The fine print, written to be read

Terms of Use

Effective: 2026-08-11 · Version 1.0 · Questions: sherpa@contextsherpa.com

The short version, honestly: Sherpa prepares work for you; the work is yours. What you share stays confidential, never trains any model, and is deleted on request. Sherpa shows his reasoning and states his confidence — and you stay the professional in charge: you review, you decide, you send. We cap our liability the way working tools do, and we don't hide behind fine print when we're wrong. The rest of this page is that promise in enforceable form.

1 · Who you're dealing with

Sherpa is operated by Ron Sircar, sole proprietor (India), operating as Sherpa. A private limited company (Oni Private Limited, operating as Sherpa) is being incorporated; when it completes, these terms novate to that company automatically — nothing about your rights or your data changes. Contact: sherpa@contextsherpa.com — a postal address is provided on request.

2 · What the service is

Sherpa is an AI-powered expert associate for development-sector consultants: briefings on funding terrain, reads of live tenders, and — for members — drafting and delivery support. Everything Sherpa produces arrives as a labelled draft: reasoning shown, claims cited, confidence stated, judgment calls flagged. Sherpa never contacts a third party on your behalf and never submits anything for you. You remain the expert of record.

Sherpa is not legal, audit, tax, or investment advice, and no output should be treated as any of those.

3 · Who these terms are for

The service is for business and professional use. By using it you confirm you are acting in a business or professional capacity, not as a consumer. It is not intended for anyone under 18.

4 · Free work (the first Terrain, the Pursuit, the Scan)

Requesting free work forms a limited agreement on these terms plus the short agreement shown at the form. Free work carries the same confidentiality, the same craft, and the same honesty as paid work — and a liability cap of the amount you paid for it: zero. Statutory rights that cannot be excluded are not excluded.

5 · What you give us, and what we owe it

• Your material stays yours and stays private. We never train AI models on your material, never sell it, never show it to another user, and never use it in cross-user aggregates without your separate, revocable opt-in under our published anonymisation standard.
• Client material. When you share a tender or document that involves your client, you warrant that it is yours to share. We treat it as client-grade confidential from the moment it arrives — including against requests from us to ourselves: client material is not even ours to release.
• Deletion and export. Ask, and we delete what identifies you or export everything. Plainly stated in the Privacy Policy, honoured within 30 days.

6 · What we produce is yours

Work Sherpa prepares for you is assigned to you on delivery — yours to use without restriction. Where an assignment mechanism fails in a jurisdiction, you have a perpetual, unrestricted licence instead. Sherpa retains only anonymised learnings that identify no one. Material Sherpa publishes for everyone (the Forum, public briefings) stays Sherpa's; you're welcome to share it with attribution.

7 · The accountability clause

Most AI products disclaim everything. We don't. "You're responsible" is not a shield for a confident wrong answer. Sherpa owes you work prepared with reasonable care and skill: reasoning shown, claims cited, confidence stated, judgment calls flagged. What we do not owe — because it cannot honestly be promised — is outcomes: we help you pursue outcomes; you review, decide, submit, and own the results. Those two sentences are one allocation: a real duty of care on the work, your ownership of the decisions built on it.

8 · Liability

For paid services, our total liability is capped at the fees you paid in the three months before the claim arose. For free work, see §4. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that law does not allow excluded — including death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, and (for India) gross negligence and wilful default.

9 · Acceptable use

Don't use Sherpa to mislead a funder or client, to misrepresent qualifications or authorship where disclosure is required, to violate someone else's confidence or rights, or to probe, overload, or reverse-engineer the service. We may decline or discontinue work that would require us to breach these terms or anyone's confidence — we'll say so plainly if we do.

10 · Waitlists and paid tiers

Joining a waitlist costs nothing and commits you to nothing; access is offered in join order. Paid-tier terms (pricing, billing, cancellation) are presented at the point payments open; founding-member pricing commitments made at signup are honoured as stated.

11 · Changes, termination, survival

We may update these terms; material changes are notified to your email before they take effect, and continued use is acceptance. You can stop using Sherpa at any time and take your data with you (§5). Confidentiality, IP assignment, and liability provisions survive termination.

12 · Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India. Before either of us goes to court, we agree to try direct negotiation first.

v1.0 self-drafted 2026-08-11; counsel review commissioned and owed. Substantive positions per the ratified counsel brief §3; changes on counsel's advice will be versioned and dated here.