Terms of Service

Ordinal is an autonomous agency. Work is performed by AI departments — configured teams of AI workers — that Ordinal builds, operates, and supervises. Ordinal is the service provider and your counterparty; we are not a marketplace, an intermediary, or a venue for third-party sellers.

You must be at least 18 and provide accurate information. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your credentials secure. You may delete your account at any time from your profile, subject to section 11.

A project begins when you submit a brief to a department and its price is accepted. The brief, including any attachments and instructions, defines the scope. Work materially outside the accepted brief is a new project. Ordinal may decline or cancel a project before delivery, in which case no charge applies.

Each project has a fixed price agreed before work begins. There are no hourly charges, no subscription, and no AI compute, model, or research costs passed on to you — Ordinal absorbs those. Payment is taken when you unlock the finished deliverable and is processed by Stripe; card details are never stored by Ordinal.

Your payment is held in escrow rather than paid directly to Ordinal. It is released when you give final sign-off, or automatically when the 72-hour warranty window closes without a revision request or issue being raised. If you raise an issue, the escrow stays frozen until it is resolved.

Before payment you are shown a watermarked proof of work — a summary, contents, and a short excerpt — so you can confirm the deliverable exists. The preview is provided for verification only; copying, recording, or redistributing it is not permitted. Unlocking delivers the full work to your dashboard.

For 72 hours after unlocking, you may request revisions at no extra cost, including highlighting specific passages. Revisions must fall within the accepted brief. If a deliverable cannot be brought to the agreed standard, Ordinal may refund the project in whole or in part from escrow, at its discretion after review.

Deliverables are produced by AI workers and reviewed by a dedicated AI quality manager before delivery. Despite that review, output may contain errors, omissions, or statements that require independent verification. Deliverables are informational work product and are not legal, medical, financial, tax, or other professional advice. You are responsible for verifying any material fact before relying on or publishing it.

You retain ownership of the briefs, files, and data you submit, and you grant Ordinal the licence needed to process them in order to deliver your project. On release of payment, ownership of the delivered work product transfers to you, excluding Ordinal's own platform, department charters, prompts, tooling, and underlying technology, which remain ours.

You confirm you have the right to submit any material you attach and that doing so does not infringe anyone else's rights. You are responsible for how you use, publish, or rely on delivered work, including checking it against laws and third-party rights that apply where you use it.

To deliver your project, the content of your brief and attachments is processed by third-party AI model providers and, where research is needed, web search providers, acting on Ordinal's instructions. They process it only to return results for your task.

You may not use Ordinal to commission unlawful, deceptive, infringing, harassing, or harmful material; to produce content impersonating a real person or organisation misleadingly; to generate spam or malware; or to circumvent the Platform's protection, escrow, or preview controls. Ordinal delivers digital, cognitive work only and does not undertake physical tasks, real-world actions, or anything requiring licensed professional sign-off.

Deleting your account permanently erases your profile, projects, deliverables, attached files, and related records. Deletion is blocked while a project is in progress or funds are still held in escrow. Transaction records may be retained where required for legal, tax, and accounting purposes.

The Platform is provided on an "as available" basis. We may change, suspend, or withdraw features, and we may update these Terms; material changes are reflected by the "Last updated" date above. Continued use after a change constitutes acceptance.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ordinal is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill. Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to a project is limited to the amount you paid for that project. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Apart from the 72-hour revision warranty in section 7, the Platform and all deliverables are provided "as is" and "as available". To the maximum extent permitted by law, Ordinal makes no other warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement, or that results will achieve any business outcome.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Ordinal and its operators from claims, losses, and costs (including reasonable legal fees) arising from: material you submit; your breach of these Terms or of section 10; or your use, publication, or reliance on deliverables in breach of law or third-party rights. Ordinal will notify you of any such claim and may take part in its defence.

Refunds are handled through the revision and escrow process in sections 5 and 7. Please raise any issue with us before disputing a payment with your card provider. Filing a chargeback for a project you have unlocked and used, without first raising the issue, may lead to account suspension.

We may suspend or terminate an account for breach of these Terms, fraud, chargeback abuse, or unlawful use. Amounts properly held in escrow at termination are settled or refunded according to section 5.

Ordinal is an online service available worldwide. If you have a concern, contact us first so we can try to resolve it informally within 30 days. If it cannot be resolved, either party may pursue the remedies available to it under applicable law. Nothing in these Terms removes mandatory consumer protections that apply to you under the laws of the country where you live.

Ordinal is not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including outages of AI model, cloud, payment, or internet providers. Affected projects remain covered by escrow until delivered, refunded, or cancelled.

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the accepted brief and price for each project, are the entire agreement between you and Ordinal. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our consent; we may transfer ours as part of a reorganisation or sale of the business.

Questions about these Terms: Contact Us. See also our Privacy Policy.