Terms of Service

shy-tomato is a recipe app I run by myself. These terms cover what you can expect from it, what I expect from you, and the basics of how we work together. I've tried to keep them honest and short.

When this document says "I" or "me," that means Wescott Sharples, the person operating shy-tomato. When it says "you," that means you, the person using it. "shy-tomato" or "the service" means the app at shytomato.com and any related surfaces I run under that name.

1. What this is

shy-tomato is a recipe app. You paste a link from anywhere on the web — a video, a TikTok, an Instagram post, a blog — and it becomes a structured recipe in a personal recipe box you can browse, save, plan meals from, and cook from on a phone.

I run it as a one-person project. There's no company behind it, no team, no investors. It's me. That means decisions are quick and the service is small. It also means downtime happens, support comes from one person, and the feature list is shorter than the big cooking apps. I think the trade is worth it.

2. Eligibility

You need to be at least 13 years old to use shy-tomato. If you're between 13 and the age of majority where you live, you should use the service with a parent's or guardian's involvement.

At launch I serve users in the United States. If you're elsewhere, you're welcome to try the service, but I'm building for US users first and some things (billing, email deliverability, language) will work best from the US.

3. Your account

You sign in with a magic link sent to your email. I don't store passwords for you; the link in the email is the credential. That means:

• Keep access to your email account. If you lose it, you lose access to shy-tomato.
• One account per person. Don't share accounts.
• You're responsible for what happens under your account.

If you suspect someone else is using your account, email me at [email protected] and I'll help you sort it out.

4. What you can do

While your account is in good standing, you can:

• Browse recipes on shy-tomato.
• Paste links to import recipes into your recipe box.
• Save recipes, organize them, and add notes.
• Plan meals (with a Pro subscription) and generate shopping lists.
• Export your data and delete your account at any time.

There are reasonable limits on these — extraction has a real cost, and I'll throttle or temporarily block accounts that are clearly being used to abuse the service. See the Acceptable Use Policy for detail.

5. Acceptable use

Don't use shy-tomato to do anything illegal, hostile, or abusive. The Acceptable Use Policy spells this out — read it, it's short. Violating it is grounds for suspending or terminating your account.

6. Pro subscription

Most of shy-tomato is free. One feature — meal planning — is gated behind a Pro subscription.

• Price. $5 per month, billed through Stripe.
• What you get. Access to the meal-planning surface and the features built on top of it. The free tier covers everything else: browse, import, save, search.
• How to cancel. One click in the billing portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period — you keep Pro access until then.
• Refunds. I don't issue partial-month refunds. If you cancel mid-month, your Pro access runs until the end of that month and then stops.
• Price changes. If I change the price, I'll post the change and email registered users when feasible, with at least 30 days' notice before it applies to your subscription. You can cancel before the change takes effect.

Stripe handles the payment itself. I don't store your card number; Stripe does. See the Privacy Policy for what I share with them.

7. Content you provide

The things you create on shy-tomato — saved recipes, meal-plan entries, notes, imports — stay yours. You keep the rights you came in with.

To run the service for you, I need a limited license to your content: I store it, display it back to you, process it through my extraction and AI pipeline, and back it up. That license lasts as long as you keep the content on shy-tomato. When you delete it (a recipe, an account, anything), that license ends with respect to the deleted content, with one exception:

• Backups and audit-log records may persist for a short period after deletion. I describe how long in the Privacy Policy.

You're responsible for having the rights to whatever you paste in. If you paste a link to copyrighted content you don't own, I rely on the same fair-use posture I describe in the next section.

8. Third-party recipes I display

shy-tomato lets you import recipes from places on the web — videos, blogs, social posts. Here's how I handle that content, because it matters.

I do not republish the original publisher's prose. What I persist and display is:

• The facts of the recipe: ingredients, steps, yield, cook time. Facts aren't copyrightable in the United States (Feist v. Rural Telephone, 1991), and a list of ingredients with their measurements is a textbook example of facts.
• A short AI-generated description written in my own voice from those facts. I do not store or display the publisher's headnote, intro, or commentary.
• A hotlinked hero image, served from the publisher's CDN. If the source URL stops serving the image (404, hotlink protection, page deletion), I may serve a stored fallback so the recipe stays usable. The original copy stays in cold storage, internal-only.

Every recipe displays the source — where it came from, who created it, and a link back. Provenance is always visible.

I keep an internal-only archive of source HTML and video for the purpose of re-extraction (if my pipeline improves, or if the source disappears). That archive is never served to users.

If you're a publisher or creator and you want a recipe removed, file a DMCA notice at shytomato.com/dmca or email [email protected]. I respond promptly. I terminate repeat infringers.

9. No warranty

I run shy-tomato carefully but it comes with no warranty of any kind. Specifically:

• Recipes are recipes. I don't verify allergens, nutrition facts, or medical suitability of any recipe for you. If you have allergies, dietary restrictions, or medical needs, verify the ingredients yourself before cooking. shy-tomato is not medical or nutritional advice.
• The service may be down. This is a Phase 0 MVP run by one person. I aim for it to be available most of the time, but I don't promise 99.9% uptime, and I don't have an on-call rotation. If you depend on shy-tomato for something time-sensitive, plan accordingly.
• Extraction is imperfect. AI extraction from videos and pages can get things wrong. Cross-check before you cook.
• The service is provided "as is." I disclaim, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all warranties — express, implied, statutory — including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent allowed by law, my total liability to you for anything connected with shy-tomato is limited to the greater of: (a) the fees you paid me in the twelve months before the claim arose, or (b) one hundred US dollars.

I'm not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages — lost profits, lost data, business interruption, and so on — even if I was told they were possible.

Some jurisdictions don't allow these limits. If yours doesn't, the limits apply to the extent they can.

11. Termination

You can end your account any time. Go to shytomato.com/me/delete. When you do, your account is marked deleted, your sessions end, your Stripe customer is detached, and your personal data is removed from active query paths. Your row remains as a tombstone (so I can prove the deletion happened) but is not surfaced anywhere a logged-in user can reach.

Get your data out before you delete. Export at shytomato.com/me/export while you're still signed in. If you have already deleted and still want a copy, email me at [email protected] — I will send your data by hand for 30 days after deletion.

I can suspend or terminate your account if you violate these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy. For serious or repeat violations, I terminate without notice. For less serious issues, I'll usually warn first. Either way, I record terminations in an internal audit log.

After termination, sections 9 (no warranty), 10 (limitation of liability), 14 (disputes), and any other clauses meant to survive will continue to apply.

12. Changes to these terms

I'll update these terms from time to time. I will post material changes on this page and email registered users when feasible. Smaller changes (clarifications, typo fixes, formatting) I'll just post.

Your continued use of shy-tomato after a posted change means you accept the new terms. If you don't want to accept them, delete your account before they take effect.

13. Contact

Email: [email protected]

Mail: Wescott Sharples, 3727 77th Pl SE, Mercer Island, WA 98040, USA

For DMCA notices specifically, see shytomato.com/dmca.

14. Disputes and governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that can't be resolved by talking with me first will be brought in the state or federal courts located in King County, Washington, and you and I both agree to that venue.

This is an open call — Wescott may revise this clause to require arbitration or a different jurisdiction before public launch.

15. Miscellaneous

• Entire agreement. These terms (together with the Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy) are the entire agreement between you and me about shy-tomato.
• No waiver. If I don't enforce a part of these terms once, that doesn't mean I waive it.
• Severability. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• No assignment. You can't assign your account or these terms. I can assign them if I ever transfer the service to another operator; in that case I'll email you first.