Terms of Service

Last updated: December 9, 2025
This version replaces all previous versions of the Lightwave Terms of Service.

What Lightwave is

Lightwave is a zero-bloat, lightning-fast, IDE-inspired cloud platform for note-taking, knowledge bases, project management, and real-time collaboration. It lets individuals and teams capture ideas, organize information, and run projects together with total control over who can view or edit anything.

By signing up or using Lightwave, you agree to these Terms. If you’re using Lightwave on behalf of a company or team, you confirm that you have the authority to accept these Terms for them.

Lightwave is currently in beta

Until we announce version 1.0, all of Lightwave is in beta. That means things might change, break, or get rebuilt entirely as we figure out what works best. We're shipping fast and iterating based on real feedback (yours included).

We'd love for you to join our Discord at https://discord.gg/yourcode where you can talk to us directly, tell us what's working (and what isn't), and share your suggestions for what we should build next.

We'll do our best to keep everything running smoothly and give you a heads-up before making big changes, but we can't promise every feature will stick around or work perfectly. Please don't use Lightwave as your only copy of anything irreplaceable (that's good advice even after we hit v1, honestly).

Once we officially launch 1.0, this beta disclaimer no longer applies-but everything else in these Terms still does.

Also note: Lightwave does not work on mobile. We fully intend to make it an excellent mobile expereince but at this time desktop takes priority.

Lightwave Identity Model

Private user accounts are the first-class citizen in the Lightwave identity model. This means you start with, and always retain, a completely private Personal workspace that's exclusively yours, siloed from any team environments, and under your sole control. This Personal workspace can never be shared as a team space, ensuring true, unbreakable privacy for your personal notes, ideas, and projects.

• One unified account for everything: Your core Lightwave account gives you seamless access to your Personal workspace plus any Team workspaces you're invited to join. We strongly recommend using a personal email you’ll always have access to (not a work email) when creating your account. This becomes your permanent identity anchor; if you lose access to this email, we may not be able to recover your account.
• Team access is additive and revocable: When you accept an invite to a Team workspace, you're added to that team without affecting your Personal workspace. Teams can add or remove you as needed. Note that content you create within a Team workspace is controlled by that Team’s administrator.
• Separate identities per team: In your settings, you can add a secondary email or profile details (like a job title) specific to a Team workspace. This keeps your core identity private while allowing professional customization where it matters.
• What happens if team access ends: If you're removed from a Team, you lose access to that Team workspace and the data within it. Your Personal workspace remains fully yours, and your data is never commingled or lost.

User Responsibility & Employer Policies
This model prioritizes user ownership: your account is you, not tied to any employer. However, you are solely responsible for ensuring your use of Lightwave complies with your employer’s data policies or any other legal obligations you may have. Lightwave cannot arbitrate ownership disputes between you and your employer.

Thanks Discord!

Discord inspired us to think about identity this way.

1. Who can use Lightwave

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a legal agreement.

2. Your account

You’re responsible for everything that happens under your account. Keep your password safe and let us know right away if you think someone else is using it.

3. Plans & Pricing

Current plans (USD)

• Personal Pro → $10/month or $99/year
• Team → $12 per user/month or $109 per user/year
• Personal Lifetime → $179 one-time

Note: We offer a generous refund policy.

Lifetime plan promise

Your lifetime purchase gives you all current and future Personal Pro features for as long as Lightwave exists as a supported product.

If we ever have to shut Lightwave down:

• We'll give you at least 12 months notice
• You'll keep full access during that year
• If possible we will ensure you'll have permanent read-only access after that point + full export

Cancellation & refunds - no tricks

• Cancel anytime → you keep paid features until the end of your billing period
• Personal Pro & Lifetime → 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked
• Team → 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked (clock starts on very first Team payment)
• Refunds are issued to the original payment method only

View our full refund policy.

Exporting your data

• You can export everything (forever) in clean, open formats (Markdown, JSON, original attachments) unless your account was terminated for abuse.

4. Your Content - You Own It All

4.1 Ownership is simple

Personal workspace: Everything you create in your Personal workspace is 100% yours, exclusively and forever. No one else (including us) can ever access, claim, or control it.

Team workspaces: Content created in a Team workspace belongs to that Team. You're contributing to a shared space, and the Team's administrator controls access and retention. (Ownership between you and your employer or team is governed by your own agreements with them, not by us.)

In both cases: We never claim ownership of anything you put into Lightwave.

4.2 We take (almost) zero license

• For technical reasons the law requires you grant us a technical "license" to handle your data.
• Essentially, to operate Lightwave you must grant us a strictly limited, revocable license to "store, process, transmit, back up, and display your content" solely so the service works.
• That’s it.
• We don’t use your content for anything else. We don’t look at it, share it, sell it, analyze it, or train AI on it.

4.3 We will never train AI on your data

• Not now, not ever. No exceptions, no fine print.

4.4 No human ever reads your private stuff

• No employee or contractor looks at your private documents unless you personally ask for help and give us written permission to do so (for example, so we can fix a bug).

4.5 Public links are your choice

• If you share a document publicly, you’re the one granting permission... not us.

4.6 When you delete your account

• Personal Workspace: Everything in your private Personal workspace is immediately made inaccessible to everyone (including us). Within 30 days we permanently delete it from all active databases and daily-use storage.
• Team Workspaces: To ensure business continuity for teams, any content you created within a Team workspace remains available to that Team. However, we scrub your personal identity from that content; your name and profile details will be removed or replaced with a "Deleted User" label.
• Backups: Any copies that remain in our long-term, offline disaster-recovery backups are never accessed or restored except in extreme circumstances and are automatically overwritten on our normal backup rotation cycle (typically within 12 months).
• Required Records: Some metadata, such as billing records may be retained for as long as necessary to comply with legal, tax, or regulatory requirements.

5. Play nice (acceptable use)

Please don’t use Lightwave to:

• break laws or infringe anyone’s rights
• upload viruses or malware
• send spam
• try to reverse-engineer or hack the service
• overload the servers
• store regulated health/financial/education data (HIPAA, PCI, FERPA, GDPR special categories) without a separate agreement

We can suspend or terminate accounts that break these rules.

6. Third-party stuff

• Any integrations (Google Drive, Slack, etc.) follow their own rules. We’re not responsible for them.

7. Privacy

• Our Privacy Policy is part of these Terms and explains exactly what we do (and don’t do) with your data.

8. Uptime & support

• We work hard to keep Lightwave fast, reliable, and running smoothly; but no software can promise 100% uptime. Lightwave is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent allowed by law, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We can’t guarantee Lightwave will be uninterrupted, error-free, or perfectly secure, but we’re always working to make it better.

9. Liability cap (the boring legal bit)

• If something goes wrong, our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the last 12 months (or $179 for Lifetime buyers). We’re not liable for indirect or consequential damages.

9.1 Desktop only at this time

Lightwave is designed for desktop browsers and does not currently support mobile devices. A mobile version will be added in the future.

10. If you cause legal trouble

• You agree to cover us if someone sues us because of your content or how you used Lightwave.

11. California law & arbitration

• California law applies. Disputes go to binding arbitration in Ventura County (no jury, no class actions). Small-claims court is always an option.

12. Changes to these Terms

• If we make big changes, we’ll give you at least 30 days notice by email or in the app. Keep using Lightwave = you accept the new terms.

13. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

We respect copyright. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work in Lightwave without permission, email us at dmca@lightwave.app with:

• what’s yours,
• exactly where it is in Lightwave,
• and a quick statement that you believe it’s not authorized,
• a short line saying you believe this in good faith and a simple statement that the information you’re providing is accurate and that you’re allowed to make the complaint,
• your contact info so we can follow up,
• and your physical or electronic signature.

We’ll review it quickly and take it down if needed. (Private documents can only be reported by the workspace owner - third parties can’t peek.)

If your content is taken down and you believe that was a mistake, you can send us a counter-notice as allowed under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g), and we’ll look into it right away.

That’s it, we don’t want stolen content in Lightwave any more than you do.

14. If Lightwave is acquired

If another company ever buys Lightwave (or substantially all of its assets), your account and content would transfer to them as part of the deal. That's standard. But here's where we go further than standard.

We will never sell Lightwave to any company, or accept investment from any investor, that won't commit to our privacy promises in writing. That means: no selling your data, no training AI on your content, no weakening of the protections in these Terms. Ever.

Any acquisition or investment agreement will require the new owner to honor these privacy commitments in perpetuity and if they ever sell, they must pass that same obligation to the next owner. It's a chain that can't be broken.

We're not naive about how this limits our options. If it means we can never sell or never raise outside funding, so be it. Your trust matters more to us than an exit.

In any case, you'll get at least 30 days notice before any ownership transfer, and you can always export everything and leave if you're not comfortable with the new situation.

15. Export controls

You agree to comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions regulations and will not use Lightwave in violation of U.S. export laws.

16. Contact us

You may contact us at any time for any reason. Humans will reply.

JV Multimedia, Inc. (Trading as Lightwave)
Moorpark, California, USA
hello@lightwave.so

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