confidential processing · terms

last updated: August 2, 2026 · operated by sol pbc, a colorado public benefit corporation

these terms cover confidential processing: the AI model sol pbc runs on confidential GPU hardware, so your journal can think with more capacity than the machine it lives on. they're between you and sol pbc. we show you these terms when you turn confidential processing on, and turning it on is how you agree to them.

1. you never have to pay us

this is capacity, not a gate. sol can always think without us:

• a model on your own hardware. solstone runs one locally. nothing leaves your device, and sol pbc is not in the path at all.
• bring your own key. point sol at your own provider account. it stays in your journal, and sol pbc is not in the path.
• bring your own endpoint. point sol at any endpoint you run or trust.

confidential processing is a convenience for when your machine doesn't have the capacity you want. it is never a privacy upgrade over running locally. if you stop using it, you lose capacity. you do not lose your journal, and you do not lose your privacy.

2. what you're getting, and what it is not

• an engine sol pbc runs itself. sol pbc's own model weights on sol pbc's own serving stack, on confidential GPU hardware sol pbc operates. thinking is served with Qwen/Qwen3.5-4B, the same model generation sol runs on your own device: the hosted service gives you more capacity, never a better model, and nothing is held back for it. no third-party AI provider is in the path, and nothing you send is handed to one.
• it is off until you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time from the journal.
• it is not the sealed arrangement our other two services have. the relay can't read what passes through it and the operated backup holds blocks we have no key to. this one is different: what you send is encrypted over the network, and visible in running memory only while it is being processed by our engine. we will not tell you we never see it. what we will tell you is what becomes of it, in § 10.
• the hardware is Microsoft Azure's, and Azure is excluded from what runs on it. the machine is a confidential GPU instance: an AMD SEV-SNP confidential virtual machine with an NVIDIA H100 in confidential-compute mode. that boundary is enforced by the hardware rather than by configuration or by promise, and it keeps the host out of what is being processed, memory included. Microsoft hosts the machine. it is not a party to your content.
• speech. when the audio switch is on, your journal sends speech for transcription over the same verified channel. it is served with parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3, created by NVIDIA and used under CC BY 4.0: the same model generation sol uses on your own device, so nothing is held back for the service. the switch is on by default whenever confidential processing is in use. turning it off keeps speech-to-text on your own device, effective on the next thing you say.
• access is complimentary while you're an approved scout. if and when paid plans open, the price and the billing interval are shown to you before any charge, and nothing about the sections below changes except that §§ 4, 6, and 8 start to apply to you.

3. the part you don't have to take on trust

most services ask you to believe a privacy claim. this one is built so your own journal can check it.

• your journal verifies the hardware before anything is sent. it checks the AMD attestation chain up to AMD's own signing keys, the GPU's own evidence, the binding of that evidence to the encrypted connection, and a fingerprint of exactly which software booted on that machine.
• that fingerprint is pinned in solstone's open source code. it is public, it is version-controlled, and it ships in the same signed releases everything else does. we commit that sol pbc will not point you at different software without a release you can read. we could not do it quietly if we wanted to.
• if the check fails, nothing is sent. your journal waits, tells you plainly that it could not verify, and never silently falls back to another service or another provider. deferring is the designed behavior, not a failure mode we tolerate.
• you can turn the whole thing off and go back to processing locally at any moment, for any reason or none.

4. how access renews, if and when you subscribe

these terms apply while access is complimentary. if and when paid access opens and you choose to subscribe, this section is how it works, and you agree to it at checkout, where the price, the billing interval, and the automatic renewal are shown and you affirmatively agree before any charge:

• your subscription renews automatically at the end of each term, at your plan's then-current price, using your payment method on file, until you cancel.
• for any annual plan, we email you a reminder 15 to 45 days before each renewal, with the renewal date, the amount, and a one-click link to cancel, so a yearly charge is never a surprise.
• we'll tell you in advance if the price ever changes. a price change only takes effect on a renewal after we've notified you, and you can cancel before it applies.

5. turning it off, and what happens to your journal

• turn it off from the journal, anytime, and it takes effect immediately. stopping the processing needs nothing from us and no billing portal.
• turning it off stops the processing; it does not cancel a subscription. if and when you're subscribed, cancel anytime, in two clicks, from the billing portal. no phone call, no email, no retention maze. canceling stops future charges, and access keeps working through the end of the period you've already paid for, then turns off on its own.
• nothing is stranded, because nothing was stored. sol goes back to thinking on your own hardware, or on whatever key or endpoint you point it at.
• your journal is never touched. it lives on your own devices. turning this off doesn't reach it, and neither does canceling a subscription.
• the audio switch is separate and works the same way: turn it off and speech becomes text on your own device instead.

6. refunds, if and when you subscribe

• because canceling lets you keep access through the end of the period you paid for, we don't run refund math on cancellation.
• if you're charged in error, whether a duplicate charge, a charge after you canceled, or a billing mistake, email support@solstone.app or use the billing portal and we'll refund the incorrect amount. this doesn't affect any chargeback or refund right you have through your card issuer or under the law.
• nothing here waives any refund or cancellation right the law gives you where you live.

7. acceptable use

confidential processing is for thinking with your own journal. don't use it to generate or pursue things that are unlawful, that are meant to harm or harass someone, that impersonate a real person in order to deceive, or that attack the service or anyone else's systems. don't use it at a volume that degrades the service for everyone else, and don't route other people's traffic through it.

what suspension can touch, and what it can never touch. sustained abuse can suspend your access to confidential processing. it can never suspend your journal, your local processing, or your bring-your-own key or endpoint. those are yours and they don't run through us. we'll tell you if we suspend access, why, and what it would take to restore it, and you can reply to support@solstone.app about it.

8. payment is handled by stripe, if and when you subscribe

• sol pbc does not take or store your card. payments run through stripe, our payment processor. your card and payment details go directly to stripe and are handled under stripe's own terms and privacy policy.
• sol pbc receives from stripe only what it needs to run your subscription: that a payment succeeded or failed, when it renews, and a reference tying the subscription to your solstone sign-in. your card number never touches sol pbc's servers.
• stripe is bound, as our payment processor, not to use what we send it for anything except processing your payments. as a regulated payment company it also runs the fraud and anti-money-laundering checks the law requires of it. sol pbc never sends stripe anything from your journal.

9. the service is provided as-is, and so is what it produces

we work to keep confidential processing up, but we don't guarantee uninterrupted service. it can go down for maintenance or for reasons outside our control, and it will deliberately refuse to run when your journal can't verify it. the local path is always your fallback.

what the model produces is not advice, and it is not checked by anyone. a model can be confidently wrong. don't rely on what it produces for medical, legal, financial, safety, or any other decision that matters, and check it before you act.

as between you and sol pbc, what you send and what comes back are yours. you grant sol pbc a limited license to process what you send, for as long as it takes to answer, solely to run confidential processing and hand the result back to you, and for nothing else. sol pbc claims no ownership of either and makes no warranty that output is accurate, complete, current, or fit for any purpose.

to the fullest extent permitted by law, confidential processing is provided "as is" and "as available," and sol pbc disclaims all implied warranties, including merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. sol pbc is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, and sol pbc's total liability for confidential processing is limited to the greater of the fees you paid for it in the 12 months before the claim, or $100. nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or personal injury, or any statutory right you have as a consumer.

10. how your data is used

running this service involves three different things, and we keep them apart:

• what you send the model. the text and images sol needs a model to work through, plus your speech when the audio switch is on. our engine processes it and returns the result. the service runs zero data retention: no content is kept once your request is answered, not even in logs. no human reviews it. it is never sold, licensed, shared, profiled, or used for advertising.
• nothing you send is used to train anything. not our models, not anyone else's. this is a commitment we make to you, and it is reinforced by our covenants: sol pbc's articles of incorporation (Article 8, the Customer Privacy Covenant) legally bind the company never to sell, license, or lease your data, never to use it for targeted advertising or behavioral profiling, and never to hand it outside sol pbc except in the narrow ways the covenant allows: to a provider strictly needed to run the service you asked for (Azure and stripe, above), at your own direction, or where the law compels it. those bind any successor through a sale, merger, or change of control. you can read them at solpbc.org.
• counts, not content. to run the service and keep it healthy we keep fleet-wide totals. they are counts rather than content, they are not associated with you, your journal, or your account, and they are never used to profile you or to advertise to you.
• your billing details, if and when you subscribe. your email, the fact of the subscription, renewal dates, and a reference linking it to your sign-in. used only to run your subscription.

for the complete picture, including every provider we rely on to run the service and how long we keep each thing, see our privacy policy.

11. how long we keep it, and your rights

• what you send the model is not kept at all, so there is nothing there to retain, export, or delete.
• we keep any billing details for as long as you have a subscription, plus the period tax and financial-records law requires us to keep afterward (generally up to seven years for transaction records). when neither applies anymore, we delete them.
• you can see, correct, export, or delete your sign-in and billing data anytime, most of it directly from your settings at services.solstone.app/settings/data and the rest by emailing support@solstone.app.
• you have the privacy rights your state or country gives you, including the Colorado Privacy Act, the CCPA/CPRA in California, and GDPR in the EU and UK: to access, correct, delete, and port your data, and to opt out. sol pbc's covenants go further than any of them require. exercise any of them at support@solstone.app; we'll respond as fast as we can, and within the time the law requires: 45 days under the Colorado Privacy Act, with the extensions the law allows. if we deny a request you can appeal by replying to that email, and we'll respond to the appeal within 45 days. if we deny the appeal, you can raise it with the Colorado Attorney General.

12. changes to these terms

we may update these terms. if a change is material, we'll notify you before it takes effect. for a change that takes effect at a renewal, you can cancel before then if you don't agree. if a material change has to take effect mid-term, we'll give you notice and a way to cancel with a prorated refund of the unused period. we'll keep the current version posted here with its date.

13. who you're dealing with, and the law that applies

these terms are between you and sol pbc, a Colorado public benefit corporation. they're governed by Colorado law. questions: support@solstone.app.