1. Acceptance of Terms

By creating an account on Road Mates, accessing the platform, or using any feature of the Road Mates service (collectively, the "Service"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms") and our Privacy Policy (set out below). If you do not agree to all of these Terms, you must not use the Service.

These Terms constitute a legally binding agreement between you ("User", "you") and Road Mates ("Road Mates", "we", "us", "our"). By continuing to use the Service after changes are posted, you accept the revised Terms.

2. Description of Service

Road Mates is a social community platform designed to connect individuals who are working toward meaningful personal and professional goals. The Service allows users to articulate their goals, map out phases of progress, share bottlenecks and solutions, and be matched with peers on comparable journeys — so no one has to grind in isolation.

Specific features of the Service include, without limitation: goal setting and phase-based progress tracking; peer discovery and AI-assisted matching; a community feed for sharing updates, wins, and setbacks; direct messaging between matched users; user profiles; bookmarks; and a Creator Studio for composing rich posts.

Road Mates reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time, with or without notice. We are not liable to you or any third party for any such modification, suspension, or discontinuation.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. By using Road Mates, you represent and warrant that you meet this minimum age requirement. If you are between 13 and 18 years old (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher), you represent that your parent or legal guardian has reviewed and agreed to these Terms on your behalf.

Road Mates does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that a user is under 13, we will terminate that account and delete the associated data promptly.

The Service is intended for individual, non-commercial personal use. Use of the Service on behalf of a corporation, partnership, or other legal entity requires separate written authorization from Road Mates.

4. User Accounts & Security

To access most features of the Service, you must register for an account. You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information during registration and to keep that information up to date at all times.

• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials.
• You are solely responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, whether or not you authorized it.
• You must notify us immediately at the contact address below if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.
• You may not create more than one account per person, use another person's account, or transfer your account to any third party.
• You may not use a username that is the name of another person with the intent to impersonate that person, or a name that is offensive, vulgar, or obscene.

Road Mates uses Supabase for authentication. Passwords are never stored in plaintext. We strongly recommend using a unique, strong password and enabling any available two-factor authentication.

5. User-Generated Content

5.1 Ownership

You retain full ownership of all content you submit, post, or display on or through the Service, including posts, goal descriptions, phase updates, roadmaps, images, and messages (collectively, "User Content"). Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of your User Content to Road Mates.

5.2 License to Road Mates

By submitting User Content, you grant Road Mates a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform your User Content in connection with operating and improving the Service, including for AI matching, recommendations, feed algorithms, and promotional material describing the platform (e.g., "what our users are building"). This license is limited to the purposes of providing and improving the Service and does not permit Road Mates to sell your content to third parties.

This license ends when you delete your User Content or your account, except to the extent your content has been shared with others who have not deleted it, or where retention is required for legal compliance.

5.3 Your Responsibility

You represent and warrant that: (a) you own or have the necessary rights to all User Content you submit; (b) your User Content does not violate any third party's intellectual property rights, privacy rights, or any applicable law; and (c) your User Content complies with these Terms.

Road Mates does not pre-screen User Content, but reserves the right (not the obligation) to review, remove, or refuse to display any User Content that we determine, in our sole discretion, violates these Terms or is otherwise objectionable.

6. Prohibited Content & Conduct

You agree not to use the Service to post, transmit, or otherwise make available any content or engage in any conduct that:

• Is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another's privacy, or tortious.
• Constitutes spam, unsolicited bulk messages, or commercial solicitation not approved by Road Mates.
• Impersonates any person or entity, or falsely states or misrepresents your affiliation with any person or entity.
• Reveals personally identifiable information about another person without their explicit consent (“doxxing”), including but not limited to home addresses, phone numbers, employer details, or financial information.
• Contains sexual content involving minors.
• Promotes, glorifies, or facilitates violence, self-harm, suicide, or terrorism.
• Constitutes hate speech targeting individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or age.
• Infringes or misappropriates any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary right.
• Contains software viruses, malware, or any code designed to interfere with or disrupt the Service.
• Attempts to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Service, other accounts, or related systems.
• Scrapes, crawls, or uses automated means to access the Service without written permission from Road Mates.
• Manipulates or attempts to manipulate metrics, feed rankings, or matching algorithms through artificial means.
• Facilitates or encourages any of the foregoing.

Violations may result in immediate suspension or permanent termination of your account, removal of content, and referral to law enforcement where appropriate.

7. Intellectual Property

The Service and all of its original content (excluding User Content), features, and functionality — including but not limited to the Road Mates name and wordmark, logo, interface design, code, algorithms, and underlying infrastructure — are and remain the exclusive property of Road Mates and its licensors, protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, and other intellectual property laws.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, Road Mates grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service for your personal, non-commercial purposes. This license does not include any right to: reproduce, distribute, or modify any part of the Service; create derivative works; reverse-engineer any aspect of the Service; or use the Service in a way that competes with Road Mates.

If you believe that your copyrighted work has been copied or reproduced in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please contact us at the address below with a description of the work and the allegedly infringing material.

8. Privacy

Your privacy matters to us. Our collection, use, and disclosure of personal information is governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference and set out in full below. By using the Service, you consent to the collection and use of information as described in the Privacy Policy.

9. Third-Party Services

Road Mates integrates with the following third-party service providers to deliver core functionality. By using the Service, you acknowledge that your data may be processed by these providers in accordance with their own privacy policies:

• Supabase (supabase.com) — Authentication, PostgreSQL database, and file storage. Supabase processes your account credentials and User Content on our behalf.
• OpenAI (openai.com) — AI-powered features including goal-phase generation and peer matching via text embeddings. Anonymized or pseudonymized goal text may be sent to OpenAI's API.
• Resend (resend.com) — Transactional email delivery, including direct message notifications, account alerts, and password reset emails.
• PostHog (posthog.com) — Product analytics and event tracking to help us understand how the Service is used and improve the experience. Analytics are collected in a pseudonymous manner.
• Vercel (vercel.com) — Cloud hosting and CDN infrastructure. Vercel processes request logs and may store edge-cached content.

Road Mates is not responsible for the practices of these third parties. We recommend reviewing their respective privacy policies. We do not authorize these providers to use your data for their own marketing or advertising purposes beyond what is described above.

10. Disclaimers & Limitation of Liability

10.1 "As-Is" Disclaimer

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ROAD MATES EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. ROAD MATES DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, SECURE, OR FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.

10.2 No Guarantee of Results

Road Mates does not guarantee that peer matching, AI-generated phases, or any other feature will lead to any particular personal, professional, or financial outcome. The Service is a tool for connection and reflection — results depend entirely on your own effort and circumstances.

10.3 Cap on Damages

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL ROAD MATES, ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS OR REVENUES, WHETHER INCURRED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, OR ANY LOSS OF DATA, USE, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO: (A) YOUR ACCESS TO OR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO ACCESS OR USE) THE SERVICE; (B) ANY CONDUCT OR CONTENT OF ANY THIRD PARTY ON THE SERVICE; OR (C) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS, USE, OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR CONTENT.

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, ROAD MATES'S TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO ROAD MATES (IF ANY) IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS (USD $100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain warranties or liability. To the extent such limitations are prohibited by applicable law, they will not apply to you.

11. Termination

Road Mates may suspend or permanently terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without notice, for any reason, including if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms or if continued access poses a risk to other users or the platform.

You may terminate your account at any time by using the account deletion feature in Settings or by contacting us. Upon termination, your right to use the Service ceases immediately. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, and 13) will survive.

Termination does not limit any of Road Mates's other rights or remedies at law or in equity.

12. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of [JURISDICTION TBD], without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions.

Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Service shall first be submitted to good-faith informal negotiation. If the dispute is not resolved within 30 days of written notice, the parties agree to resolve the dispute through binding arbitration or, where arbitration is not permitted, in the courts of [JURISDICTION TBD].

You waive any right to participate in a class-action lawsuit or class-wide arbitration to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

Note to users in the European Union: nothing in these Terms limits your rights under applicable EU consumer protection law, including the right to bring claims before the courts of your country of residence or to use alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.

13. Changes to Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes to our practices, the Service, or applicable law. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, where practicable, notify you via email or an in-app notice.

Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the new Terms, you must stop using the Service.

14. Contact

If you have questions, concerns, or requests relating to these Terms, please contact us at:

This Privacy Policy explains how Road Mates collects, uses, shares, and protects personal information about you when you use the Service. It is incorporated into our Terms of Service above. By using Road Mates, you agree to the data practices described here.

1. What Data We Collect

1.1 Account & Profile Data

• Email address — used for authentication and transactional notifications.
• Username and display name — used to identify you on the platform.
• Date of birth — used to verify minimum age eligibility.
• Gender (optional) — used only if you choose to provide it, for profile display.
• Profile photo or avatar (optional) — stored in Supabase Storage.
• "I want to become ___" goal statement — the core of your Road Mates identity, used for matching and feed personalization.

1.2 User Content & Activity Data

• Posts, updates, phase entries, bottleneck logs, and roadmap data you create.
• Direct messages you exchange with matched peers.
• Bookmarks and reactions.
• Read-count signals (how many times your guides have been read by peers).

1.3 Technical & Usage Data

• IP address and approximate geographic location (country/region level).
• Device type, browser type and version, operating system.
• Pages visited, features used, and time spent (via PostHog analytics).
• Error logs and crash reports to diagnose bugs.
• Referral source (how you found Road Mates).

1.4 AI-Derived Data

• Vector embeddings derived from your goal text, used exclusively for peer matching within Road Mates. Raw goal text is sent to OpenAI's API to generate these embeddings.
• AI-generated phase suggestions based on your stated goal.

2. How We Use Your Data

• Providing and operating the Service — authentication, data storage, feed rendering, messaging.
• Personalization — tailoring your feed, peer recommendations, and discovery to your current phase and goal.
• AI peer matching — comparing your goal embeddings with those of other users to surface relevant peers.
• Notifications — sending transactional emails (DM alerts, weekly digests, account security alerts) via Resend.
• Product improvement — analysing anonymized usage patterns (via PostHog) to understand which features are valuable, diagnose issues, and plan new features.
• Safety and trust — detecting prohibited conduct, investigating abuse reports, enforcing these Terms.
• Legal compliance — meeting our obligations under applicable law, responding to lawful requests from authorities.

AI features.When you create a goal, write a post, or use an AI-assisted feature (roadmap generation, content classification, the “I’m Lost” coach, or peer-matching embeddings), the relevant text you provide is sent to OpenAI to generate a response or a search embedding. OpenAI processes this as our service provider under a Data Processing Agreement. We do not use your content to train AI models, and OpenAI does not use data submitted through its API to train its models by default. OpenAI may retain API data for a limited period (up to approximately 30 days) to monitor for misuse, after which it is deleted in the ordinary course — except where a longer period is required by law or court order. As of 2026, OpenAI is subject to a court preservation order arising from litigation in the United States that has required it to retain certain data beyond its standard schedule; we do not control these legal retention requirements. We send only the minimum text necessary for a feature to work, and we never send your password or payment information to any AI provider.

3. Data Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to any third party for their own marketing or commercial purposes, ever. We share data only in the following limited circumstances:

• With service providers acting as our data processors (Supabase, OpenAI, Resend, PostHog, Vercel) solely to the extent necessary for them to provide services to us, under contractual obligations of confidentiality and data protection.
• With other Road Mates users, to the extent you have chosen to make content public (e.g., public posts appear on the feed; your profile is visible to matched peers).
• In response to valid legal process — a court order, subpoena, or other lawful government request — after reasonable steps to notify you where permitted.
• To protect the rights, property, or safety of Road Mates, our users, or the public, including sharing information with law enforcement to investigate fraud or abuse.
• In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets involving Road Mates, provided the acquiring entity agrees to respect this Privacy Policy.

Our sub-processors. We use the following service providers, each under a Data Processing Agreement and (for transfers outside the EEA) Standard Contractual Clauses:

• Supabase — database, authentication, file storage, and realtime. Data: account data, profiles, posts, direct messages, embeddings. Location: European Union (Ireland).
• Vercel — application hosting, serverless functions, and content delivery. Data: HTTP requests, IP address, request logs. Location: global edge; compute in the United States.
• OpenAI — AI features (roadmap generation, content classification, the coach, and search embeddings). Data: the text you submit to those features. Location: United States.
• Resend — transactional email (notification messages). Data: recipient email address and message content. Location: United States.
• PostHog — product analytics, only after you consent. Data: usage events, device/browser, pseudonymous identifiers. Location: European Union (Frankfurt) or United States.
• Cloudflare — DNS, content delivery, and security/DDoS protection. Data: IP address and request metadata. Location: global edge.

4. Cookies & Local Storage

Road Mates uses cookies and browser localStorage solely for session management and authentication. Specifically:

• Session cookies — set by Supabase SSR to maintain your authenticated session across requests. These are HttpOnly, Secure, and expire when you log out or the session times out.
• PostHog analytics cookies — a pseudonymous identifier used to stitch together your product usage events into a single session. No personally identifiable information is stored in this cookie.
• No third-party advertising cookies are set by Road Mates.

You may disable cookies in your browser settings. Doing so will prevent you from logging in or using authenticated features of the Service.

5. Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. Specific retention periods:

• Account, profile, and User Content (posts, messages, roadmaps) — retained for the lifetime of your account. When you delete your account, this data is deleted immediately and permanently from our live systems, including your uploaded files; we do not keep a recovery copy in the live database. Content you shared with other users (for example a message you sent) may remain in that recipient's view.
• Encrypted backups — residual copies of deleted data may persist in our encrypted, access-controlled database backups for up to 30 days, after which they are overwritten in the ordinary backup rotation.
• Analytics events — retained for up to 24 months in PostHog, then automatically purged.
• Server access logs — retained for up to 90 days for security and debugging purposes.
• Legal hold — data subject to a legal hold or ongoing investigation may be retained for longer as required by law.

6. Your Rights

Depending on your country of residence, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

• Access — request a copy of all personal data we hold about you.
• Correction — request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Deletion (“right to be forgotten”) — request deletion of your account and associated personal data.
• Data portability — request an export of your data in a machine-readable format (JSON).
• Restriction of processing — request that we pause processing your data in certain circumstances.
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interest.
• Withdrawal of consent — where processing is based on your consent, withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at hello@roadmates.co. We will respond within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity before processing your request.

You may also delete your account directly from Settings at any time, which initiates the deletion process described above.

7. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13 years of age, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 13, we will promptly delete it and terminate the associated account.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child under 13 has created a Road Mates account, please contact us immediately at hello@roadmates.co.

8. Security

We use industry-standard technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures include TLS encryption for data in transit, encrypted storage of passwords, row-level security (RLS) policies in our database, and regular security reviews.

No method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security and are not liable for unauthorized access due to factors beyond our reasonable control. If you believe your account security has been compromised, contact us immediately.

9. International Transfers

Where your data is stored. Your account data, profile, posts, and direct messages are stored in the European Union (Ireland, eu-west-1)on database infrastructure provided by Supabase. To operate the Service we also rely on trusted sub-processors that may process limited data in the United States and other countries — including Vercel (hosting), OpenAI (AI features), Resend (email), PostHog (analytics), and Cloudflare (network security). See “How We Use Your Data” for the full sub-processor list and locations.

Transfers outside the EEA.Because some of these providers, and some of our own administrative and support access, are located outside the European Economic Area — including the United States and other countries that the European Commission has not recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection — your personal data may be transferred to and accessed from those countries. Where we transfer personal data outside the EEA or UK we rely on appropriate safeguards, including the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses with our processors, together with technical and organisational measures (access controls, encryption in transit and at rest, and data minimisation). Administrative access from outside the EEA is limited to authorised personnel and to what is necessary to operate and support the Service.

10. Privacy Contact

For any privacy-related questions, data subject requests, or to report a concern about our data practices, contact our Privacy team at:

This page contains both our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy. Both documents were last updated on May 24, 2026. Jurisdiction placeholder ([JURISDICTION TBD]) will be replaced when Road Mates formally incorporates or establishes a registered legal presence.