Terms of Service

1. Agreement to Terms

By accessing or using samantar.us (the "Service"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

These Terms constitute a binding agreement between you and Samantar LLC ("Samantar," "we," "us," or "our"), a Texas limited liability company.

These Terms incorporate by reference any supplemental policies we may publish, including but not limited to Community Guidelines, Acceptable Use Standards, Developer Documentation, and API Terms. Each such policy will be published at samantar.us when applicable and will be subject to these Terms.

2. Description of Service

Samantar is an educational information tool that helps users explore career and degree program outcomes based on historical statistical data. The Service presents aggregated, publicly sourced information about earnings, employment rates, and related metrics to help users make more informed decisions about education and career paths.

All projections and estimates presented by the Service are derived from historical aggregate data and are subject to the limitations described in our Disclaimer. The Service does not provide financial, investment, career, or academic advising.

2.1 AI Assistant Feature

The Service includes an AI Assistant — a conversational interface that allows users to ask questions about Samantar's published content, including career profiles, degree program data, return-on-investment estimates, and related topics, and receive natural-language responses.

The AI Assistant is powered by a self-hosted open-weight language model operating entirely on infrastructure controlled by Samantar. The model's weights are stored and executed on Samantar's own servers. At no point during normal operation are user queries, retrieved content, or model responses transmitted to the model's developer, the model repository, or any other third party.

Limitation on AI-generated responses. Responses generated by the AI Assistant are informational only. They are drawn from Samantar's published content and are subject to the limitations of automated language generation. They do not constitute financial, investment, career, or academic advice. Responses may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies, including in responses that appear confident or definitive. You should not rely on AI Assistant responses as a substitute for independent research or qualified professional advice.

The prohibitions in Section 6 (Acceptable Use) apply fully to your use of the AI Assistant, including the prohibitions on misrepresenting outputs, deceptive use, and automated extraction.

3. Eligibility

The Service is intended for users age 16 and older. By using the Service, you represent that you are at least 16 years of age. If you do not meet this requirement, you are not authorized to use the Service.

4. Authentication and Credential Registration

The Service uses passkey-based authentication (WebAuthn/FIDO2 standard). When you register a credential:

• Your device generates a cryptographic key pair. Your private key never leaves your device and is never transmitted to or stored by us.
• We store only your public key and a randomly generated credential identifier. No password is created or stored. No name, email address, or other personally identifying information is associated with your credential.
• You are responsible for maintaining access to the device and authenticator (e.g., Face ID, fingerprint sensor, hardware key) used to register your credential.

Loss of device access: Because we do not store a password or any other fallback credential, and because we cannot verify your identity from the information we hold, we may be unable to restore access if you lose your authenticating device. You may contact us at admin@samantar.us, but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to assist. See our Privacy Policy for a complete description of the information associated with registered credentials.

5. User Submissions

5.1 Contact Form

The Service includes a contact form for submitting bug reports, feature requests, and general feedback. As described in our Privacy Policy, the form does not require your name or email address, and the message body is not stored in any Samantar database.

5.2 License Grant

By submitting a message through the contact form, you grant Samantar LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to read, use, and act on the content of your submission for the purposes of operating, improving, and developing the Service. This includes the right to implement ideas, suggestions, or feedback you provide without obligation, attribution, or compensation to you.

5.3 No Expectation of Response

Because the contact form does not collect a name or email address, we cannot respond to your submission unless you voluntarily include a contact method in your message body. Submission does not create any obligation on Samantar to respond or take action.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree to use the Service only for lawful purposes and in a manner consistent with these Terms.

6.1 Prohibited Activities

You may not use the Service to:

1. Misrepresent outputs — including presenting statistical projections, estimates, or other outputs from the Service as individual guarantees, personalized predictions, professional advice, or verified facts, whether to educational institutions, employers, or any other party.
2. Make deceptive or fraudulent use of outputs — including submitting, incorporating, or relying on outputs from the Service in any context where doing so would mislead a third party as to the nature, source, reliability, or meaning of the information.
3. Engage in unauthorized reliance — including using outputs from the Service as a substitute for individualized professional, financial, academic, or career advice in circumstances where such reliance is unreasonable given the statistical and aggregate nature of the data.
4. Impersonate or misrepresent — including impersonating any person or entity, falsely claiming affiliation with Samantar, or making false or misleading statements about the Service.
5. Scrape, harvest, or extract data in bulk — including using automated tools, bots, crawlers, scripts, or any programmatic method to extract, copy, replicate, or download Service data at scale.
6. Train or develop AI or machine learning systems — including using any output, dataset, visualization, or aggregated result from the Service as training data, evaluation data, or fine-tuning data for any machine learning model, large language model, or automated AI system; or replicating, reproducing, or reverse-engineering the Service's data aggregations, normalizations, or scoring methodologies for use in any competing or derivative system.
7. Reverse engineer or circumvent — including attempting to access, decompile, reverse engineer, or exploit any portion of the Service's backend systems, data sources, or algorithms.
8. Interfere with service operations — including attempting to disable, overload, or damage the Service or its infrastructure, or gaining unauthorized access to any systems.
9. Violate applicable law — including any federal, state, or local statutes, regulations, or ordinances in connection with your use of the Service.

6.2 Enforcement

Where we reasonably determine that a user has violated these provisions, Samantar may suspend or terminate access to the Service without prior notice.

7. Intellectual Property

The Service and its original content, features, data visualizations, design, functionality, proprietary normalizations, and scoring methodologies are and will remain the exclusive property of Samantar LLC and its licensors. All rights not expressly granted in these Terms are reserved by Samantar LLC and its licensors. These Terms do not grant you any rights to use the Samantar name, logo, or other proprietary marks.

7.1 Permitted Uses

You may use outputs from the Service for personal, non-commercial, educational, and informational purposes, including:

• Personal decision-making about your education or career path
• Sharing information with advisors, counselors, educators, school administrators, or nonprofit organizations for non-commercial guidance purposes
• Citing, referencing, or quoting Service outputs in non-commercial blog posts, educational materials, journalism, or research — provided clear attribution is given to Samantar (samantar.us)

7.2 Restricted Uses

Without express written permission from Samantar, you may not:

• Resell, relicense, or commercially distribute Service content or outputs
• Reproduce Service outputs in bulk or for commercial republication
• Extract, aggregate, or compile Service data for use in competing products, directories, or datasets
• Use Service outputs as training, evaluation, or fine-tuning data for any AI or machine learning system

7.3 Third-Party Data

Data presented by the Service may originate from federal, state, or institutional sources. Where such data is subject to its own terms or attribution requirements, those terms apply.

8. Third-Party Links and Content

The Service may contain links to third-party websites or resources. We do not control, endorse, or assume responsibility for any third-party content, and we are not responsible for any loss or damage arising from your interaction with third-party sites.

9. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SAMANTAR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT: (I) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE; (II) THE DATA OR PROJECTIONS PRESENTED ARE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR CURRENT; OR (III) ANY PARTICULAR RESULT OR OUTCOME WILL BE ACHIEVED.

See our Disclaimer for important disclosures regarding the statistical basis, limitations, and intended uses of the financial and career outcome data presented by the Service.

10. Limitation of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL SAMANTAR LLC, ITS MEMBERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES — INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES — ARISING FROM YOUR ACCESS TO OR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO ACCESS OR USE) THE SERVICE.

10.1 Specific Disclaimers — Outcome Reliance

Without limiting the foregoing, Samantar expressly disclaims any liability for:

• Admissions outcomes — whether or not a user is admitted to any educational program, institution, or course of study after consulting the Service;
• Academic success or performance — outcomes relating to grades, degree completion, academic standing, or any other academic metric;
• Employment outcomes — whether or not a user secures employment, obtains a particular role or title, or achieves any professional outcome after consulting the Service;
• Salary and earnings expectations — any difference between projected earnings presented by the Service and actual compensation received;
• Return on investment — any shortfall between expected and actual financial return on any educational program or credential;
• Reliance on third-party data — errors, inaccuracies, delays, or omissions in data sourced from federal, state, institutional, or other third-party sources incorporated into the Service;
• Institutional reporting errors — inaccuracies arising from how educational institutions report data to the federal or state sources on which the Service relies;
• User decision-making — any decision made by a user — including decisions to enroll in, continue, or withdraw from any educational program — based in whole or in part on outputs from the Service;
• AI-generated responses — any inaccuracy, error, omission, or misstatement in a response generated by the AI Assistant, including responses that appear confident or definitive but are produced by an automated language model.

The Service provides statistical context for decision-making. It does not guarantee any individual outcome, and AI-generated responses do not constitute verified information.

10.2 Liability Cap

IN JURISDICTIONS THAT DO NOT ALLOW EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN DAMAGES, OUR LIABILITY IS LIMITED TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. WHERE SAMANTAR HAS RECEIVED NO COMPENSATION FROM YOU IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING UNDER THESE TERMS SHALL NOT EXCEED ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100).

11. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Samantar LLC and its members, officers, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from: (a) your use of the Service; (b) your violation of these Terms; or (c) your violation of any third-party rights.

12. Force Majeure

Samantar shall not be liable for any delay or failure to perform any obligation under these Terms to the extent that such delay or failure results from causes beyond our reasonable control. These include, without limitation: failure or interruption of third-party data sources, federal or state data systems, or educational databases on which the Service relies; failure of cloud infrastructure or hosting providers; acts of God, natural disasters, pandemic, or public health emergency; government action, embargo, or regulatory change; cyberattack, distributed denial-of-service attack, or other security incident affecting infrastructure we do not control; and labor disputes or supply chain disruptions affecting our service providers.

Samantar will use commercially reasonable efforts to restore Service availability as promptly as practicable following any such event.

13. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of the Service shall be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Travis County, Texas, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

14. Changes to These Terms

We reserve the right to update these Terms at any time. When we do, we will revise the "Last Updated" date at the top. Material changes will be communicated through the Service. Your continued use of the Service after any changes constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

15. Termination

Where we reasonably determine that a user has violated these Terms or that suspension is necessary for operational or legal reasons, Samantar may suspend or terminate access to the Service with or without notice. Upon termination, your right to use the Service ceases immediately.

16. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

17. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, and any supplemental policies incorporated by reference herein, constitute the entire agreement between you and Samantar LLC regarding your use of the Service and supersede all prior agreements.

18. Contact

Samantar LLC 5900 Balcones Drive STE 100, Austin, TX 78731, US admin@samantar.us

Please note: Because of the privacy-by-design architecture of the Service, we may not be able to verify your identity or associate your inquiry with a specific credential or session. Please describe your situation as specifically as possible so we can assist you to the extent we are able.