Terms of Service

Effective date: October 8, 2026

These terms are an agreement between you and Summa (“we”) about your use of Summa. When you set up your account, you agree to them. If you don't agree, please don't use Summa. The Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines, Copyright Policy, Cookie Policy and Refund Policy are part of these terms.

Please read section 18. It says that you and Summa will settle most disputes by individual arbitration, not in court, and that neither of us can bring or join a class action. You can opt out within 30 days.

1. Who can use Summa

• You must be at least 13 years old.
• You need an account, which you sign in to with your own school email address at a college where Summa is open (Johns Hopkins and UIUC for now). Your school is set from that address and can't be changed. Keep access to that inbox to yourself: anyone who can open your sign-in emails can use your account.
• If you're 13 to 17, a parent or guardian must have read these terms and the Privacy Policy and agreed to you using Summa. Students under 18 can't post anonymously.
• One account per person. Don't share your account or use someone else's.

2. What Summa is

Summa is a private study room for each class. In a class's room, students can ask and answer questions, share their own notes and review guides, practice with quizzes written by AI from the class's shared notes, play ranked practice rounds, and challenge classmates. Summa is free; there are no paid plans and we don't collect payment details. If we ever add a paid plan, we'll update these terms and our Refund Policy, and show the full price, billing period and renewal terms before you pay.

3. Class rooms

• Each course at a school has one room (sometimes one per section). Only signed-in students at that school can join it and see what's inside.
• Everyone in a room can see what members post there (questions, answers, notes, review guides and comments) with the poster's display name, clout and badges, except that anonymous questions don't show who asked them. They can also see members' scores and rounds played.
• Someone who opens a course room's link without signing in sees only the course code. They can also play the room's latest class round as a guest. They can't see posts, notes or names.
• Pick a display name that isn't offensive and doesn't pretend to be someone else. Summa blocks some offensive names automatically.
• Rooms with no activity for 12 months are deleted, along with everything in them.

4. Questions, answers and anonymous posting

• You can post a question under your display name or anonymously. An anonymous question doesn't show your name to other students and earns no clout, so it can't be traced back to you through your score.
• Anonymous isn't untraceable. Summa stores who posted every question. Summa's moderators can see the author of an anonymous question when they review a report, enforce these terms, or respond to a legal request. Each time they look, it's logged.
• Answers and comments always show your display name.
• Answers from classmates are their own views. They aren't checked by Summa or your instructors and can be wrong. Check important points against your course materials.

5. Honor code and what you may post

Summa honor code: I'll share only my own notes and study guides: never graded work, exam or quiz questions, solutions, or course materials I don't have permission to share. I'll help classmates learn, not do their work for them.

Only post notes, review guides and other material you created yourself or have permission to share. Don't post:

• graded homework, problem sets, labs or projects, or their solutions, current or past
• take-home exams, or questions from any exam or quiz, current or past
• solutions manuals, test banks or answer keys
• course materials you don't have permission to share, such as your instructor's slides, handouts or recordings, or textbook pages
• anyone's personal information, including your own
• anything illegal, hateful, harassing, threatening, sexually explicit, or that bullies or targets a person, including a classmate, instructor or teaching assistant
• spam, advertising, or answers pasted from AI tools without checking them

Don't use Summa to complete graded work, or in any way that breaks your school's academic integrity rules. Your school's rules apply to you on Summa too. The Community Guidelines explain these rules in more detail, with how we enforce them.

6. Your content

“Your content” means the questions, answers, comments, notes, review guides, files and display name you add.

• You keep ownership of your content. You give us permission to store it, copy it, show it to the students in your room, and send the text of notes and review guides to our AI provider to write quizzes and topic labels, only to run Summa. That permission ends when your content is deleted.
• Students in your room can read, view and download what you post there, save it to their account, and comment on it.
• Quiz questions written from your notes show that they came from your notes, with your display name. Questions already written from a room's notes stay in that room's quizzes and rounds for the other members after your notes are deleted, until the room is deleted.
• We don't review content before it's posted, and we aren't responsible for content other students post.

7. Clout, badges and tiers

• Clout points are awarded by Summa's servers when classmates find your contributions useful: for example an answer the asker accepts, upvotes on your answers, likes and saves on your notes, your notes being used in a quiz classmates play, and finishing practice rounds. Clout is counted per room and overall.
• Clout unlocks badges, tiers and some extra features, and helps decide the order answers and questions are shown in. Clout has no cash value and can't be sold, transferred or exchanged for anything.
• Don't try to game it, for example by liking your own posts, using other accounts, or swapping likes with other students. Summa discounts clout it detects as gamed, and removes clout earned from content that's removed for breaking these terms.
• We may change how clout is earned, what it unlocks, or reset it, at any time.

8. AI-written quizzes

Quizzes, practice rounds, answers and explanations are written by AI from the notes students share in a room. Summa checks that each question quotes those notes and rejects some badly formed questions, but questions can still be wrong, unclear or incomplete. Use them for practice, alongside your course materials. Summa doesn't promise any particular grade or result.

9. How ranked rounds work

• Each question has a 30-second timer.
• A correct answer earns 100 points plus a speed bonus of up to 50 points. The bonus shrinks steadily from 50 at the start to 0 at 30 seconds.
• In rounds created from October 6, 2026, correct answers in a row also earn a combo bonus: 10% more for each correct answer in the streak, up to 50% more. A wrong answer or a timeout ends the combo.
• A wrong answer, or no answer before time runs out, earns 0.
• All scoring happens on our servers.
• Each member can play each class round once. Everyone gets the same questions, with the answer order shuffled for each player.
• A room's leaderboard adds up each member's class round scores. Each round also has its own leaderboard. Players with the same score share a rank. Guests aren't on any leaderboard.
• Solo practice rounds and quizzes never count toward a leaderboard.
• Any member who has answered a question can flag it. A question is removed from everyone's scores once at least 3 members flag it, or 15% of the players who finished the round if that's more. Only flags from members who joined before the round was created count toward removal. When a question is removed, scores and rankings are recalculated.
• Leaderboards show practice scores, not grades.

10. Reporting and moderation

• Every question, answer, note and comment has a Report button. Content reported by several students is hidden automatically until a moderator reviews it.
• Summa filters some offensive language automatically, especially in anonymous questions, and limits how often you can post, answer and like.
• We may hide or remove content, remove clout, scores or badges, and suspend or close accounts that break these terms, with or without notice. If you think we got it wrong, email summacapybara@gmail.com.
• If we're required to by law, or someone's safety is at risk, we may share information about a post, including the author of an anonymous question, with the authorities.

11. Copyright

We respect copyright and respond to notices under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Copyright Policy explains how to send a notice, how to send a counter-notice if your material was removed by mistake, and how we close the accounts of students who repeatedly infringe.

12. Play fair

Don't:

• use more than one account, for example a second account to see answers before playing or to give yourself clout
• flag questions you know are correct, or report content that doesn't break the rules, to change scores or bury posts
• use bots, scripts or automation, or try to get around Summa's limits or security
• try to find out who posted an anonymous question

We may remove scores, clout, members or content involved in cheating or abuse.

13. Summa's own content and software

Summa's name, logo, mascot, design, software and the text we write belong to us. We give you a personal, non-transferable permission to use Summa for your own studying, under these terms. Don't copy, sell or reverse-engineer Summa, scrape it, or use its name or logo without our permission. If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them without paying you or owing you anything.

14. Other websites and services

Notes and posts may link to other websites, and Summa relies on other companies' services (listed in the Privacy Policy). We don't control other websites and aren't responsible for them.

15. Ending use

You can stop using Summa at any time and delete your account on the Your account page. We may suspend or end access to Summa, or change or stop the service, at any time. Sections 6 (as far as it covers content already shared), 13, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21 still apply after your account ends.

16. Disclaimers and limits on our liability

Summa is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, including warranties that it's fit for a particular purpose, accurate, always available or free of errors, to the extent the law allows.

To the extent the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive losses, or for lost data, grades or opportunities, or for losses caused by content other students post, by AI-written quizzes, or by decisions you or your school make based on them. Our total liability to you for all claims about Summa is limited to US$100.

Some places don't allow these limits, so they may not apply to you. Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law doesn't allow to be limited.

17. Responsibility for your use

If someone brings a claim against us because of content you posted, your breaking these terms or the law, or your breaking someone else's rights, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and costs from that claim, including legal fees, to the extent the law allows. We'll tell you about the claim and let you help respond to it.

18. Settling disputes: individual arbitration and no class actions

Talk to us first. If you have a dispute with Summa, email summacapybara@gmail.com with your name, your school email address and what you're asking for. We'll do the same if we have a dispute with you. Neither of us will start an arbitration or court case until 30 days after that email, so we can try to settle it.

Arbitration. If we can't settle it, you and Summa agree that any dispute about Summa or these terms will be decided by binding individual arbitration, not in court, except as stated below. The arbitration will be run by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, which set out who pays which fees. A single arbitrator will decide it, and can award you the same individual relief a court could. It can take place by video, by phone, on written submissions, or in the county where you live. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.

No class actions. You and Summa may bring claims against each other only individually, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective or representative action. The arbitrator can't combine claims of more than one person. If a court decides this paragraph can't be enforced for a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) will be decided in court, not in arbitration.

Exceptions. Either of us may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court, as long as it stays there. Either of us may also go to court to stop someone infringing intellectual property rights or misusing Summa.

No jury. Where a dispute goes to court instead, you and Summa give up the right to a jury trial, to the extent the law allows.

You can opt out. To opt out of this section, email summacapybara@gmail.com from your school address within 30 days of first agreeing to a version of these terms that includes it, with the subject “Arbitration opt-out”. Opting out doesn't affect the rest of these terms, or any other arbitration agreement you have with us.

19. Which law applies

The laws of the State of Delaware, USA, govern these terms and any dispute about Summa, without regard to its rules on conflicts of law. Any dispute that isn't arbitrated will be heard only in the state or federal courts in Delaware, and you and Summa agree to those courts' jurisdiction. If you live outside the United States, you keep any protections the laws of your country give you that can't be changed by agreement.

20. Changes

We may update these terms. We'll change the effective date above, and if the change matters, we'll ask you to agree again the next time you use Summa. Changes apply from then on, not to disputes that started before.

21. General

• These terms, with the policies listed at the top, are the whole agreement between you and Summa about Summa.
• If a court finds part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don't enforce part of these terms straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• You can't transfer your rights under these terms to anyone else. We may transfer ours if Summa is sold, merged or taken over, as described in the Privacy Policy.
• We aren't responsible for delays or failures caused by things outside our reasonable control.
• We may send you notices by email to your school address, or show them on Summa.

22. Contact

Summa. Email: summacapybara@gmail.com.