Terms & Conditions

Effective August 9, 2026

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your use of benroberts.ai, the B4 Index and its paid plans, the B4 Framework™, The Build Report, and any related tools, APIs, and content (together, the "Services"), operated by Ben Roberts ("I," "me," or "we"). By using the Services, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, don't use the Services.

1. The Services

The Services include free content (such as the B4 Framework, the public Directory, and category considerations), the newsletter, and paid offerings (B4 Web, B4 Agent, and Enterprise), which may include verdicts, scorecards, vendor data and pricing, the Continuum, and access through an API or MCP server. I may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Services at any time.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 to use the Services. If you create a B4 Index account, you're responsible for keeping your credentials and any API keys secure, and for all activity under your account. Don't share your access or API keys with anyone outside your organization.

3. Intellectual property

The B4 Framework™, the B4 Index, the B4 scoring methodology, all category scores, verdicts, scorecards, considerations, vendor research and pricing data, the Continuum, and the text, design, and code of the Services are my proprietary property, protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, and other laws. "B4" and "B4 Framework" are my trademarks. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership to you.

4. Your license, and its limits

Subject to these Terms, I grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Services, and to use the content you're entitled to for your own internal business or personal decision-making.

You may not, and may not allow anyone else to:

You may quote brief, attributed excerpts for ordinary commentary or review. Everything beyond that needs my written permission. I reserve all rights not expressly granted.

5. Paid plans, API, and MCP access

The paid plans (B4 Web, B4 Agent, and Enterprise) and any API or MCP access are licensed for use within your own organization only. Access is metered and may be subject to rate limits and fair-use terms. The verdicts, scorecards, and vendor data delivered through a paid plan are confidential and proprietary, and the restrictions in Section 4 apply in full. Pricing, billing terms, and plan features for paid offerings will be presented at purchase; fees are non-refundable except where required by law. Section 6 sets out the additional terms that govern every paid subscription. I may suspend or terminate access for any breach of these Terms.

Usage data and the feedback loop. The B4 Index learns from how it's used. When you use the Services, including searches made through the site, the MCP connector, or the API, I log your queries and how the system responded, and I may use that data to operate, secure, and improve the Services, including the Index's accuracy and coverage. I use it in aggregate and handle it as described in the Privacy Policy. You are responsible for not sending confidential or personal information you're not permitted to share in your queries.

6. B4 Index Subscriber Terms

This section applies to every paid B4 Index subscription (B4 Web, B4 Agent, Enterprise). It is the section Stripe Checkout asks you to accept before it takes a card. Where it differs from Section 4, this section controls for subscribers.

The plain version. A subscription is for one person: you. Read, search, filter, and use the Index in your browser as hard as your work requires, and quote short attributed bits of it. Don't point scripts, headless browsers, or agents at the paid parts of the site. That's what the Agent tier exists for. The free MCP tools, b4_browse and b4_score, remain available to every user at their published rate limits, including users who never pay for anything. Don't copy the Index out wholesale, by machine or by hand. Don't feed substantial parts of it into a model, a vector store, or a training set. Don't rebuild the taxonomy or the scored lists somewhere else. Bulk access, redistribution, and API use need a separate written license. The legal wording follows.

6.1 One named user per subscription

Each subscription authorizes one natural person, identified by the account email. You may not share your password, API key, MCP connector key, session cookie, authentication token, or any other credential with anyone, and you may not let another person use your session. Accounts are not transferable between people without my written consent. If more people at your organization need access, buy more subscriptions or contact me about an Enterprise agreement.

6.2 No automated access to gated or paid capabilities below the Agent tier

Gated and paid capabilities of the Services are licensed for interactive human use. Except through the Agent tier's MCP tools or an interface I expressly provide, you may not use any of the following against a gated or paid capability, and may not permit anyone else to:

Free tools carve-out. The rate-limited free MCP tools, b4_browse and b4_score, remain permitted to all users, including anonymous and unauthenticated ones, within their published rate limits and result depth. Nothing in this Section 6.2 restricts them. Using them is an allowed automated use of the Services.

6.3 What the Agent tier grants

The Agent tier licenses machine access to the B4 Index through the MCP server, for interactive and agentic use by the named user, within the published rate limits. It does not license resale of that access, operation of the connector as a service for third parties, proxying calls on behalf of people who are not the named user, or exposing B4 results through a product or endpoint of yours. Rate limits are a technical control, not a license grant: staying under them does not authorize a use this section prohibits.

6.4 No systematic copying, even when it's manual

You may not systematically collect, compile, transcribe, or store the B4 data, whether by automated means or by hand. This includes bulk manual transcription, compiling screenshots or screen recordings into a dataset, copying category or vendor records into a spreadsheet or database, and reassembling a substantial portion of a category, domain, or the Index across multiple sessions or multiple people. The prohibition is on the systematic result, not the method. Ordinary use, such as saving a handful of records relevant to a decision you're making, is fine.

6.5 No ingestion into AI models, RAG systems, or vector stores

Without my prior written permission, you may not upload, index, embed, or otherwise integrate a substantial portion of the B4 data into a large language model, a retrieval-augmented generation system, a vector database or embedding store, a knowledge base, a fine-tuning corpus, or any model training, distillation, or evaluation pipeline. This applies to your own systems and to third-party systems you feed. Passing individual results into an AI assistant during a working session is ordinary use and is permitted; building a durable store of B4 content that a model reads from is not.

6.6 No derived works, competing datasets, or recreated scores

You may not recreate, reconstruct, approximate, or publish the B4 taxonomy, the category and domain structure, the scoring methodology, the dimension weights, individual scores, band verdicts, or the scored vendor lists, in whole or in substantial part. You may not use the Services, or anything derived from them, to build or improve a competing index, ranking, directory, scoring system, dataset, or decision-support product, or to benchmark or train one.

6.7 Bulk access, API use, and redistribution need a separate written license

Bulk export beyond the export features included in your plan, REST API access, embedding B4 content in your own product or client deliverables for distribution, and any redistribution of the B4 data to people outside your organization each require a separate written license from me. Enterprise agreements are the normal path. Email ben@benroberts.ai.

6.8 I monitor usage

I log and review usage of the Services for security, billing accuracy, rate-limit enforcement, and detection of the activity this section prohibits. That includes request volume and patterns, session and credential activity, IP and client metadata, and the queries you run. This monitoring is reasonable in scope and is handled as described in the Privacy Policy.

6.9 What happens if you breach this section

If I reasonably believe your account is being used in breach of this Section 6, I may throttle or rate-limit your access, require you to re-authenticate, revoke API or MCP keys, suspend the account, or terminate the subscription, with or without notice, and without refund of fees already paid. I may preserve logs, request records, and other evidence of the activity for as long as needed to investigate or to pursue a claim. Because unauthorized extraction and redistribution cause harm that money doesn't repair, I reserve the right to seek injunctive or other equitable relief in addition to any other remedy, without posting a bond.

7. AI-produced work and the Fleet

Much of the work behind the Services is produced by AI systems operating under my direction — the crew of agents described on the Fleet. Where an AI agent produced or assisted with a piece of content, the byline says so. The agents are software, not people, and nothing on the Services presents an AI agent as a human. Recommendations, verdicts, and reviews are published under my name as the human author of record, with agents credited for the work they performed.

Some imagery on the Services is AI-generated within my own visual system. AI-assisted work goes through human review before it ships, and it can still contain errors; Section 8 (informational only) applies to all of it. When you use AI-powered features of the Services, such as semantic search or the MCP connector, your queries may be processed by third-party AI model providers to serve the feature, as described in the Privacy Policy.

8. Informational only, not professional advice

The B4 Index, scores, and considerations are opinions and decision-support tools, not professional, legal, financial, or investment advice. Software and vendor markets move quickly, and the data may be incomplete or out of date. You're responsible for your own decisions, including any build, buy, or investment decision you make using the Services. Do your own diligence.

9. Third-party vendors and links

The Services reference third-party vendors, products, and websites. I don't control or endorse them, and I'm not responsible for their content, pricing, or accuracy. Trademarks and product names belong to their respective owners; their use here is for identification and commentary only.

10. Disclaimers

The Services are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. I don't warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, I won't be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of your use of the Services. My total liability for any claim relating to the Services is limited to the greater of the amount you paid me for the Services in the twelve months before the claim, or USD $100.

12. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold me harmless from claims, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your use of the Services or your breach of these Terms.

13. Termination

I may suspend or terminate your access at any time, with or without notice, for any reason, including a breach of these Terms. The sections that by their nature should survive termination (including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnification) will survive.

14. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arkansas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Arkansas for any dispute that isn't subject to other agreed resolution.

15. Changes to these Terms

I may update these Terms from time to time. Changes take effect when posted, with an updated effective date. Continuing to use the Services after a change means you accept the revised Terms.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@benroberts.ai.

See also our Privacy Policy.