scienium

Effective August 6, 2026 — Version 1.0

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and me. I am Rig Saini, and I operate scienium, the science-research game and classroom tool at https://scienium.app (the "Service"), as an individual — there is no company behind it. In these Terms "we", "us", and "our" mean me.

Please read them. They cover what you may and may not do, who owns the work you create, what we promise, and what we do not.

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

The short version

scienium is free right now and is pre-release software. Things will change, and features may break.
You keep ownership of everything you create. We do not claim your research, your writing, or your project. We only get the permission we need to run the product for you.
Use it for schoolwork. Do not harass anyone, do not upload other people's personal information, and do not try to break the AI or the cost limits.
The AI can be wrong. It is a study aid. It is not your teacher, not a doctor, and not a science-fair rulebook.
Real-world experiments are your school's responsibility, not ours. Nothing in scienium is a safety review.
Knowledge points, buildings, and trophies are game state. They have no cash value and cannot be bought, sold, or redeemed.

1. Who may use the Service

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account on your own.

If you are under 18, you may use the Service only with the involvement of your school or the permission of a parent or legal guardian, and that parent, guardian, or school agrees to these Terms with you and on your behalf. If you are a parent or guardian and you do not agree, tell your child not to use the Service and email us at hello@scienium.app to close the account.

Children under 13 may use the Service only through a school that has enrolled them and has provided consent on behalf of parents as described in our Privacy Policy. We do not knowingly permit a child under 13 to sign up without a school, and we will close such an account when we learn of it.

You may not use the Service if we have previously suspended or removed you, or if doing so would violate US export control or sanctions law.

2. Accounts, classes, and teams

Accurate information. Give us a real name and a working email address. Do not impersonate another person, another student, or a teacher.

Your account is yours alone. Do not share your password. Do not sign in as someone else, and do not let anyone else sign in as you — including a teammate "just to fix something". You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us at hello@scienium.app if you think someone else has access to it.

Class join codes. A class code is for the students in that class. Do not post it publicly or share it outside the class. A teacher can regenerate a code to revoke a leaked one, and codes expire.

Teams. Teams share work: a project log written by one member is visible to the rest of the team, and lab resources are shared. Joining a team means agreeing to that. If you leave a team, the work you contributed to the team's project stays with the team, because it is the team's project too. Team leads have additional powers over the team, including removing members, and they must use them for the project, not to settle arguments.

One role. A student account cannot be converted into a teacher account. If you need a teacher account, create one.

3. Schools and teachers

If you accept these Terms on behalf of a school, district, or other organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind it, and "you" in these Terms means that organization as well as you personally.

A school or teacher who uses the Service with students agrees that it will:

provide any notice to parents, and obtain any consent, that its own policies and applicable law require before students use the Service;
supervise students' use, including any real-world experimentation, in accordance with its own safety policies;
review student submissions before approving them for public publication; and
keep class join codes confined to the intended class.

A teacher can see the work, progress, and submissions of students in their own class, and no others. A school may direct us to export or delete the data of its students, and we will act on a verified instruction from the school even over a student's objection.

If we have signed a separate written agreement with a school or district, that agreement controls where it conflicts with these Terms.

4. Pre-release software

scienium is under active development and is offered for classroom pilots. That means, honestly:

Features will change, move, and sometimes be removed.
There may be bugs, downtime, and errors in generated content.
We may need to reset, migrate, or rebuild game state — knowledge points, buildings, trophies — as the game is balanced. We will not intentionally destroy your research work, writing, or project data to rebalance the game, and we will give notice before any reset that affects saved work.
We do not promise any particular uptime, and we may suspend the Service for maintenance.

Please export anything you cannot afford to lose, and keep your own copy of work that a science fair depends on.

5. Fees

The Service is free today. There are no charges, no subscriptions, and we collect no payment information.

We may introduce paid plans in the future. If we do:

existing free features will not become paid without at least 30 days' notice;
no charge will ever be applied retroactively;
no one will be charged without first agreeing to a separate order or plan; and
schools will be given the option to end their use and export their data rather than pay.

6. Acceptable use

Use the Service for learning and research. Do not do any of the following.

Toward other people

Harass, bully, threaten, demean, or target another student, teacher, or person.
Post hateful content, or content that attacks people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Post sexual content, graphic violence, or content promoting self-harm, eating disorders, or substance abuse.
Publish another person's personal information — full name, face, address, school, contact details, or anything else identifying — without their permission, and, for another minor, without their parent's permission.
Impersonate anyone.

Toward the Service

Access another team's, class's, or school's data, or try to.
Use another person's account, or let anyone use yours.
Probe, scan, or test the security of the Service, except to report a vulnerability in good faith as described in our Privacy Policy.
Circumvent rate limits, spend caps, phase gates, cooldowns, or any other control — including by scripting, automating, or running multiple accounts.
Scrape the Service, or use bots, crawlers, or automated clients against it.
Deliberately generate expensive AI activity, or run activity whose purpose is to increase our costs rather than to learn.
Attempt to make the AI ignore its instructions, produce prohibited content, or reveal system prompts or other users' data.
Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code, except where that restriction is unenforceable by law.
Resell, sublicense, or offer the Service to third parties as your own.
Introduce malware, or upload a file designed to exploit a system.
Interfere with anyone else's use of the Service.

Around schoolwork

Falsify experimental data, or present fabricated results as real.
Submit AI-generated work as your own where your school or a competition forbids it (see section 12).
Upload content describing dangerous procedures — explosives, weapons, hazardous synthesis, or illegal activity — or use the Service to plan them.

We may investigate suspected violations, remove content, and suspend accounts. Serious violations by a student will be reported to their teacher or school.

7. Your content and who owns it

You own your work. Research plans, notes, project logs, datasets, writing, photographs, showcase submissions — everything you create in the Service ("Your Content") remains yours. Where a school's policy gives the school rights in student work, that arrangement is between you and your school; we do not claim ownership either way.

The permission you give us. To run the Service, we need a limited license. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, transmit, display, reformat, and create technical derivatives of Your Content solely in order to operate, secure, support, and improve the Service for you, your team, your class, and your school. This license exists for technical reasons — storing a file, showing it to your teammates, generating a thumbnail, sending text to our AI provider so a quiz can be made — and for nothing else.

It ends when your content does. The license terminates when you delete Your Content or your account, except for: (a) content you published publicly, which others may already have copied; (b) work you contributed to a team's shared project, which stays with the team as described in our Privacy Policy; and (c) copies in backups until they age out on the normal cycle.

Publishing is a separate, wider permission. If you set a project to public and a teacher approves it, you additionally grant us the right to display it in the public gallery and to allow the public to view it. See section 10.

We do not use Your Content to train AI models, and we do not license it to anyone who does.

Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions about the Service, we may use them freely and without owing you anything. Do not send us anything confidential as feedback.

We do not have to keep your content. We are not a backup service. Keep your own copies.

8. Uploading other people's material

You are responsible for what you upload. By uploading anything, you confirm that:

you have the right to upload it and to grant the license in section 7;
it does not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, or other rights;
it does not contain another person's personal information without their permission, and for another minor, without their parent's permission; and
any photograph of a person was taken and uploaded with that person's permission, and if they are a minor, their parent's.

About research papers. scienium lets you upload PDFs of papers so you can study them. Uploading a paper you obtained lawfully, for your own study, in a private team workspace, is the intended use. Do not upload a paper you do not have lawful access to, do not upload paywalled material you obtained improperly, and do not publish a paper's full text to the public gallery. If a rights holder asks us to remove material, we will.

9. Copyright complaints

If you believe material on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to hello@scienium.app (subject line: DMCA) containing:

your physical or electronic signature;
identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed;
identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it (a URL is best);
your address, telephone number, and email address;
a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.

We will remove or disable material in response to a valid notice, and we will notify the person who posted it, who may send a counter-notice. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

10. Publishing to the showcase

The showcase lets a team publish its project. Three things to understand:

A teacher approves it. A project set to "public" is submitted for review and appears in the gallery only after a teacher of the class approves that exact version. Editing an approved project sends it back for review.

Public is public and effectively permanent. Once a project is public, anyone can view it, quote it, screenshot it, and search engines may index it. Unpublishing removes it from our gallery; it does not recall copies other people already made.

We can take it down. We may remove, unpublish, or refuse to publish any project, with or without a report, at our discretion — including for a violation of section 6, a copyright complaint, a privacy concern, a safety concern, or a request from the student's school. We will tell the team when we do, unless the law prevents us.

Anyone may report a published project using the report link on its page.

11. AI-generated content

Parts of the Service generate content with a large language model: quizzes, explanations of sources, grading and feedback on explain-back answers, relevance checks, and the in-app AI assistant.

It can be wrong. Generated content may be inaccurate, incomplete, out-of-date, biased, or confidently mistaken about a paper you can read yourself. Grades and scores it produces are approximations, not authoritative assessments.

It is not advice. Nothing generated by the Service is medical, legal, psychological, financial, or safety advice. Health information in the Service is general reference material. If you have a medical question, ask a doctor.

Verify before you rely on it. Read the paper. Ask your teacher. Check the rulebook. Do not cite an AI summary as if it were the source.

We are not responsible for decisions you make based on generated content, to the fullest extent the law allows.

Ownership. As between you and us, we do not claim ownership of the output generated for you. Similar or identical output may be generated for other users, and generated output may not be protectable by copyright.

Do not put sensitive information into it. Not yours, not anyone else's.

12. Academic integrity and science-fair rules

scienium is a study tool, and using a tool is not the same as letting it do your work.

Your school's academic-integrity policy governs. If your teacher says AI assistance is not allowed on an assignment, this Service does not override that.
Science-fair rules are your responsibility. Competitions such as ISEF and its affiliated fairs have their own rules about AI use, human and vertebrate subjects, hazardous materials, required forms, and approvals. Any guidance, deadline, form list, or checklist shown in scienium is informational and may be incomplete or out of date. Always use the official rules from the competition itself. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any science-fair organization.
Do not fabricate data. Do not present generated or invented results as experimental findings.

Disqualification from a competition, a failing grade, or an academic-integrity finding is between you, your school, and the competition — not something we can be responsible for.

13. Real-world experiments and safety

scienium helps students plan and document research. Actual experimentation happens in the physical world, under the supervision of a school, a teacher, and where required an institutional or scientific review committee.

Nothing in the Service is a safety review, a risk assessment, an approval, or a substitute for adult supervision.
Do not attempt any procedure that is hazardous, that requires equipment or training you do not have, or that your school has not approved.
The Service is not designed to evaluate or approve research involving human subjects, vertebrate animals, hazardous biological agents, controlled substances, or hazardous chemicals. Those require review by qualified people under the rules that apply to you.
If you are ever unsure whether something is safe, stop and ask a teacher.

We are not responsible for injury, damage, or harm arising from physical experimentation, to the fullest extent the law allows. Schools and teachers retain full responsibility for supervising students.

14. The Battle Arena and virtual items

Knowledge points, currency, buildings, spells, trophies, leaderboard positions, and every other in-game item are a limited, revocable, non-transferable license to use game state within the Service. They are not property, they have no monetary value, and:

they cannot be purchased with real money today, and cannot be sold, traded, transferred, or redeemed for anything of value;
selling or trading accounts or items outside the Service is prohibited;
we may adjust, rebalance, reset, or remove them as we develop the game; and
when your account ends, they end with it, and you are owed nothing for them.

The Battle Arena matches teams within the same class. Play it as a game. Using it to harass classmates is a violation of section 6.

15. Our intellectual property

The Service — its software, design, pixel art, sprites, the Field Codex lessons and other written curriculum, the name scienium, and its logos — is owned by me or my licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Where contributors have worked on scienium, their contributions are licensed to me for this purpose.

We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service for its intended educational purpose while these Terms are in force. Everything not expressly granted is reserved. In particular, you may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of the Service or its content, or use our name or logos, without our written permission.

Teachers and schools may use the Service's content for classroom instruction with their own students.

16. Third-party content and services

The Service displays research papers, abstracts, citation data, patent records, and health explainers from public sources, and links to third-party websites.

That material belongs to its own authors and publishers, is subject to its own terms and licenses, and we make no representation about its accuracy, completeness, or availability. We are not responsible for third-party sites you reach through the Service. Availability of any third-party source may change or end without notice.

17. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and why, and is part of these Terms. Please read it — especially the sections on children, schools, and what happens to student writing sent to our AI provider.

18. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service at any time and may request deletion of your account as described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate an account, or restrict access to any feature, if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms, if your account creates a security or cost risk, if a school or parent asks us to, or if we are required to by law. Where the situation allows, we will warn you first and give you a chance to fix it; for serious violations, including anything that endangers another student, we may act immediately.

We may discontinue the Service. If we shut it down or end a school's pilot, we will give reasonable advance notice and a window to export work before data is deleted.

On termination: your license to use the Service ends; your right to publish ends; and sections 7 (the surviving licenses), 8, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 24 survive.

19. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

Without limiting that, we do not warrant that: the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; generated content will be accurate; results will meet your expectations; defects will be corrected; or that data will not be lost.

We are not an educational institution, an accreditation body, a science-fair organization, a medical provider, or a laboratory safety authority, and nothing in the Service should be treated as coming from one.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. In those states, the exclusions above apply only to the extent permitted, and you may have rights that these Terms cannot limit.

20. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

No indirect damages. Neither I nor anyone who contributes to or supplies the Service will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, lost work, loss of goodwill, or business interruption, arising out of or related to the Service — even if we were advised such damages were possible.

Cap. My total liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid me for the Service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars ($100).

What is not limited. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law, including liability for fraud, for fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or willful misconduct, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence. These limits do not apply to our obligations under our Privacy Policy regarding student data.

Allocation of risk. The disclaimers and limits in sections 19 and 20 are a fundamental part of the agreement between us and reflect that the Service is currently provided free of charge. They apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose.

Some states do not allow certain limitations of liability. In those states, the limits above apply only to the extent permitted.

21. Indemnification

This section does not apply to students under 18.

If you are an adult account holder, a school, a district, or another organization, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless me and anyone who contributes to the Service from any claim, damage, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from: (a) your violation of these Terms; (b) content you upload or publish; (c) your violation of any law or of anyone's rights; and, for schools, (d) a failure to obtain a consent or provide a notice that applicable law or your own policy required before students used the Service, and (e) the supervision of physical experimentation by your students.

We will notify you of any claim, let you control the defense with counsel reasonable to us, and cooperate with you at your expense. You may not settle any claim in a way that imposes an obligation on us without our written consent.

22. Disputes and governing law

Talk to us first. If you have a problem, email hello@scienium.app and describe it. Most disputes can be resolved this way, and we ask that you give us 30 days to try before starting a formal proceeding. We will do the same before starting one against you.

Governing law. These Terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, except that the Federal Arbitration Act and federal copyright and trademark law govern where they apply. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Where disputes are heard. The state and federal courts located in Santa Clara County, California have exclusive jurisdiction, and you and we consent to personal jurisdiction there. Nothing prevents either of us from seeking injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect intellectual property or data.

These Terms do not require arbitration and do not waive any right to participate in a class action.

Time limit. Any claim relating to the Service must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred, except where a longer period is required by law — including any claim by or on behalf of a minor, for which the period allowed by law applies.

Public entities. If you are a US public school district or other government entity, provisions of these Terms that conflict with the law governing you — including governing law, venue, and indemnity — apply only to the extent that law permits.

23. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. When we do, we will change the effective date and version above and post the new version at https://scienium.app/terms.

For a material change, we will give notice in the app and by email at least 30 days before it takes effect where practical. Changes apply going forward, not retroactively. If you do not agree to a change, stop using the Service and close your account before it takes effect; continued use after that date means you accept the updated Terms.

We will keep prior versions available on request at hello@scienium.app.

24. General terms

Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service, and replace any earlier understanding — except for a separate signed agreement with a school or district, which controls where it conflicts.

Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the rest stays in force.

No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. I may assign them to a company I form to operate scienium, or to someone who acquires it, subject to the student-data commitments in our Privacy Policy.

No third-party beneficiaries, except that a school on whose behalf an authorized representative accepted these Terms may enforce sections 3, 17, and 18.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including outages of the third-party providers the Service depends on.

Notices. We may notify you in the app, or by email to your account address. You may notify us at hello@scienium.app and at Rig Saini, 2841 Pruneridge Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95051.

Export and sanctions. You confirm that you are not located in, and are not acting on behalf of anyone in, a country or on a list subject to US embargo or sanctions.

Relationship. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship.

Headings are for convenience and do not affect interpretation. "Including" means "including without limitation".

25. Contact

Email: hello@scienium.app
Postal: Rig Saini, 2841 Pruneridge Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95051

Terms of Service