PutOut terms of service

Practical terms for using the PutOut Discord bot — not exhaustive legal boilerplate.

Last updated: 2026-07-21. Source of truth in-repo: docs/TERMS.md.

1. Who this is between

PutOut is a free, open-source Discord bot (MIT License) that sends bin/waste collection reminders. Anyone can self-host it. When you use a running instance, your agreement is with the operator who runs that instance (the Discord server host or account operator), not with the PutOut project authors. The authors provide the software; they do not run every deployment.

By registering with /i-putout (or otherwise using the bot’s commands), you accept these terms.

2. What PutOut is (and isn’t)

• A best-effort reminder service. It looks up publicly available collection schedules and pings you before collection day.
• Unofficial and independent. PutOut is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Discord, any municipality, council, or waste authority, or any schedule provider it queries.
• Not a system of record. It reflects what upstream schedule sources publish; it does not set or guarantee your actual collection days.

3. Accuracy — read this one

Collection data comes from third-party municipal and aggregator sources. It can be wrong, incomplete, out of date, delayed, or unavailable — because a source changed its API, published a holiday shift late, or was simply mistaken.

4. Acceptable use

Don’t:

• Abuse, overload, or attempt to disrupt the bot or the schedule sources it queries (e.g. scripted mass lookups).
• Use it to harass others, or register data for people who haven’t consented to the reminder.
• Attempt to break, reverse, or circumvent access controls on the bot or on any third-party service it uses.

One reasonable registration per user is the intent. Operators may rate-limit, suspend, or remove abusive accounts.

5. Your data & privacy

What PutOut stores and where location lookups go is described in the Privacy notice. You control your data with /putout-export (see it), /putout-clear (erase it), and /putout-privacy (summary).

6. Availability & changes

The service is provided “as is” and “as available.” An operator may change, suspend, or discontinue any instance at any time, and self-hosted instances vary in uptime and coverage. Region coverage changes as sources are added or dropped (when a source becomes unreliable it may be replaced by an ICS/manual fallback).

7. Third-party services

Using PutOut also means interacting with:

• Discord — your use of Discord is governed by Discord’s Terms of Service.
• Schedule sources — councils/aggregators whose public location endpoints are queried for dates. PutOut sends a location query (postcode/UPRN/street/ICS), not your Discord identity. See the Privacy notice for the list.

PutOut is not responsible for third-party services’ availability, accuracy, or their terms.

8. No warranty; limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, PutOut is provided without warranty of any kind, and neither the operator of an instance nor the project authors are liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from use of (or inability to use) the bot — including missed collections. This mirrors the warranty/liability terms of the MIT License under which the software is released.

9. Changes to these terms

These terms may change as the bot evolves. Material changes update the “Last updated” date above and this page. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated terms.

10. Contact

Reach the operator via the Discord server that runs the bot, or open an issue on the project’s GitHub repository.