Terms of Service

Last updated: November 6, 2026

These terms are the agreement between you and the team behind Vireo ("we", "us"), which operates Vireo at vireoworks.com.

1. Accepting these terms

By using Vireo you accept these terms. Before your first conversation you are shown a short disclaimer and asked to confirm you understand it; accepting it, and continuing to use the site, means you agree to what is set out here. If you do not agree, please close the tab and do not use the service.

Our Privacy Policy explains what happens to what you write. It is part of this agreement.

2. Who may use it

You must be 16 or over to use Vireo on your own. If you are under 16, use it only with a parent or guardian's knowledge and involvement. It is not intended for children under 13.

There is no age verification beyond the confirmation you give on the disclaimer screen. By continuing, you confirm that what you told us there is true.

3. What Vireo is

Vireo is a companion for prayer and reflection. You write to it in plain language about what is on your mind — a difficulty, a passage of Scripture, a habit of prayer that has gone quiet, something you are grateful for — and a large language model, Claude, made by Anthropic, writes back. It can help you find words, sit with a question, point you toward Scripture or the Catechism, or suggest a prayer you might then pray yourself. It is a text interface to a language model, running independently, with nobody on the other end.

4. What Vireo is not

This section is the most important one, and it is written out at length on purpose.

It is not a pastor or a priest, and there is no sacrament or ordinance here. No pastor or priest is involved at any point. Vireo cannot hear your confession, cannot forgive sins, and cannot grant absolution. Nothing it says carries pastoral, priestly, or sacramental authority, and nothing it says substitutes for any sacrament or ordinance of any church. If what you need is confession or pastoral care, go to your pastor or priest.

It is not a channel to God. It does not relay anything to God or from God. It has no access to the divine and makes no claim to any. Whatever prayer happens while you use it is yours, not the software's.

No spiritual direction relationship is formed. Spiritual direction is a relationship between people, entered into deliberately, with someone who knows you and is accountable for how they accompany you. Using this site creates none of that. The model does not know you, does not remember you between conversations, and is not accompanying anyone.

No privilege or confidentiality attaches to anything you write. There is no seal of confession here, no clergy-penitent privilege, and no professional confidentiality of any kind. What you send is processed by a third-party AI provider so that a reply can be produced. Please read the Privacy Policy before writing anything you would not want handled that way.

It is not medical, psychological, or therapeutic care. Vireo is not a therapist, a counselor, a psychiatrist, or a doctor. It does not diagnose, does not treat, and does not give medical advice. It cannot tell you whether what you are experiencing is depression, scrupulosity, addiction, grief, or anything else, and you should not use it to find out. If you are struggling with your mental or physical health, please see a professional.

It is not legal advice. Nothing on this site or in a conversation with it is legal advice, and nothing about your use of it creates a lawyer-client relationship.

No professional relationship of any kind is formed by using this service. Not pastoral, not clinical, not legal, not fiduciary. There is no duty of care of the sort a professional owes a client, because there is no professional here.

5. No church endorsement or affiliation

Vireo is an independent project. It is not endorsed by, affiliated with, approved by, or answerable to any church, denomination, convention, association, diocese, congregation, or religious order.

Nobody has reviewed its output for doctrinal accuracy on behalf of any church or church authority. When it describes what a tradition teaches it is doing its best to describe that teaching accurately; it is not speaking with any church's authority, and it has none.

Any organizations, helplines, or resources linked from this site have no relationship with it and have not endorsed it.

6. The output can be wrong

Vireo is written by a language model, and language models get things wrong. It can misquote Scripture, misattribute a saint or a reformer, garble a catechism or a confession, blur a distinction that matters, or state something with complete confidence that the Church does not in fact hold. It can also be wrong about ordinary facts.

Treat what it says as a starting point for your own prayer and reading, not as an answer. Where the answer matters — a question of doctrine, a moral question you are actually deciding, anything touching the sacraments or ordinances — verify it with your pastor or priest, your church, or another competent authority, and with Scripture and the primary texts themselves. You are responsible for what you do with what it says.

7. In a crisis

Vireo is not an emergency service and is not equipped to help in one. It cannot call anyone, alert anyone, or intervene.

If you are in danger, or thinking of harming yourself or someone else, please contact your local emergency services or one of the crisis lines listed at the foot of every page on this site. Those numbers reach people who can actually help. Please use them rather than this.

8. Acceptable use

Use Vireo as it is meant to be used: for your own prayer and reflection. Do not:

• try to elicit content that is harmful, abusive, hateful, sexual, or illegal, or that is designed to hurt someone;
• try to manipulate the model into presenting itself as a pastor or a priest, offering absolution or pronouncing forgiveness, claiming to speak for any church, or claiming to relay messages to or from God;
• use it in place of professional help you need — medical, psychiatric, therapeutic, or legal;
• submit other people's personal information, or details about a third party they would not want processed;
• automate access: no scripting, scraping, bulk requests, or circumventing the rate limit or the free allowance;
• share a subscriber key publicly, or sell or give it to people outside your household;
• attempt to probe, overload, disrupt, or reverse-engineer the site or the systems behind it;
• resell access, wrap the service in your own product, or present it as something you operate.

We may limit or block access if the service is being used this way.

9. Availability

The service is provided as-is, whether you use the free allowance or subscribe. It may be slow, unavailable, changed, or discontinued at any time, with or without notice. Requests are rate limited. We do not promise that it will be available when you want it, or that a conversation will finish successfully.

10. The free allowance and subscriptions

Free use. Without a subscription you may ask a limited number of questions each day. The number is shown next to the question box. The count resets at midnight UTC, is kept per network address, and only answered questions count against it. We may change the free allowance.

Subscribing. A subscription gives unlimited questions for as long as it is active. It costs the price shown next to the subscribe button and at checkout — at the time of writing, US$0.99 a week; the checkout page shows the final amount, including any tax — billed every week in advance by Stripe, and it renews automatically every week until you cancel. We email you its terms and how to cancel when it starts.

First-month offer. From time to time we may offer new subscribers a discount on their first month, such as 50% off, in exchange for leaving an email address. When an offer applies, the checkout page shows the discounted amount before you pay. The discount covers the first monthly payment only; after that the subscription renews at the normal price until you cancel. The discount buys unlimited questions only: the full report of the Bible character quiz comes with a subscription at the normal price, not with a discounted one. An offer is for a first subscription and can be used once per email address. It has no cash value and may be changed or withdrawn at any time without affecting a subscription that has already started. Leaving your email address is optional, and the Privacy Policy explains what happens to it.

Canceling. You can cancel at any time from the billing page linked on the Pricing page. You can also reply to any email we have sent about it, and we will cancel it for you. Canceling stops future charges; your access continues until the end of the week you have already paid for, and then ends. There is nothing else to close.

Refunds. You can cancel at any time from the billing page. Canceling stops future payments, and you keep unlimited questions until the end of the period you have already paid for. If something has gone wrong with a charge, write to us and we will put it right. Nothing in these terms affects any rights you have under the consumer law of the place where you live, including any right to cancel a contract made at a distance.

Price changes. If the price changes, existing subscribers will be told at least 30 days before the change applies to them, and can cancel before it does.

Your key. There is no account. Your subscription is attached to a private key kept in your browser, and anyone who has the key can use your subscription, so keep it private. If you lose it, write to us from the email address you paid with; once we have checked it against Stripe we will issue a replacement and the old key will stop working.

Your quiz report (one-time purchase). The result of the Bible character quiz is free. A full report (the strengths and growth edge you share with your character, passages for what weighs on you, and a seven-day reading plan) can be bought once, for the price shown on the quiz before you pay; the checkout page shows the final amount, including any tax. It is a one-time payment, not a subscription: nothing renews and nothing more is charged. The report is shown as soon as payment completes, and a copy is emailed to the address you gave. If it is not what you hoped for, reply to that email within 14 days and we will refund you in full, no questions asked. The quiz and the report are for reflection and fun: a character match is not a judgment about you, your faith, or your standing before God, and it does not buy any spiritual good.

Trial of Vireo Unlimited. Where it is offered (at present, to people who have just bought their quiz report, and in the chat once the day's free questions are used up), you can try a subscription for 7 days for a small fee charged when you start; the amount is shown next to the button and on the checkout page before you agree. Unless you cancel before the 7 days are up, the subscription then renews automatically at the normal monthly price, shown at the same time, every month until you cancel. Cancelling during the trial stops any further charge; the trial fee itself is not refunded. We email you the terms when the trial starts, and a reminder a few days before it ends. You can cancel from the billing page linked on your account page, or by replying to either email. A trial is available once per email address.

What a subscription is for. It pays for the cost of running a piece of software — each answer is produced by a language model, and each one costs money. It buys more questions to that software, and, at the normal price, the full report of the Bible character quiz, and nothing else. It does not buy prayer, a Mass, a blessing, an indulgence, or any spiritual good, and it does not change what the companion is or what it will say.

Payment processing. Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. and its affiliates under Stripe's own terms. We never see or store your card details.

11. Your words

You keep whatever you write. We claim no ownership of it, no license over it beyond what is technically required to send it to the model and stream a reply back to you, and no right to use it for anything else. We do not store it, so we could not use it even if we wanted to.

The site itself — its text, design, and code — belongs to us, and these terms give you no rights over it.

12. No warranty

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.

In plain terms: we do not promise the service will be accurate, complete, uninterrupted, doctrinally sound, or suitable for any particular purpose, including any spiritual or pastoral purpose.

13. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE TEAM BEHIND VIREO IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR SPECIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE.

This includes reliance on anything the model says, including anything it says about what any church teaches. Our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or nothing if you used only the free allowance.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limits. Where that is so, these limits apply only as far as the law allows. Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

14. Indemnity

If your use of the service in breach of these terms leads to a claim against us, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and legal costs arising from it, to the extent the law permits.

15. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. The current version always lives at this address, with the date it was last updated at the top. If we make a significant change we will say so plainly rather than quietly reword the page. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept the new terms.

16. Ending your use

There is no account to close. If you subscribe, cancel from the billing page, as described in section 10. You can stop using the site at any time by closing the tab; clearing site data for vireoworks.com removes the conversation and the record of your disclaimer acceptance from your browser. We may suspend or block access, or withdraw the service entirely, at any time.

17. General

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we have not given it up. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about the service.

18. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the country where the operator is established, and its courts have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. If you use the service as a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory laws of the country where you live.

19. Who operates this, and how to reach us

Vireo is operated by the team behind Vireo.

Questions about these terms, or about the service: chris@vireoworks.com.