ARGUS Terms of Service

Effective September 9, 2026

These Terms govern your access to and use of ARGUS, a deterministic manuscript-analysis service operated by Cristiano da Silva, doing business as ARGUS, for The First Generation Series. By signing in, submitting a manuscript, purchasing a report, or otherwise using ARGUS, you agree to these Terms and the Privacy Policy.

All sales are final, except where applicable law requires otherwise. ARGUS provides a digital analysis service and a manuscript-specific report. Once the analysis has been performed or the report delivered, that work cannot be undone or returned. See Section 5 for the full policy.

1. The service

ARGUS accepts supported EPUB files, performs reproducible measurements and pattern-based checks, produces a private diagnostic report, and may send a report-ready notification. ARGUS provides evidence and review locations; it is not an automated editor and does not replace professional editorial, legal, publishing, or other advice.

2. Accounts and access

You must use accurate account information and keep control of the Google account used to sign in. You are responsible for activity performed through your account. Accounts may not be transferred or shared to bypass service limits.

3. Your manuscripts

You retain ownership of your manuscript and other content you submit. You grant the operator a limited, nonexclusive permission to receive, copy, extract, process, store, and display that content only as reasonably necessary to provide, secure, troubleshoot, and improve ARGUS as described in the Privacy Policy.

You represent that you own the submitted material or have all permissions necessary to submit and process it. You must not upload content that is unlawful, malicious, infringes another person’s rights, violates confidentiality obligations, or is intended to disrupt or probe the service.

4. Deterministic findings

ARGUS reports measured patterns and potential review items. A flagged pattern is not necessarily an error, and the absence of a finding does not establish that a manuscript is error-free. Results depend on EPUB structure, parsing, rule definitions, thresholds, and software versions. The author’s creative and editorial judgment remains authoritative. Subject to your rights under applicable law, disagreement with findings, the number of findings, or a change of mind does not entitle you to a refund; the final-sale policy in Section 5 applies.

5. Purchases, final sales, and failed processing

ARGUS is pay-per-report at $0.45 per 1,000 words USD. The server counts the manuscript words and displays the rounded price before checkout; applicable tax is shown at checkout. Each payment purchases one diagnostic report for one submitted manuscript; it is not a subscription. Payment is collected through the configured hosted payment provider before analysis begins. A new manuscript analysis requires a new purchase.

All sales are final, except where a refund or other remedy is required by applicable law. Your purchase pays for analysis of the manuscript you submit and delivery of a digital diagnostic report. Analysis already performed cannot be undone, and a delivered digital report cannot be returned like a physical product. ARGUS therefore does not offer voluntary returns, exchanges, or change-of-mind refunds. This policy applies whether you pay by card, PayPal, or another supported payment provider.

Before checkout, you must separately acknowledge this final-sale policy. Please review your manuscript, word count, and quoted price before paying. Choosing not to access or download a completed report, deleting the report, or later uploading a revised manuscript does not reverse the completed service or create a right to a voluntary refund.

Your statutory rights remain unaffected. This policy does not exclude any cancellation, withdrawal, refund, or other remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded. It does not prevent correction of duplicate, unauthorized, or demonstrably erroneous charges, and it does not excuse failure to provide a service or remedy required by law.

If a paid analysis fails because of an internal ARGUS error, the operator may retry that same analysis without another charge. Contact the operator if processing cannot be completed so the order can be investigated. Payment-provider processing times and legally required consumer rights may vary by location.

6. Acceptable use

You may not attempt unauthorized access; interfere with service operation; evade upload, account, or rate limits; introduce malware; scrape or automate access without permission; reverse engineer security controls; impersonate another person; or use ARGUS in violation of applicable law.

7. Privacy and retention

The Privacy Policy explains how account data, manuscripts, reports, structured findings, short excerpts, logs, and backups are processed and retained. Do not submit a manuscript if you do not have authority to permit that processing.

8. Service changes and availability

ARGUS may be modified, suspended, limited, or discontinued at any time. Features, deterministic rules, report formats, limits, and retention periods may change. Reasonable efforts will be made to operate the service reliably, but uninterrupted access, successful report generation, email delivery, or preservation of any report is not guaranteed. Download reports you wish to keep.

9. Third-party services

ARGUS relies on third parties such as Google for authentication and Stripe or PayPal (and Lemon Squeezy for existing payment sessions) for payment processing, and may use hosting, infrastructure, and transactional-email providers. Their services and policies are outside the operator’s control, and their availability may affect ARGUS.

10. Intellectual property

Except for your submitted content, ARGUS and its software, interface, branding, report design, documentation, and original materials are owned by or licensed to the operator and are protected by applicable law. These Terms do not grant rights to use ARGUS branding or redistribute the service itself.

11. Suspension and termination

The operator may disable or terminate access when reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, protect the service or others, comply with law, address security risk, or conclude a testing program. You may stop using ARGUS and request account deletion using the contact information below. Closing or deleting your account does not reverse a completed analysis or entitle you to a voluntary refund. The final-sale policy and statutory-rights exceptions in Section 5 continue to apply.

12. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, ARGUS is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, noninfringement, accuracy, completeness, or uninterrupted availability. Nothing in these Terms excludes a warranty or right that cannot lawfully be excluded.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, opportunities, data, manuscripts, or goodwill arising from or related to ARGUS. Where liability cannot be excluded, it will be limited to the amount you paid to use ARGUS during the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Changes to these Terms

These Terms may be updated as the service changes. The effective date will be revised, and material changes may be announced within the service. Continued use after updated Terms take effect constitutes acceptance where permitted by law.

15. Contact

ARGUS is operated by Cristiano da Silva, doing business as ARGUS. Questions about these Terms may be sent to cristiano@zyraeng.com.