Terms of Service

1. The Service

Walk and Hear is a studio for building narrated walking tours (stops on a map, stories, AI-generated or recorded narration, trails and trigger areas) and a player for listening to them. Features differ by plan and may change; we will not remove a core feature you have paid for during your current billing period.

2. Accounts

You sign in with a Google account and must be at least 16. Keep your Google account secure; you are responsible for activity under your account. Tour owners decide who may edit or view each tour and are responsible for the people they invite.

3. Plans, subscriptions and auto-renewal

• Free plan. One tour with limited stops, narration minutes and listener sessions, as shown on the pricing page.
• Paid plans (Starter, Standard, Pro) are subscriptions billed in advance, monthly or yearly where offered, in US dollars, plus applicable taxes. Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each period at the then-current price until you cancel.
• Enterprise plans are governed by a separate written order or agreement, which controls if it conflicts with these terms.
• Limits. Each plan includes monthly allowances. Narration minutes (1 minute = 1,000 script characters) stop when the allowance is used until the next month or an upgrade. Listener sessions are never cut off. We count sessions above your allowance but do not charge for them today; we will give at least 30 days' notice before we start.
• Price changes. We will give at least 30 days' notice of a price increase, effective at your next renewal.

4. Payment, cancellation and refunds

Payments on our website are processed by Stripe; by paying you also agree to Stripe's terms. You authorise us to charge your payment method for each renewal and for any upgrade you choose. If a payment fails, we may retry it and keep your paid features for a short grace period before your organisation moves to the Free plan.

Cancel anytime from "Manage billing" in the app (Stripe's customer portal) or by emailing support@toplevelcode.com. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period, and you keep paid features until then. Your tours are not deleted when you cancel; your organisation moves to the Free plan's limits, so you cannot add tours or stops beyond them.

Changing plans. An upgrade (to a higher-priced plan, or from monthly to yearly billing) takes effect immediately, and we charge the prorated difference for the rest of your current period right away. A downgrade (to a lower-priced plan, or from yearly to monthly billing) takes effect at your next renewal; you keep your current plan until then.

Refunds. Fees are non-refundable, and we do not give refunds or credits for partial periods, except where the law requires. If you cancel a yearly plan within 14 days of your first purchase of it, we will refund it in full. Nothing here limits refund rights you have under consumer law.

Purchases in our mobile apps. The iOS and Android apps do not sell subscriptions; paid plans are bought on our website.

5. Your content

You (or your organisation) keep ownership of the text, recordings, citations and other material you put into Walk and Hear ("Your Content"), and of the narration audio generated from your scripts, as between you and us.

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, process, transcribe, convert to speech, display, stream and distribute Your Content, only to operate, secure and improve the Service and to deliver your tours to the listeners you choose. This licence ends when Your Content is deleted from the Service, except for copies kept as described in our Privacy Policy and any listener's personal downloads already made.

You confirm that you have the rights needed for Your Content (including permission from anyone whose voice you record), and that your tours are accurate to the best of your knowledge and cite sources for historical claims where possible.

6. AI-generated narration

Narration can be generated by artificial intelligence (ElevenLabs text-to-speech) using stock synthetic voices. It is not a recording of a real person reading your script. AI audio can mispronounce names, misread dates or sound different from one generation to the next. Listen to and approve narration before you publish it. You are responsible for the scripts you submit and the tours you publish.

Do not use generated audio to impersonate a real person, to mislead listeners into thinking a real person said something, or outside the Service in ways our providers' terms prohibit. We may label tours or audio as AI-generated. A voice may be withdrawn by its provider; audio already generated keeps playing, but new narration may need a different voice.

7. Acceptable use

Do not use Walk and Hear to:

• break the law, or infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, privacy or publicity rights;
• publish hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, violent or deceptive content, or content that targets private individuals;
• direct listeners onto private property without permission, into unsafe places, or encourage trespass;
• interfere with the Service, probe or bypass access controls, scrape it, or overload it, including our routing and narration providers;
• resell or share access beyond your plan, or create accounts to evade limits.

Tours must also follow our Content Guidelines. We may remove content or suspend accounts that break these rules, and will tell you why unless the law or safety prevents it.

8. Walking safely

Tours are for information and enjoyment. Stay aware of your surroundings, traffic, weather and terrain; obey local laws, signs and property boundaries; do not look at your screen while crossing streets. Trails are snapped to paths from open map data, which can be wrong, closed or unsafe. Tour makers, not us, choose routes and stops. Automatic playback depends on your device's location accuracy and may start early, late or not at all; you can always play a stop by tapping it.

9. Third-party services and app stores

The Service relies on Google, ElevenLabs, Stripe, OpenFreeMap and routing providers. Their services are subject to their own terms. If you downloaded our app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, these terms are between you and us, not Apple or Google, and the store's own terms also apply. If you downloaded the app from the Apple App Store, Apple's standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement also applies, and these terms add to it.

10. Disclaimers and liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and we do not guarantee that tours, AI narration, maps or routes are accurate, complete or uninterrupted.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or lost profits or data, and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim (or US$100 if you used only the Free plan). Some places do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.

11. Ending the agreement

You can stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end access for a serious or repeated breach of these terms, or if required by law, and will give notice where reasonable. When an account ends, we delete its data as described in the Privacy Policy, after giving owners a chance to export their tours. To get an export of your tours or data, email support@toplevelcode.com.

12. Law, disputes and changes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Disputes will be resolved in the state courts located in Saratoga County, New York, or the federal courts for the Northern District of New York, unless the consumer law where you live gives you other rights. There is no arbitration requirement or class-action waiver.

We may update these terms. We will post the new version here with a new effective date and, for material changes, notify account holders at least 30 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the change. Contact: support@toplevelcode.com, Top Level Code LLC, 14 3rd St, Waterford, NY 12188.