These are interim terms, for the alpha only.
Roost is unfinished and closed. Everybody in it was invited by hand, or was written in by us. These terms are written for that small group and will be replaced before Roost opens to anybody else, when we will ask you to agree to the new ones. They are short on purpose. A contract written against risk from strangers would be the wrong document for a few dozen people who are here because they were asked.
We are still taking legal advice on parts of this, and we would rather publish and say so than wait and say nothing. The Online Safety Act 2023 is the main one, and clause 6.9 says where that stands. A solicitor has not yet read this. If any of it turns out to be wrong we will correct it here and tell you what changed, rather than quietly editing the page.
Version 0.1, interim. In force from 14 August 2026.
1.1 These terms are between Azimuth Partners Ltd ("we", "us"), a company registered in England and Wales, company number 16360004, registered office Snaffles, Downton Hill, Redlynch, Salisbury, England, SP5 2JF, and you.
1.2 Roost is a private network for families and the people around them, made of rooms. What is posted in a room is visible to that room's members, and to nobody else except us on the narrow terms in clauses 7.2 and 7.3. There are two smaller qualifications, and we would rather state them than let "nobody else" carry more weight than it can. If you leave a room, you keep the ability to see and take down your own posts there, so a former member still reads that much of it. And every member's device keeps a copy of what it has loaded, as clause 2.4 explains.
1.3 There is nothing public in Roost, nothing to search, and nobody to discover. It is free: there is nothing to buy and nobody has paid us anything.
1.4 Where our site is written in the first person singular, that is José Picardo writing on behalf of Azimuth Partners Ltd, and the company is responsible for it.
1.5 When these terms bind you, and the honest state of that. These terms are published, and they are the basis on which we provide Roost. There is no screen in Roost that asks you to accept them, and nothing in Roost records anybody having done so. We are not going to paper over that: we will not argue that carrying on using Roost was agreement, and if it ever mattered whether you had accepted these terms, our answer today would have to be that you had not been asked.
What we will do is ask, properly, once there is a screen for it, and we will tell you when that happens. Until then treat this as us telling you plainly how we run Roost and what we expect, which is worth having whether or not it is a contract. In return for us providing Roost, we ask you to accept the permission in section 5 and the rules in section 6.
1.6 The form on our website. Anybody can ask on our public page to be told when Roost opens. That is not joining, and these terms do not govern it. Filling it in sends us an email with the address and any note you wrote, so we can answer you. If you would like that removed, write to hello@azimuth.org.uk.
2.1 Getting in. There are three routes and no others. You can use an invitation minted by a member of that room who holds the capability to mint one, in a room that is open. You can be set up by a guardian. Or, for the first person in Roost, we wrote them straight into the database, because the first person cannot be invited by anybody. An invitation is for one person, works once, and expires after seven days.
2.2 Age. You must be at least 10 to hold an account. A child under 10 can be in the record but cannot sign in. Nothing verifies anybody's age or identity: the date of birth we hold is one you, or your guardian, typed. We take it on trust. If it is wrong, tell us and we will correct it, and nothing in these terms penalises you for a mistake.
2.3 Signing in. There are no passwords. You sign in with a code sent to an email address, so anybody who can read that inbox can sign in as you. Keeping it secure is yours to do.
2.4 Your device. Once Roost has loaded, your device keeps a copy of everything you could see, and it stays there after you sign out. No control in the hosted app clears it, so signing out protects nothing on a shared device. Clearing the browser's storage for our site is the only way to remove it, and you have to do that yourself.
2.5 If somebody else can get into your account. Write to hello@azimuth.org.uk. What we can actually do, by hand, is change the address you sign in with, and take you out of rooms while it is sorted out. What we cannot do is lock anybody out, because Roost has no such thing. Clause 6.7 says why.
2.6 Being told there is something new. You can ask Roost to tell your phone when a room has something new in it. You are asked first, by your phone rather than by us, and you can stop it at any time from Account. What it sends is deliberately almost nothing: the room's name, once per room, and not again until you have been back into that room. Not who posted, not what they said, not how many things are waiting. Nothing is sent between 10pm and 7am where you are. Nothing is sent to anybody under 18, whoever asks for it. Nothing comes back to whoever posted: they are not told that you were notified, or that you opened it, or that you did not.
2.7 What that costs in privacy, and it is not nothing. To send it, your browser gives us an address at your phone's push service, which is Apple's for an iPhone or iPad and Google's for most other devices, and we hand that service the message to deliver. It is encrypted so that the service cannot read it, and the room's name is the whole of what is inside, but that service does learn that a message was sent to your device and when. If you would rather not have that, do not turn it on: the lamp beside a room's name lights either way when you next open Roost.
3.1 Setting a child up. If you set a child up, you accept these terms for yourself. You are not making the child a party to them, and we do not treat them as one. What you are agreeing to is that you hold parental responsibility for that child, that you will supervise how they use Roost, and that you will act if they break the rules in section 6. Nothing in Roost checks any of that, or the child's existence, or their date of birth. Your word is the only check there will be.
3.2 This is not a data protection consent. Agreeing to these terms is not your consent, or your child's, to how we handle personal information. What we rely on is a separate question, it is not settled, and we are not going to settle it in a contract. Section 7 says what we can tell you today.
3.3 What a guardian can do. Set a child up. Set and change the address the child signs in with, until the child first signs in. Add the child to rooms the guardian is in. Remove the child from a room the guardian is also in, at any age. Name a second guardian. See the child's date of birth, whether they have signed in, and which rooms they are in.
3.4 Removal from a room you have not joined. The database permits a guardian to remove their child from any room at all, including one the guardian is not in. The app does not: it gives a guardian no screen for a room they have not joined, and will not even show that such a room exists. If you need your child taken out of a room you are not in, write to hello@azimuth.org.uk and we will do it by hand.
3.5 What a guardian cannot do. Read the child's posts in a room the guardian is not in. Read the child's private messages, at any age. Take down or edit anything the child wrote. See the address the child signs in with, once the child controls it.
3.6 Private messages to a child. Any member of a room can open a private conversation with any other member, including a child. Nobody else can see it, and a guardian cannot. The child cannot block, mute or report the sender, because Roost has none of those. Read that again before putting a child in a room with people you do not know well.
3.7 The under 13 rule. A child under 13 can only be added to a room if their guardian joins it too. Roost enforces that when they join and never again: the guardian can leave afterwards while the child stays.
3.8 A second guardian is permanent. Nobody can end it through Roost: not the person named, not the person who named them, not us. The person named is never asked. Name only somebody who has agreed outside Roost. Only somebody who is not themselves supervised can be named.
3.9 Guardianship does not end. Not at 18, and not at any other time. The part of Roost that would end it on an eighteenth birthday is written and is not switched on, so a guardian keeps everything in clause 3.3 indefinitely. Confirmed on the live database on 14 August 2026: the scheduling extension is not installed, there is no job table, and the function that would end supervision has no caller.
3.10 The child's sign-in address. It is typed by the guardian, and nothing confirms it belongs to the child. Until the child first signs in the guardian can change it, including to an address the guardian controls, and can also ask Roost for it back. Email to it is therefore not reliable notice to the child, and we will not treat it as such. Once the child has signed in for themselves, the address is theirs alone and the guardian can neither read it nor change it.
3.11 If you are under 18. We do not treat these terms as a contract you have entered into, and we do not rely on your guardian's agreement as though it were yours. The rules in section 6 still describe how we ask everybody here to behave. You should know what clauses 3.3 to 3.6 say, because they are about you: an adult who set you up can see your date of birth, can see which rooms you are in, and can take you out of a room, but cannot read your posts unless they are in the room, cannot read your private messages, and cannot delete anything you wrote. Nothing in the app tells you that today, and it should. We will publish a page written for you, in plain words, when the privacy notice in clause 7.1 is published.
4.1 Invitations. Only a member of the room who holds the capability to mint invitations can invite anybody, and only while the room is open. Every member can see that an invitation exists and who is answerable for it, but not the code. Only the person who minted an invitation can withdraw it.
4.2 What an invitation gives away. Whoever joins can read everything ever posted in that room, from the day it was founded, however long ago. Nothing is held back, the other members are not asked and not told, and a redeemed invitation cannot be undone.
4.3 What we ask of you. Invite somebody only if you would be content for them to be in that room with everybody already there, children included, and to read all of it. Do not pass a code to anybody but the person you made it for.
4.4 Holding a room. Rooms are held rather than owned. Whoever holds one can rename it, change its details, close it, open it again, and decide who takes it on. It can only be handed to a member who asks, nobody can be made to hold one, and whoever holds a room cannot leave until somebody else takes it on.
4.5 Closing and leaving. Closing stops new posts, new members and new invitations, and hides nothing: everything already there stays visible to the room, which can be opened again. You can leave any room you do not hold, and nobody is told. What you posted stays. If you are under 18 you cannot rejoin by yourself.
4.6 Nobody else can be removed. No member, and nobody who holds or founded a room, can remove another person from it. The only removals are yourself, or your own child. That is deliberate, and section 6 says what is left when somebody behaves badly.
5.1 It stays yours. Everything you post remains yours and these terms transfer no ownership. The Roost name, software and design are ours.
5.2 The permission you give us. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free permission, for as long as we hold the thing, to store what you post, to hold the copies that storing anything on rented computers involves, to make the reduced-size versions Roost shows before you open a picture, and to show what you posted to the members of that room and to you. It is worldwide only because our suppliers and the people in your rooms are not all in one place, and it is not a permission to publish anything. Read against clause 5.4 and clause 9.3, which say that nothing is truly erased, this permission is in practice indefinite, and we would rather write that here than let you work it out four sections later.
5.3 What that permission excludes. We will not sell, rent, licence or hand on what you post. We will not use it in advertising, rank or score it, or use it to train or evaluate any machine learning model. We have not authorised any supplier to do any of those things and we will not, though we do not yet have written data processing terms with every supplier, and clause 7.6 says where that stands. We will not use anything of yours to promote Roost without asking each identifiable person in it first. We will not show what you post to anybody outside that room, except in the two cases in clause 7.2. The suppliers who run the database, the file store and the servers hold it in order to run Roost, which is a different thing from us showing it to somebody, but you should know they hold it.
5.4 Taking a post down. You can take down anything you wrote, at any time, and it stops being shown to everybody except you and us. It is not erased: the text stays in the database, and any photograph, voice note or scan stays in our file store, where nothing in Roost can remove it. Only we can remove either, by hand, and clause 9.3 says what we can promise about that.
5.5 Other people's posts. You cannot take down, edit or remove anything written by anybody else. Neither can whoever holds the room. Nobody in Roost has that power over another person's post.
5.6 What is inside a photograph. A photograph taken on a phone usually carries hidden information in the file, often the exact place and time it was taken and an identifier for the camera. Roost uploads the original as it came off the device, and anybody in the room can download it and read that. If it matters, strip it out first or do not post the picture.
5.7 Other people in what you post. A picture of five people at Christmas is five people's picture. We are not asking you to promise that everybody in it agreed, partly because a room's membership can change afterwards without your being told. What we ask is that you post what you have reason to think those people would be content for that room to see, and that if somebody asks you to take down a picture of them or of their child, you take it down.
5.8 Asking for something to be taken down. If somebody has posted a picture of you or your child, or something that is yours, ask them first: they are the only person in Roost who can take it down. If they will not, write to hello@azimuth.org.uk with enough detail for us to find it. One person decides, by hand. We will normally tell the person who posted it what has been asked and give them the chance to answer, unless doing so would put somebody at risk. If we take something down we will say so; if we decide not to, we will say why, and you can ask us to look again under clause 6.8.
6.1 The rules. You agree not to:
(a) present yourself as somebody else, or use another member's name or photograph;
(b) post anything unlawful, and in particular any sexual image of a child, or anything meant to harass, threaten or frighten somebody;
(c) send a child a private message you would not have been willing to post in the room itself;
(d) publish or pass material from a room to anybody outside it without the agreement of whoever posted it and of anybody identifiable in it;
(e) post at a volume or size that makes a room unusable for the people in it;
(f) try to reach anything you have not been given access to, or work around the rules that keep one family's rooms away from another's. If you find a way through one, tell us. We will not pursue anybody who reports a fault they found and did not exploit.
6.2 What Roost does not have. There is no reporting mechanism, no blocking, no muting, no filtering, no automated detection, and no way for any member to take down anything written by anybody else. Nothing inside a room notifies us of anything. The only message Roost ever sends us by itself comes from the public form on our website, which is nothing to do with what happens in a room. That is how it is built, and it means the adults in a room are the only people placed to notice something wrong in it.
6.3 What you can do. Leave any room you do not hold. Take down anything you posted. Close the room, if you hold it, which stops anything new for everybody. If you are a guardian, take your child out of any room you are also in, at any time, without asking anybody. For a room you are not in, clause 3.4 applies and you have to ask us.
6.4 Reaching us. Write to hello@azimuth.org.uk. That is the only route to us, for anything. It is read by one person who does not do this full time, with no cover out of hours.
6.5 If somebody is at risk now. If a child, or anybody, is in immediate danger, contact the police on 999, or 101 if it is not an emergency. Concerns about a child being approached sexually online can go to CEOP at ceop.police.uk. An email to us is not a report to anybody else, and we cannot act like an emergency service.
6.6 What we can do by hand. If you tell us, we can open the room and read it on the terms in clause 7.2, take a post down, remove a post or a file outright, remove somebody from a room, and close a room.
6.7 What we cannot do. Roost has no suspended, disabled or banned account, for anybody, so we cannot lock somebody out and will not claim we can. We cannot remove somebody from a room they hold until a new holder takes it on, and we cannot reach copies already on other people's devices.
6.8 Complaining, and asking us to look again. You can complain to us about anything: somebody's behaviour, something posted, something we did, or something we refused to do. Write to hello@azimuth.org.uk and say what happened and what you want. We aim to acknowledge within two working days and to answer within ten, and we will tell you if it is going to take longer rather than let it go quiet. We will tell you what we decided and why, unless we are legally barred from saying so. If somebody has complained about you, we will normally tell you what has been said and give you the chance to answer before we act, unless doing so would put somebody at risk. If you disagree with a decision, say so and we will look at it again. There is one person, so looking again means that person reconsidering with whatever you have added. That is the whole procedure, and we would rather print its size than dress it up.
6.9 The law about this, and where we stand. The Online Safety Act 2023 places duties on services where people post things that other people see, including duties to assess risk, to give users a way to report illegal content, and to run a complaints procedure. We are taking advice on how much of this applies to a closed, invited service of this size. We are not going to leave a reader to infer that no statute is in play.
6.10 How to tell us, from inside Roost. There is a "Tell us about a problem" panel on your account screen and on every room's own screen. It carries our address, opens your email with it filled in, and prints the address in full for a device where that does not work. It says what to include: what happened, and which room. A person reads what arrives.
6.11 What that is and is not. It is an address, not a system. There is still no report button on a post, no block, no mute, no filter, no automated detection and no takedown, and clause 6.2 says so. What the panel changes is that there is now a way out of a room that does not go through anybody in it, which matters most for a child in a room with an adult, and for anybody whose difficulty is with the person they would otherwise have to tell. One warning we would rather print than leave you to discover: it opens your own email, so anybody who can read your email can read what you send. The panel says that too, and suggests writing from somewhere else if that is a problem.
6.12 The honest position. These rules still have very little machinery behind them. Publishing them with the gap visible is better than implying a system we do not have, and clause 6.8 remains a procedure written down rather than something that runs on its own.
7.1 The notice is not published yet. We have not yet published the information the law requires us to give you about how we handle personal information. It is written and it is being finished. Meanwhile, ask at hello@azimuth.org.uk and we will tell you what we hold and what we do with it. Publishing terms before that information is the wrong way round, and we would rather say so than let the order look deliberate. This section is a narrow summary and not a substitute for the notice.
7.2 Opening a room. As a rule we do not open a family's room. There are two exceptions: fixing a fault that cannot be fixed any other way, and a demand made lawfully that we cannot refuse. Roost has a register for recording each such access, and the rule letting the room concerned read its own entries is enforced by the database. But nothing writes that register automatically. We fill it in by hand, with the same credential that could rewrite it, and no screen yet shows it to a room. It is a promise kept by discipline, not a control that operates on its own. As at 14 August 2026, the date these terms take effect, the register is empty, counted on the live database rather than assumed.
7.3 What we are technically able to do. The access that lets us fix a fault does not distinguish reading from writing. We can read any post and any private message, and we could alter them. We will not alter anything anybody wrote, except at that person's own request or where the law requires it, and if we ever did we would record it in the same register and tell the room.
7.4 Where it is held. Our website and our two small server routes run in London. Our database and the files in it are held in London: the project runs in our supplier's eu-west-2 region, which is London, read off the supplier's own account rather than inferred from our code. We still cannot tell you where our suppliers' backups and logs sit, or who at those suppliers can reach them.
7.5 Not a consent. Agreeing to these terms is not your consent, or your child's, to how we handle personal information. Nothing in these terms limits your rights under data protection law, or your right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
7.6 Our suppliers. Roost runs on other companies' computers: a database and file store, a company that serves the website, a company that sends the sign-in emails, and the provider of the mailbox you write to. We do not yet have written data processing terms in place with all of them. That is ours to fix, not yours, and the privacy notice in clause 7.1 is where each of them will be named. Until then, do not read anything on our website as a statement that they are contractually restricted.
8.1 Unfinished. Roost is in alpha. It is incomplete, it changes without notice, and parts of it do not do what their own wording says. Where we know of such a case, we have tried to say so in these terms.
8.2 Backups. We have no backup arrangement for your material that we can describe to you. We do not know what our hosting suppliers keep, for how long, or whether anything we remove by hand also goes from it. Keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose.
8.3 Getting your things out. The download in the app gives you the words: people, rooms, posts and what was kept, in plain text you can open without Roost. It does not include photographs, voice notes or scans, whatever its own wording says, and it does not include the rooms you have left or the address you sign in with. Ask at hello@azimuth.org.uk and we will get the rest out for you by hand.
8.4 What we do promise about your archive. We will not delete it to make room, to save money, or because you stopped paying. That is a promise about our conduct and we mean it. It is not a promise that nothing can ever be lost, because clause 8.2 is true.
8.5 Where these terms are narrower than the app. Some wording inside Roost promises more than these terms do, in all three languages. The Record footer and the note beside the export both say, without qualification, that we will never delete, expire or paywall your archive and that the export gives you everything you have. The file inside the download says it contains a folder of photographs, and then reports that it contains none. The screen where a guardian types a child's sign-in address says Roost never shows one back, which is true of the app's screens and not true of the product beneath them, as clause 3.10 explains. Clauses 3.10, 5.4, 8.2 and 8.3 are the accurate position. We are correcting that wording rather than relying on this clause to override it.
8.6 Money. Roost is free and there is nothing to buy. If it ever becomes something people pay for, anybody who held an account in Roost before the date at the top of these terms keeps it free for as long as Roost exists. That was said publicly on our site as an intention, and here we mean it as a promise. Azimuth Partners Ltd stands behind it.
8.7 If Roost stops. Roost is run by one small company, with no successor arrangement, escrow or wind-down plan today. If we decide to stop running it, we will give you as much notice as we can and not less than 30 days, and during that time we will get your material out for you by hand if you ask. If the company were wound up, that notice may not be available, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise.
9.1 You. You can stop using Roost whenever you like, leave any room you do not hold, and take down anything you posted. If you leave a room, your right to take down your own posts survives, but the app gives you no screen that reaches them and photographs you posted will stop loading for you. That is a fault. Until it is fixed, take down anything you want gone before you leave.
9.2 Closing an account. No control in Roost closes an account. Write to hello@azimuth.org.uk.
9.3 What we can and cannot remove. We can remove a post from the database and a file from the file store, by hand. What we often cannot do is delete your person record. In almost every case where you have done anything at all in Roost, or where somebody else has named you, the database refuses it: if you have posted anything, kept a post, made or held a room, opened or closed one, made or used an invitation, invited anybody who is still in a room, granted anybody a permission, or been named by somebody else as a room's successor. We also cannot reach copies already on other people's devices, and we cannot tell you a removal has reached our suppliers' backups, because we do not know what those hold. We will tell you plainly what applies in your case rather than describe a process that would not.
9.4 Us. If you break these terms in a way that puts somebody else here at risk, or if the law requires it, what we can actually do is take down individual posts and files, and take you out of rooms, by hand. We cannot lock you out, and clause 6.7 says why, so we will not describe it as suspending or closing your account. Before we do any of it we will tell you what has been said and give you the chance to answer, unless doing so would put somebody at risk or the law prevents it, and afterwards we will tell you what we did and why. You can ask us to look again under clause 6.8.
10.1 As it is. Subject always to clause 10.4, Roost is provided free of charge and as it is. We do not warrant that it will be available, that it will work without fault, or that anything lost can be recovered. Clause 8.2 is the reason, and it is stated rather than buried. Nothing in this clause takes away our duty to perform a service with reasonable care and skill, or any other right of yours that cannot be signed away.
10.2 Other people's computers and other people's sites. Roost runs on infrastructure we do not own or control, and we cannot guarantee it is available. Who our suppliers are, and what each holds, belongs in the privacy notice described in clause 7.1 rather than here, and clause 7.6 says what we can tell you meanwhile. A link posted in a room takes you to a site nobody at Roost has checked, and we are not responsible for what is on it.
10.3 What we are responsible for. We are responsible to you for loss we could reasonably have foreseen when you agreed to these terms. We are not responsible for loss that was not reasonably foreseeable, or for loss of profit, business, revenue, goodwill or opportunity, because Roost is supplied for personal and family use and not for any business purpose.
10.4 What cannot be excluded, and is not. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for:
(a) death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
(b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
(c) damage to your device or to your other digital content caused by Roost, where reasonable care and skill would have prevented it (Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 46);
(d) failing to perform a service with reasonable care and skill (Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 49);
(e) anything arising under data protection law, including compensation, your rights over your own information, and your right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office;
(f) anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.
10.5 No indemnity. We are not asking you to indemnify us against anything. There is no such clause here and there is not going to be one. Nothing in these terms affects your rights as a consumer that cannot be signed away.
11.1 Interim. These terms apply while Roost is in alpha. They will be replaced before Roost opens beyond the invited group, and at that point we will ask you to agree to the replacement rather than treat your continued use as agreement.
11.2 The privacy notice. We will publish the full privacy notice, and the page written for children described in clause 3.11, before Roost opens beyond the invited group, and sooner if we can. Clause 7.1 says how to ask for that information meanwhile.
11.3 Changing these terms. We may change these terms during the alpha where the law changes, where what Roost does changes, where a supplier changes, or where security requires it. We will give reasonable notice of anything that matters, by email to the address you sign in with and by publishing it on our site. The notifications described in clause 2.6 are not used for this: they carry a room's name and nothing else, and are not a way of telling you something important. Clause 3.10 means email is not reliable notice to a child either.
11.4 If you do not want to accept a change. You can stop using Roost and ask us to get your material out under clause 8.3. Be clear about what that gives you: a copy of your material, by hand, and whatever removal clause 9.3 turns out to permit in your case, which is often none. It is not a clean exit, and we are not going to offer one we cannot perform.
12.1 Law and courts. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Proceedings may be brought in the courts of England and Wales, and if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom where you live. Nothing here requires you to arbitrate anything.
12.2 Our public statements. Where something we have said publicly on our site and these terms disagree, whichever is more favourable to you prevails, and you can hold us to it. Two sentences on that site are wrong today and are being corrected: one says our suppliers are contractually barred from using your material for anything but running Roost, which clause 7.6 says is not established, and one offers deletion of your account by hand, which clause 9.3 says the database will often refuse. Neither of those is a promise you should rely on until we have made it true.
12.3 The rest. If any part of these terms is not enforceable, the rest continues to apply, and if we do not enforce something straight away that does not mean we have given it up. We may transfer our rights and obligations to another company, but only where your rights under these terms are not reduced. You cannot transfer yours.
12.4 Contact. hello@azimuth.org.uk, or by post to Azimuth Partners Ltd, Snaffles, Downton Hill, Redlynch, Salisbury, England, SP5 2JF. Azimuth Partners Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 16360004, and that address is its registered office.
Azimuth Partners Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 16360004. Registered office: Snaffles, Downton Hill, Redlynch, Salisbury, England, SP5 2JF. hello@azimuth.org.uk