These terms cover the reading room and the Library Card. They are written to be read, not to be survived. By using the service you agree to them.
The service is provided by Hidden Door LLC, operating as The Hidden Door ("we", "us"), a single-member company operating from the Memphis, Tennessee metropolitan area. Contact: [email protected].
"The service" means thehiddendoor.ai, the reading room at mcp.thehiddendoor.ai, and the material served through them.
The Hidden Door is a reading room. It serves written material — an investigation method, a glossary, and live rooms of a community — to an AI client that you already have and that you connect yourself.
It is a place to read and to ask questions. It is not a course you enrol in, not a professional service, and not a substitute for one.
You must be 18 or older to buy a Library Card, and you confirm this at checkout. If you are between 13 and 18 you may read the free material with the involvement of a parent or guardian. The service is not intended for children under 13.
Part of the material is open to anyone who connects, with no account, no payment, and no card. We may change what sits in the free tier, but we will not retroactively bill you for something you have already read.
A Library Card is a one-time purchase that unlocks the Library's reading rooms. Your receipt is your key — the identifier on your receipt is what you present to unlock those rooms. Keep it. We can help you recover it from your payment email, but we cannot invent one for you.
A key is issued to you, for your own reading, on the AI clients you personally use. Please do not publish it, resell it, or hand it around. If a key is being used in a way that is plainly not one person reading, we may retire that key. Where we can tell the difference, we would rather write to you first.
We should be exact about this, because "lifetime" is a word that gets used loosely and we would rather not.
Your card lasts as long as we operate the service — not as long as you live. It carries no expiry date and no recurring charge, we will not convert it into a subscription, and we will not put material behind a second paywall that your card already unlocked. But a one-person company is not a permanent institution, and if it stops, the reading room stops with it.
If the service is ever discontinued we will give at least 30 days' notice where it is within our power. If that happens within 12 months of your purchase, write to us and we will refund you in full. After 12 months we do not promise a refund — at $5 once, you will have had the reading, and we would rather say that plainly now than let the word "lifetime" do work it cannot do.
If the service does not work for you, write to [email protected] within 30 days and we will refund you. You do not need to justify it. If we discontinue the service within a year of your purchase, write to us and we will refund you then too.
The material is owned by us or by the community members who wrote it, and is protected by copyright. Your card buys you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to read it and to think with it.
You may quote it, discuss it, argue with it, and use what you learn — including in your own work. You may not:
Automated access beyond ordinary reading through your AI client needs our written permission. Ask; we are not unreasonable.
Many rooms are live community channels. What you read there was written by members, and it reflects their views, not necessarily ours. It is served as it is currently written, which means it can change or disappear between one reading and the next. We do not warrant its accuracy, and members retain rights in what they wrote.
You connect using an AI client you already have. Your use of that client is governed by your agreement with its provider — Anthropic, in most cases — and not by these terms. We do not control it, we do not see your conversation with it, and we are not responsible for what it does with what it reads. AI systems make mistakes, including confident ones; the material we serve is the material, and your Claude's commentary on it is your Claude's.
Nothing in the service is medical, psychological, legal, or financial advice, and no reading of it creates a professional relationship of any kind.
Some rooms hold material about domestic violence, coercive control, and psychological abuse. It is offered because it helps people. It is not therapy, not a clinical resource, and not a substitute for a qualified professional or for emergency services.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911 (or your local emergency number). In the US: the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788; the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is reachable by calling or texting 988.
We aim to keep the service up, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted availability. It depends on third parties — Cloudflare, Discord, Stripe, and your own AI provider — and any of them can have a bad day. We may change, suspend, or discontinue parts of the service; if a change removes something your card unlocked, section 5 applies.
We may suspend or terminate access for a serious or repeated breach of these terms — in particular section 6. Where the situation allows it, we will tell you what the problem is and give you a chance to fix it first. If we terminate your access and you have not breached these terms, we will refund you.
THE SERVICE AND THE MATERIAL ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT THE MATERIAL IS ACCURATE OR COMPLETE.
What this section does not touch, stated first so it cannot be missed. The limit below does not apply to death or personal injury, to fraud or misrepresentation, to gross negligence or wilful misconduct, to your rights under consumer-protection law including the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, or to anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. We are not attempting to cap those, and we would not try to.
SUBJECT TO THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE, AND TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE. FOR ORDINARY CONTRACT CLAIMS ONLY, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM, OR (B) FIFTY US DOLLARS.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so parts of sections 12 and 13 may not apply to you at all.
This clause is deliberately narrow. It is aimed at someone who takes the material and sells it, not at an ordinary reader who has a dispute with us.
You are responsible for third-party claims arising directly from your intentional infringement, unlawful republication, or resale of the material — including our reasonable legal costs in defending such a claim. It does not apply to claims caused wholly or partly by us, and it does not apply to ordinary personal use of the service.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Tennessee, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Shelby County, Tennessee, and we each consent to that venue. If you are a consumer in a jurisdiction whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings locally, this does not take that right away.
If these terms change, the date at the top changes with them. For a material change we will give notice on the site before it takes effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the new terms; if you do not, stop using the service and — if you bought recently — ask us for a refund.
If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing something on one occasion is not a waiver of it. These terms, with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about the service. You may not assign them; we may assign them to a successor if the business is transferred.