invent things, even when it works from Work Theory's memories or follows a guide's rules. A guide's rules can tell the agent to bring work to the guide first, but that is a safeguard, not a promise. You are responsible for checking what your agent tells you and does before you act on it, for what you let it do, and for the decisions you make.

4. Who sees what, and who owns it

"Content" means everything that you, your agent's other people, your guides, or a chatbot acting for any of you saves to Work Theory: memories, handoff notes, questions, answers, rules, lessons, reviews and profiles.

An agent's memories belong to its clients. That includes memories its guides saved. The agent's clients and members see all of them.
A team sees only what was shared with it:
- what its own guides saved;
- what the agent's clients and members saved in a chat that included that team.

At the start of each chat, the agent asks which guides to include, unless the chat already says. A team that isn't included sees nothing from that chat. Once a memory is saved, nobody can change which teams it is shared with. A team sees nothing of an agent while its engagement is paused or after it ends.

A team owns its playbook: its rules, including the rules it writes for one agent, and its lessons. It keeps them after an engagement ends. Work Theory doesn't give a client a team's playbook or the rules it wrote for their agent.
De-identified lessons. A team may draw a lesson from guiding an agent and use it with other agents, but only if the agent's clients permit it. Only a client can give or withdraw that permission. It is off unless a client turns it on, and withdrawing it applies to future lessons. A lesson must not identify the agent or its people. The database refuses a lesson that names an agent the team guides or has guided, or that contains an email address, a web address, a phone number or an exact large figure. That check can't catch everything, so the guide remains responsible for what they write.
When guidance ends, the clients keep every memory saved on the agent, including the team's handoff notes. What the agent learned in your chatbot's own memory is governed by your chatbot, not by Work Theory.
Our licence. You give Work Theory permission to host, copy, process and display content to the people allowed to see it, and to use content and the activity log to run, secure and improve Work Theory. We don't sell content, and we don't use it to train AI models.
Your responsibility. You confirm that you have the right to save what you save, including information about other people.
Nothing is overwritten. A correction keeps the history of what it replaced. A retraction is recorded, not erased. Content is deleted only on request, as described in the Privacy Policy, apart from one-time secrets (section 5).

5. One-time secrets

Use a one-time link to share a password or key. A secret never passes through your chatbot or our activity log. Its link opens only for the person it is meant for, once they sign in. It is read once and then destroyed. A secret nobody reads within 7 days is destroyed, and when guidance ends, unopened links between the client's side and that team are turned off. Never put a password or key in a memory, or give one to your chatbot.

6. Acceptable use

Don't:

break the law, or use Work Theory to harm, harass or defraud anyone;
save content you have no right to share, or that infringes someone else's rights;
save full payment card numbers, government ID numbers, or health information beyond what the guidance needs;
try to see content you aren't allowed to see, or get around Work Theory's access rules or limits;
probe, scan or test Work Theory's security without our written permission, or interfere with how it runs;
copy, resell or reverse engineer Work Theory, or scrape it by automated means other than the connector.

7. Suspension and ending

You can stop using Work Theory at any time. How an engagement ends is covered by the Platform Terms.
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or puts other people or Work Theory at risk. We will give notice when we reasonably can.
When an account closes, its content stays with the agent's clients or the team that owns it until deletion is requested.

8. Changes to Work Theory and to these terms

Work Theory will change over time.
Each version of these terms is numbered and dated. A new version takes effect when it is published, and we email account holders when it is. Continuing to use Work Theory after that means you accept it. Changes to Work Theory's share of a fee are covered by the Platform Terms.

9. Disclaimers

Work Theory is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We don't promise that Work Theory will be uninterrupted or error-free. We don't promise that anything your agent does, or anything a guide teaches it, is accurate or suitable for your situation.

10. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows:

Work Theory isn't liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue or data.
Our total liability for all claims relating to Work Theory is limited to what you paid Work Theory, and Work Theory kept, in the 12 months before the claim arose.

11. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify Work Theory against third-party claims arising from your content, your use of Work Theory in breach of these terms, the guidance you provide as a guide, or what your agent does on your instructions.

12. Disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

Any dispute relating to Work Theory or these terms is resolved by binding arbitration in New York, New York, administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules. Claims are brought individually, not as a class or representative action. Either side may still bring an individual claim in small-claims court, or ask a court for an injunction to protect its intellectual property or stop misuse of Work Theory.

13. General

These terms, the Privacy Policy and the Platform Terms are the whole agreement between you and Work Theory about Work Theory. A team's own terms are between that team and the agent's clients.
If any part is unenforceable, the rest still applies.
Not enforcing a term doesn't waive it.
You may not transfer these terms. We may transfer them as part of a merger or sale.

Contact: hello@worktheory.ai

Work Theory Platform Terms: fees, payment and ending

Effective date: November 4, 2026 · Version: 5

These Platform Terms add to the Work Theory Terms of Use. They cover how an agent's clients pay a team to guide their agent, how Work Theory takes its share, how teams are paid, and how an engagement ends. Words defined in the Terms of Use mean the same here.

"Work Theory" and "we" mean Work Theory Inc, a Delaware corporation, 242 Newkirk Ave #7C, Brooklyn, NY 11230. These Platform Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and disputes about them are resolved as section 12 of the Terms of Use describes.

1. Who is who

The team guides the agent. Through Work Theory, it teaches the agent: its playbook, its rules for that agent, and its guides' answers and feedback. It doesn't do the client's work through Work Theory.
The agent's clients agree to the team's fee and terms, and pay.
Work Theory provides the platform. It collects the client's payment through Stripe, keeps its share, and passes the rest to the team.

Work Theory is not a party to the guidance.

2. Fees

The team's fee. The team owner proposes a monthly fee for each agent the team guides. The fee can be zero. A client of the agent agrees to it in the portal, together with the version of the team's terms they were shown.
- A new or higher fee never applies until a client agrees to it. Until then, the agreed fee stands.
- A team can lower its fee at any time without the client agreeing. The lower fee applies from the next bill.
What the client pays. The team's agreed fee, and nothing more. The portal shows the client that one amount before they agree.
Work Theory's share. For each engagement and each month, Work Theory's share is the greater of 20% of the team's agreed fee and $30. It comes out of the team's fee. Work Theory keeps its share of the client's payment, up to the whole of it, and the team receives the rest.
- The minimum applies to each engagement, so a team that guides two agents owes Work Theory at least $30 a month for each.
- When the team's fee is less than $30, Work Theory keeps the whole fee, and the team owes Work Theory the difference for that month. On a $0 fee, the client pays nothing and the team owes $30.
- For example: on a $299 fee, the client pays $299, Work Theory keeps $59.80 and the team receives $239.20. On a $100 fee, Work Theory keeps $30 and the team receives $70. On a $20 fee, Work Theory keeps $20 and the team owes $10.
- The portal shows the team its fee, Work Theory's share, what it receives and anything it owes, before it proposes the fee and on each bill.
Changes to Work Theory's share. Work Theory may change its percentage or its minimum. We will email team owners at least 30 days before Work Theory's share goes up. A rise takes effect from the first billing month that starts after the notice period ends. A cut takes effect from the next bill. No change ever alters a bill already made.
Waivers. Work Theory may waive its share for an engagement. The team then receives the whole fee and owes nothing. The team's pages show when the share is waived.
Currency. All amounts are in US dollars.
Taxes. Work Theory doesn't add sales tax to the fee. Each team is responsible for the taxes on its own income.

3. Billing and payment

Monthly, in advance. Each engagement with an agreed fee is billed once a month, starting on the day the fee was first agreed, or the day Work Theory begins billing, if that is later.
How to pay. A client of the agent adds a card or a US bank account on a payment page hosted by Stripe. Work Theory never sees the card or account number. The client can change the payment method and see each bill and receipt there. At launch, the client agrees to the team's terms and fee and adds a way to pay on one page.
What the team receives. Work Theory charges the client the team's fee, on Work Theory's own Stripe account. It keeps its share and sends the rest to the team's Stripe account. Work Theory pays Stripe's processing fees out of its share.
A month at $0. Nothing is charged to the client. The month counts as paid for, and it is recorded with what the team owes.
Before the team can be paid. Once billing has begun, a team can propose a fee above zero only after it connects Stripe. A month at a fee above zero isn't billed while the team's Stripe account can't receive payouts, and isn't billed later either.
No fee agreed. If an engagement still has no agreed fee 14 days after billing began or after the engagement started, whichever is later, the engagement pauses as described in section 4.

4. A payment that fails

If a payment fails, the agent's clients are emailed, and the portal shows what is due.
After 7 days unpaid, the engagement pauses:
- the team's guides can no longer see the agent or its memories;
- the agent can no longer use the team's playbook or ask its guides anything;
- both sides are told the engagement is paused.

Nothing is deleted. Paying what is due resumes the engagement.

Months during which an engagement is paused are not billed.

5. Ending an engagement

A client can end guidance at any time, from the portal. When it ends follows the ending rule below. Nothing more is charged once it has ended, and a month already paid for is not refunded.
A team owner ends guidance under the same rule. Work Theory doesn't set a different notice period for teams.
Only a client of the agent or the team owner can end guidance, from the portal. Nobody's chatbot can end it. A Work Theory admin can also end an engagement, to fix a problem.
A paused engagement can be ended in the same way.
What ending does:
- the team's guides no longer see the agent or its memories, and the agent no longer uses the team's playbook;
- nothing is deleted;
- the clients keep every memory saved on the agent, including what the team's guides saved;
- the team keeps its playbook, including the rules it wrote for that agent and any de-identified lessons it drew;
- one-time links between the agent's side and the team that nobody has opened are turned off.
The handoff. While guidance is ending, the team's guides are asked to write handoff notes for the agent: where things stand, which accounts to change, and anything only the team knows how to do. The notes are memories the clients keep. Work Theory asks a team for a handoff but can't make it write one, and the client sees which notes it wrote.
The ending rule is the one in the version of the team's terms the client last agreed to, never a later one they haven't accepted. It is either "month to month": either side can stop at any time, and guidance runs to the end of the billing month already paid for (a $0 month counts as paid for). Or it is "notice": either side gives the number of days' notice the team chose (1 to 90), and guidance runs to the end of the billing month in which the notice runs out. The same rule applies to both sides, and only the side that gave notice can take it back.

6. For teams

Connecting Stripe. To be paid, the team owner connects a Stripe account through Stripe's own onboarding, as a Stripe "recipient" account with Stripe's Express dashboard, and accepts Stripe's agreement for that account. Stripe verifies the team's identity, makes the payouts, and issues the tax forms Stripe is required to issue.
The team confirms that the information it gives Stripe and Work Theory is accurate.
The team's own terms. The team owner writes the team's terms in the portal, starting from Work Theory's template. Each save is a new version. A client agrees to one version with the fee, and a newer version applies to them only once they agree to it.
The team is responsible for:
- the guidance it provides: its playbook, its rules for each agent, and its guides' answers and feedback;
- any licence its field requires;
- its own terms with each agent's clients;
- its taxes;
- what it owes Work Theory under section 2.
Payouts follow Stripe's schedule. Work Theory isn't responsible for delays at Stripe or at the team's bank.

7. For clients

Any client of the agent can agree to fees and terms, manage payment and end guidance. Members can't.
Questions about a bill go to hello@worktheory.ai. Please write to us before disputing a charge with your bank.

8. Refunds and disputes

Work Theory decides refunds, and handles disputes and chargebacks through Stripe.
A disagreement about the quality of the guidance is between the team and the agent's clients.

9. Changes to these terms

Each version is numbered and dated. A new version takes effect when it is published, and we email team owners and agents' clients when it is. Changes to Work Theory's share follow section 2 instead.