Terms & Privacy

1. What Brightwater Compass is

Brightwater Compass is an AI assistant for Brightwater Academy. It answers questions about the school using content published on compasschat.org. It is free to use. It is built and operated by Solvetix LLC for Brightwater Academy.

2. AI limits — read this first

• Answers are generated by an AI model. They can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date.
• Brightwater Compass is not advice, and it is not an official school decision or announcement.
• Always confirm important information with the school before you act on it.
• For anything urgent, call the school office at 612-555-0142.
• School closings, medical matters, admissions decisions, and deadlines must be confirmed with the school.

3. Acceptable use

• Use Brightwater Compass for school questions only.
• Do not type personal, medical, or confidential details into the chat.
• Do not try to break, overload, or misuse the service.
• We may limit or block use that looks automated or abusive.

4. Your data

This section is the privacy notice for Brightwater Compass.

What Brightwater Compass does with what you type:

• Chat messages are sent to an AI model (gpt-oss-120b by OpenAI, or gpt-oss-20b when the first is busy) that runs on Groq's servers, to produce an answer. OpenAI does not receive your messages. When both of those models are busy, the message goes instead to GLM-5.3 Flash by Z.ai, which runs on Cloudflare Workers AI through Cloudflare AI Gateway; Z.ai does not receive your messages, Cloudflare does not use them to train AI models, and the gateway is set not to log or keep them. Depending on the question, short search queries may also go to the services in section 6 (for example weather, calendar, lunch, or ratings providers). We do not keep conversation records.
• Chat history is saved in your own browser only. Clearing your browser data deletes it. On a shared or school device, other people using the same browser profile may be able to see it until it is cleared.
• Failed questions. If the assistant cannot answer, it asks whether you want to send the question to Brightwater Academy and to our team. If you click "Yes, send it", the school sees the question in its Brightwater Compass dashboard, and our team gets the question, the searches it ran, and its answer. Until you click, this stays in your browser only; we do not keep a copy. The "Yes" button works for 24 hours. Contact info such as emails, phone numbers, and street addresses is redacted before anything is sent. Automatic redaction can miss some details, so please do not include names or contact info.
• Feedback. The text you type in the feedback box is sent to our team. We do not ask for your name or email. Do not include personal details about yourself or others. We automatically redact contact info such as emails, phone numbers, and street addresses before anything is shared, but redaction can miss some.
• Usage counters. A signed device id (see Cookies) is linked to usage counters used only to prevent abuse and to enforce rate limits.

How long we keep it (our data retention policy). We keep each kind of information only as long as we need it for the reason given, then delete it:

5. Cookies and browser storage

Brightwater Compass uses one cookie. It is strictly necessary, so no consent banner is shown.

Brightwater Compass also saves these items in your browser's own storage. They stay on your device until you clear your browser data:

• A copy of the device id. It is used when the cookie cannot reach us, for example when the chat is shown inside the school's website. It has the same purpose as the cookie and does not expire by itself.
• Your chat history (see section 4).
• A failed question you have not sent yet, so the "Yes, send it" button still works if you reload the page.
• Display settings: light or dark theme, and sidebar width.

We use no analytics, no advertising and no tracking cookies.

6. Services we rely on

7. Age and children's privacy

Brightwater Compass is intended for the students, parents, and staff of Brightwater Academy, including students under 13.

We do not ask for a name, email, or account to use Brightwater Compass. We collect only what section 4 lists: the text typed into the chat, which is sent to the AI model to make an answer and is not kept, and the random device cookie described in section 5, which exists solely to stop abuse and is never used to build a profile of any person. Please do not type personal details into the chat.

For students under 13, we rely on Brightwater Academy's authorization, given in its agreement with us. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a US law, and the Federal Trade Commission's guidance let a school give this consent on a parent's behalf for tools used only for a school purpose. Parents can ask the school what is collected, or ask us to delete it, at the address in section 11. We do not use any information from Brightwater Compass for advertising, profiling, or any purpose beyond answering school questions for Brightwater Academy.

8. Content and copyright

School content stays the property of Brightwater Academy. Third-party sources are quoted briefly and linked to their origin.

If you own content shown here and believe it infringes your copyright, contact us at the address in section 11 with: (1) identification of the copyrighted work, (2) identification of the material you want removed (URL or question and date), (3) your contact information, (4) a good-faith statement, and (5) a statement of accuracy under penalty of perjury. We review notices promptly, remove material where appropriate, and handle counter-notices and repeat-infringer termination under 17 U.S.C. section 512.

9. Liability

Brightwater Compass is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, Solvetix LLC is not liable for loss caused by reliance on an answer. Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited.

10. Accessibility

We aim to conform to WCAG 2.1 level AA. This statement is aspirational and is not a certification of conformance as of any audit date. If any part of this site is hard for you to use, contact us at the address in section 11 and we will fix it.

11. Who we are

• Operator: Solvetix LLC, a Missouri limited liability company, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
• Mailing address: [MAILING ADDRESS]
• Phone: [PHONE]
• Email: contact@compasschat.org
• Built for: Brightwater Academy, Alder Point, MN, USA

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, USA. Any dispute not covered by section 13 must be filed in a state or federal court located in St. Louis County, Missouri, and you agree to that location.

13. Dispute resolution — arbitration

Read this section. It affects your legal rights.

You and Solvetix LLC agree to resolve any dispute about this service through individual binding arbitration instead of in court, except that either side may always bring a qualifying claim in small claims court instead.

You and Solvetix LLC each give up the right to a jury trial and the right to bring or join a class action, class arbitration, or any other case brought on behalf of a group. An arbitrator cannot combine more than one person's claims into a single case.

The arbitration will be run by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, held in St. Louis County, Missouri, or by video or phone if the arbitrator agrees. Each side pays its own attorney's fees unless the arbitrator decides otherwise under those rules.

If any part of this arbitration section is found unenforceable, the rest of it still applies. The class-action waiver cannot be separated out: if a court finds the waiver unenforceable for a claim, that claim must go to court, not to arbitration.