Builder Agreement

Voshi is a service of MyEducator, LLC ("MyEducator", "we"). This is the agreement between you and MyEducator when you build a tool on Voshi. You accept it when you create a builder account, and it covers every tool you build, whether Voshi runs it or your own server does. The Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are part of it.

We see you as a partner in providing educational resources. It is our shared responsibility to meet the expectations and requirements of modern universities. Great care has been taken to provide an API that enables functionality for your tools while upholding security, privacy, accessibility, and uptime standards.

Contact us if you need something beyond the Voshi API. We'll work with you to figure out the correct ways to add functionality within the educational standards. Please do not try to work around the Voshi API! Doing so not only your tool placements, but it could jeopardize the entire Voshi ecosystem as an approved resource provider. It is strictly against this agreement.

1. Your tool is yours

You own what you build, and you can take it with you. The code, text, images, and media in your tool remain yours. You can download the code at any time and leave Voshi whenever you choose. The license you give us below is not exclusive: you may publish the same tool elsewhere. Voshi is not your backup; keep your own copy of your code and content.

You are responsible for everything in it. You confirm that you hold the rights to all of it: your own work, material you licensed, libraries you included, and anything an AI generated for you. Keep records of the licenses and permissions for material others created, and show them to us when a school asks. Copyright claims about your tool are yours to answer. If someone tells us your tool uses their work without permission, we pass the claim to you, and you work with us to resolve it. At our discretion, we may take down the content or tool while that happens.

You give us the license we need to run it. So that Voshi can publish your tool, you grant MyEducator a non-exclusive license to host, copy, run, display, and distribute it through Voshi in your courses and every course that adopts it, and to review it, including with automated and AI-assisted tools. We may update the platform pieces your tool runs on, such as the loader and the Voshi client library, and we may patch or disable a tool to close a security hole, telling you afterward. The license lasts as long as your tool is on Voshi, plus the grace period in section 12. We may show your tool's name, description, and screenshots, and your name or your organization's as its builder, in the Voshi catalog and in our own marketing.

The account that holds a tool owns it, as far as Voshi is concerned. Accounts can be shared, and teams change. We take instructions about a tool from the account that holds it. If the people behind a tool disagree about who owns it, that is yours to settle, and we may freeze the tool until you do. You may transfer a tool to another account with our help.

2. What a tool may be

A tool teaches something a school would teach, in a way a school would be comfortable placing. Tools are for education: the subjects taught at universities, colleges, and in professional training, presented in good taste. A tool must not:

• contain hate speech, or harass, demean, or discriminate against anyone;
• defame anyone, or violate anyone's privacy or publicity rights;
• contain content that would be seen as explicit by universities, or content whose purpose is to shock rather than to teach;
• break the law, or help someone else break it;
• contain malicious code, work around the Voshi API, or try to reach data, accounts, or systems it has not been given;
• mislead users about what it does, who made it, or what it costs.

A simple test: if a tool would embarrass or harm the instructor who placed it, the school that approved it, or the students who use it, the tool does not belong on Voshi.

3. Where tools run and who may use them

Tools are used by learners who reach them through their school's LMS. Voshi serves universities, colleges, schools, and corporate training programs. Students reach a tool only by launching it from a course in their institution's learning management system, signed in by that institution through LTI 1.3. A tool must not offer its learners an external login unless approved by Voshi. Tools must not be distributed to the general public.

Voshi is primarily built for use in higher education. Tools are for learners aged 13 and older unless we agree otherwise in writing.

4. Student data

Student data belongs to the student and their school, and it stays inside Voshi. Information about students reaches Voshi from an institution's LMS, and we handle it on the institution's behalf as a school official under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), as the Privacy Policy describes. Your tool works under our instructions, and while we handle most of the work here, you must abide by the same rules, along with whatever the school, its state, or its country adds. The requirements page lists the main ones; Voshi carries them so that you can follow the rules below and be covered.

Unless otherwise agreed with Voshi, your tool must conform to the following:

• Names and emails appear only through Voshi. A student's name or email reaches the screen only through the <voshi-member> element. Your tool never accesses, stores, logs, copies, or sends them anywhere. To your code, a student is a Voshi member id and nothing more.
• Voshi data stores. Everything your tool keeps is saved to Voshi using the Storage API. You must not store data in your own database, cache, analytics service, or other data storage service.
• Voshi file uploads. All file uploads related to your tool are uploaded to Voshi via the Files API. You must not upload files to an external server, S3 bucket, or other location beyond Voshi.
• Nothing leaves without approval. Student data goes to an outside service only through an external connection approved under section 5, and never to train an AI model.
• For the course, and only the course. Data your tool collects is used to run the tool for that course and for no other purpose.

When your tool is removed or you leave Voshi, you take your code. Student data stays with Voshi and the institution, and we handle it as the Privacy Policy describes.

5. External connections

Your tool talks only to the outside services you declare and we approve. Every outside site your tool reaches is listed in its voshi.json, with the reason it is needed. We review the list with each version, and your tool uses each connection only for the approved purpose. Changing a connection, or what it is used for, means a new review.

An AI provider is an external connection like any other: declared, approved, sent member ids rather than names, and never allowed to train on student data. Schools increasingly ask what AI a tool uses and what it is sent, and we answer from your declaration.

6. Contacting instructors and students

Course members are reached through the Voshi Notifications API, and in no other way. Your tool may send messages through the Notifications API, within its limits and for the reason approved with the version. It may not collect contact details, email or message course members outside Voshi, or market to them.

7. Review and publishing

Every version you share is reviewed before anyone else can use it. When you publish a version for instructors beyond your own courses, we review it for security, privacy, accessibility, content, and this agreement, and it becomes available when we approve it. We review in the order received and make no promise about how long a review takes. We may review a published version again at any time.

The exception is your own courses: a course you teach, or one taught by an instructor who shares an account with you. Those courses are already yours, so you may place any version in them without waiting for review. That is also how you test a tool with real students before sharing it.

A shared tool is kept working. Browsers, LMSes, and the Voshi client change, and you keep your tool working as they do. Answer the support questions we forward within a few business days. We may deprecate a version that no longer works, and we tell you when we do.

8. Accessibility

A shared tool works for every student, including those who use assistive technology. Before we publish a version, it meets WCAG 2.1 AA: everything reachable by keyboard, readable by a screen reader, with sufficient contrast and captions where there is media. You keep it there as the tool changes. We may hold a version or ask for fixes, and we may move the standard to WCAG 2.2 AA with notice.

Schools sometimes ask for more than the standard, for a particular student or under their own policy. When a request is reasonable, you work with us to meet it. Our own accessibility documents cover the Voshi platform; your tool's content is yours to make conform.

9. Free use

Voshi is free as long as no one pays for your tool. Free use of the system is a service provided by Voshi and is at its discretion. Building a tool, testing it in your own courses, and sharing it with others is free—within reasonable use—as long as no one is charged for the tool or for anything it requires. If a tool accompanies a paid textbook or other product sold elsewhere, it does not qualify for free use in Voshi.

We set limits on and monitor use of storage, traffic, files, and build activity of both free and paid tools. We may charge a platform fee for an otherwise free tool that uses an unreasonable share of the infrastructure, that serves a commercial purpose, or in cases we deem it necessary.

10. Paid tools

Every payment for a tool goes through Voshi payments. If you charge for your tool, Voshi sells it on your behalf and collects every payment. A tool may not take payment any other way: no outside checkout, license keys, access codes, donations, or required purchases elsewhere.

Students, or their institution, pay Voshi. Voshi keeps 70% of what it receives and pays you 30%, net of refunds and chargebacks. What Voshi receives is the money that actually reaches us, including from a deal we negotiate with an institution at a discount. Sales tax, payment processing, exemption certificates, purchase orders, invoicing, and first-line student support are ours to handle.

Payouts go through Stripe, our payment partner, by direct deposit. With our help, you set up a Stripe account and give us your tax forms before the first payout. We send a statement of your tool's sales at least quarterly and pay what is due by the end of the month after each quarter. Income tax on what we pay you is yours, and nothing in this agreement makes you an employee or agent of MyEducator.

You set the price, but we may ask you to reconsider a price that seems out of line, and we may decline to sell a tool in certain cases. A student who buys a tool is buying access to it for their course; refunds follow the policy shown at purchase and the institution's rules.

11. Our decisions about tools

Voshi decides what runs on Voshi. We may hold a version, suspend or remove a tool, or close an account at any time, for any reason we consider relevant: a risk to a school or its students, a complaint, a change in the law, a school's request, or a judgment call about where Voshi is going. We'll tell you why and work with you to resolve the concern. We see you as a partner and want your tool to succeed. But the final decision is ours, even if it seems unreasonable to you. Schools place their trust in Voshi, and we have to be able to keep it.

12. Leaving, and the two-year grace period

You can leave at any time; the courses using your tool get up to two years to adjust. You may disable a tool or close your account whenever you choose. Your code goes with you.

When you disable a tool or leave, Voshi may keep publishing it for up to two years to the instructors who already use it, including in new terms of the same course, so that a curriculum built around it has time to change. The license in section 1 and the payment terms in section 10 continue for that period, so a paid tool keeps paying you. No new instructors or schools adopt it from the catalog during the grace period, and we may end it sooner if the tool breaks this agreement or no course still uses it.

If Voshi ever closes, you hear first. If MyEducator stops offering Voshi, we give builders at least 90 days' notice and keep Download Code available through that time.

13. Considerations for external tools

This section applies to tools that have been granted special allowances to run outside the Voshi ecosystem. This is primarily for existing companies with their own systems that use Voshi to connect into the university environment.

Running on your own external server comes with increased reviews for security and other standards. You must uphold the same strict requirements as Voshi itself. In addition, you:

• use <voshi-member> to display student PII rather than keeping it yourself.
• verify every launch Voshi sends you and keep your signing keys and API keys secret;
• serve the tool over TLS and keep it patched, with no access from outside a Voshi launch;
• keep the tool available while courses are in session, and tell us ahead of planned downtime;
• tell us within 24 hours of a suspected security incident, and work with us on the resolution;
• submit to reviews for security, privacy, and accessibility.

14. Who may build

You must be an adult who can enter a contract. You are at least 18 and able to agree to these terms. If you build on behalf of a company, school, or publisher, you confirm that you may accept this agreement for it, and "you" means that organization as well.

15. Responsibility and limits

You answer for your tool, and we answer for Voshi. You are solely responsible for your tool, its content, and what it does. If a school, a student, or anyone else brings a claim against MyEducator because of your tool's content or conduct, such as a copyright claim or a claim that the tool misused data, you will defend us against it and cover what it costs. Schools require this of us for every tool we publish, and we can only promise it because builders promise it to us. While a claim about your tool is open, we may hold your payouts and apply them to what the claim costs.

Voshi is provided as is. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error free, or that any level of adoption or revenue will follow from publishing a tool. An outage caused by something beyond our control, such as a provider failure or a natural disaster, is not a breach of this agreement. To the extent the law allows, MyEducator is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, and our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the amount we paid you, or you paid us, in the twelve months before the claim.

16. Changes, law, and contact

We may change this agreement, and we tell builders first. The date at the top is the date of the current version. A material change is announced to builders before it takes effect, and continuing to publish on Voshi after that date is acceptance. If you do not agree with a change, download your code and disable your tools before it applies; the grace period in section 12 still runs for the courses that use them.

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Utah, where MyEducator is based, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. If part of it cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. If we let a breach pass once, we may still act on the next one. This agreement, with the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, is the whole agreement between us about building on Voshi and replaces any earlier discussion. Sections 1, 4, 12, and 15 survive after your tools or account end.

Notices go to the email address on your account; keep it current. We may assign this agreement if MyEducator is sold or merges with another company, and we tell you when that happens. Questions go to MyEducator at the addresses on the contact page.