Terms

Terms of service

Last updated 31 August 2026

Ratchet is operated by Deimos.MX. Using the service means accepting these terms. They are written to be read, and the section that matters most is the one about what we do not promise.

What the service is

Ratchet records decisions about side effects. You ask whether an action may be performed; we return a durable answer and keep a record of it.

Ratchet never performs the action. It holds no credentials for your vendors and has no access to your systems. Everything that reaches the outside world is done by your code, on your authority.

What we promise

• At-most-once initiation. For a given workspace, effect type, and idempotency key, at most one caller is told to execute at a time. This is enforced by a database constraint, not by application logic.
• A durable record. Decisions are recorded before they are returned.
• Honest unknowns. When a lease expires unreported, the effect is recorded as indeterminate. We will never guess it succeeded or failed.
• Tenant isolation. Every query is workspace-scoped. A lookup across workspaces returns a 404 and discloses nothing.

What we explicitly do not promise

Exactly-once execution. It is not achievable in a distributed system and we do not claim it. What we provide is at-most-once initiation. Where a vendor honours idempotency keys and you send the key we derive, the vendor refuses the duplicate — that is a compositional guarantee that holds only where the vendor supplies its half, and we tell you in each response whether it does.

That your action succeeded. We record what you report. We cannot observe your vendors, so a recorded outcome is your report, not our observation.

Uninterrupted availability. Ratchet sits in your critical path. Decide before integrating what your agent does when we are unreachable, and be aware that failing open re-admits the duplicates this service exists to prevent.

Your responsibilities

• Derive idempotency keys from the work itself. A key from a random value or a timestamp makes the gate useless, and no refund follows from that.
• Keep API keys secret. Anyone holding one can act as your workspace.
• Obey the decision returned. Only execute authorises action.
• Do not send us data you would not want stored — particularly in result and request_summary, which we keep verbatim.
• Use the service lawfully, and not to coordinate anything you could not do directly.

Billing

The metered unit is a gated effect: the first begin for a given effect type and idempotency key. Duplicate suppression, retries, reports, and reads are free. Plans and prices are on the pricing page.

Subscriptions renew monthly until cancelled, and cancelling stops future charges rather than refunding the current period. Prepaid credit is non-refundable once spent. Prices are in USD, exclusive of any tax you may owe.

External spend is never ours. Budget ceilings limit what your agents declare they will spend at third parties. We do not collect that money; we only count it, and only when you declare it.

Suspension and termination

You may stop using the service at any time and delete your workspace. We may suspend an account for non-payment, for abuse, or where continuing would break the law — and will tell you why. We will give reasonable notice before discontinuing the service, and you can export your data throughout.

Liability

The service is provided as is. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim is limited to the fees you paid us in the three months before it arose. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including the cost of an action performed twice, or of one that was refused and should not have been.

That limit is not a way to disclaim the product's purpose. If the gate fails to do what this page says it does, tell us — the receipts exist so you can prove it.

Changes

We will post material changes here with a new date, and email workspace owners before changes that reduce what you get.

Contact

support@ratchetgate.com · legal@ratchetgate.com · Privacy

These terms describe how the service actually behaves, verified against the code. They are not legal advice and have not been reviewed by a lawyer. Before relying on them commercially, have your own counsel read them.