User Agreement

1. Who We Are and What This Agreement Covers

Shuter Nexus ("the Platform", "we", "us") is an AI-powered educational platform operated by Shuter & Shooter Publishers (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in the Republic of South Africa, with its principal place of business at 45 Willowton Road, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, 3201.

By creating an account or using the Platform, you ("User") agree to this User Agreement and our Privacy Policy. If you are registering a school, accepting these terms means you are authorised to do so on behalf of that school.

2. Definitions

• Learner — a registered student using the Platform for educational purposes (Grades 1–12).
• Teacher — an educator registered to manage classes, assignments, and learner progress.
• School Administrator — an authorised representative of a registered school with administrative rights over that school's learners and teachers on the Platform.
• Competent Person — a parent, guardian, or other person legally authorised to consent on behalf of a child under 18.
• School — an educational institution registered on the Platform through Shuter Nexus's onboarding process.
• Individual User — a learner or teacher who accesses the Platform without a school account.
• AI Features — all AI-assisted tools, including the Siphesihle AI tutor, subject tutors, quiz generation, assignment marking assistance, and the Kwazi chatbot.

3. Account Types and Eligibility

You must provide accurate information when registering. Impersonating another person or providing false information will result in immediate account suspension.

Learners under 18 may not register with a personal email address as the primary account identifier without school or parental authorisation. Where a learner registers through a school registration code without providing an email address, the Platform generates a login username in the format firstname.surname.regcode. That username is the learner's sole login credential and must be kept safe.

4. School Accounts and the School–Learner Relationship

When a school registers on Shuter Nexus:

• The school is responsible for ensuring that parental or competent-person consent has been obtained for all learners under 18 who access the Platform through that school.
• The school may create, provision, manage, and deactivate learner and teacher accounts for educational purposes.
• Educational records generated through school-managed accounts — including AI conversations, quiz results, assignments, and progress data — are accessible to that school's authorised teachers and administrators for educational purposes only. They are not shared with other schools or unrelated third parties.
• Learners remain data subjects with full rights under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA"), exercisable by the learner or their competent person as applicable.

5. Acceptable Use

You may use Shuter Nexus only for lawful educational purposes. You must not:

• Upload, share, or generate content that is harmful, abusive, sexually explicit, discriminatory, defamatory, or unlawful.
• Attempt to bypass AI rate limits, manipulate AI outputs to produce harmful content, or use the Platform to generate answers for live examinations in violation of your school's assessment policy.
• Impersonate any person, school, or institution.
• Attempt unauthorised access to other users' accounts or data.
• Use the Platform to harvest, scrape, or bulk-export content, including publisher materials, lesson content, or assessments, for any purpose other than your own authorised educational use.
• Use Shuter Nexus content, including book chapters, assessments, or AI-generated explanations, to train third-party AI systems or feed external knowledge bases without our prior written permission.
• Upload malware, viruses, or any content designed to interfere with the Platform or other users.

We reserve the right to remove content, suspend accounts, or restrict features where we reasonably believe a violation has occurred, or where required by South African law, our AI service providers' acceptable use policies, or the rules of a registered school.

6. AI Features — What They Are and What They Are Not

Shuter Nexus's AI features are designed to assist and support learning. They are not a substitute for teacher judgement, professional advice, or official educational decisions.

You acknowledge and agree that:

• AI-generated explanations, feedback, quiz questions, and study guidance may occasionally be inaccurate. Always verify critical information against your official textbooks and your teacher's instruction.
• AI outputs are assistive tools only. Final grades, disciplinary decisions, promotion or progression decisions, and any other materially significant educational decision must be made by a qualified teacher or school administrator, not by AI alone.
• AI conversations may be reviewed by Shuter Nexus for safety, quality assurance, and platform improvement purposes, subject to our Privacy Policy.
• Daily AI usage is subject to fair-use limits. Individual learners are capped at a set number of AI messages per day (currently 20 for individual-tier and 100 for school-tier learners). Limits reset at midnight UTC. Schools may apply additional daily caps at school level.

The AI tutoring system on this platform is powered by Claude (Anthropic). Anthropic explicitly permits organisations serving minors to use their API with appropriate safety measures and disclosure in place, which we have implemented.

7. Intellectual Property

All platform code, the Shuter & Shooter book catalogue, lesson materials, assessments, graphics, and publisher content made available through the Platform are owned by or licensed to Shuter & Shooter Publishers (Pty) Ltd and remain so at all times.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to access and use Platform content for your own authorised educational purposes only. You may not copy, reproduce, redistribute, resell, or use Platform content for commercial purposes. You may not remove copyright notices from any content.

Content you upload to the Platform (assignments, submissions, voice notes, images) remains your property. By uploading it, you grant Shuter Nexus a limited licence to store, display, process, and secure that content solely to provide the service and comply with applicable law. We will not use your uploaded content to train AI models or for any purpose beyond delivering the service to you.

8. Fees and Subscriptions

During the current pilot phase, Shuter Nexus is provided to participating schools at agreed pilot terms. Individual features and free-tier access are available without charge for the duration of the pilot.

When commercial pricing applies, it will be communicated in advance. Schools will receive pricing, invoicing, renewal, and cancellation terms in a separate Service Agreement.

9. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or terminate your account, without prior notice where necessary, for:

• Breach of this Agreement.
• Safety risk to other users.
• Legal compliance requirements.
• Non-payment of agreed fees (school accounts only, with reasonable prior notice).
• Requirements imposed by our upstream AI service providers.

Schools will generally receive written notice and a reasonable opportunity to remedy a non-safety breach before termination. Accounts suspected of serious safety, legal, or abuse violations may be suspended immediately. On termination, your right to access the Platform ends. Retained data is handled according to our Privacy Policy.

10. Limitation of Liability

The Platform is provided on an "as available" basis. Shuter Nexus does not warrant uninterrupted availability or that AI outputs will always be accurate.

To the maximum extent permitted by South African law, Shuter & Shooter Publishers (Pty) Ltd's liability to you is limited to direct losses directly caused by our breach of this Agreement. We are not liable for AI inaccuracies where human review is required under clause 6, for decisions made by teachers or schools on the basis of AI outputs, or for losses arising from factors outside our reasonable control.

Nothing in this clause limits our liability for gross negligence, fraud, or wilful misconduct, or excludes any rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 or POPIA.

11. Governing Law and Disputes

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Any dispute arising from or related to this Agreement will be resolved in the courts of KwaZulu-Natal, unless the parties agree to refer the matter to mediation first.

12. Changes and Contact

We may update this Agreement as the Platform grows. Material changes will be communicated to registered users by email or in-platform notification at least 14 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

See also our Privacy Policy for how we handle your personal information.