Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of heypcb.ai and related software, APIs, and services (the "Service") operated by heypcb ("heypcb," "we," "us," or "our"). By creating an account, signing in, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. The Service

heypcb provides AI-assisted PCB design tools that work with KiCad-native project files. Features may include an editor, agent chat, design-rule checks, autorouting, imports/exports (including Gerbers), templates, and related workflows. Features may change, be limited by plan, or depend on external model providers and infrastructure.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 13 years old (or the age of digital consent in your jurisdiction) and able to form a binding contract. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping credentials and OAuth access secure. Provide accurate information and notify us of unauthorized use at justin@heypcb.ai.

If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization to these Terms.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for unlawful, harmful, or infringing purposes, or to design hardware intended to violate export controls or sanctions
• Probe, scan, or attack the Service, or interfere with other users
• Reverse engineer, scrape, or abuse the Service beyond normal product use, except where applicable law prohibits that restriction
• Circumvent rate limits, billing, authentication, or access controls
• Upload malware or content you do not have rights to use
• Use a profile photo, name, bio, link, note or reply that is sexually explicit, harassing, or impersonates someone else
• Misrepresent AI-generated designs as certified, safety-approved, or production-ready without your own engineering review

We may suspend or terminate access for violations or to protect the Service and other users.

4. Your content and designs

You retain ownership of project files, prompts, and designs you create or upload ("Your Content"), including exported Gerbers and KiCad archives, subject to any third-party rights in libraries or components you incorporate.

You grant heypcb a limited license to host, process, transmit, and display Your Content solely to operate, maintain, and improve the Service for you (for example, running the agent, DRC, routing, storage, and exports). We do not claim ownership of your boards.

You represent that you have the rights needed to use Your Content with the Service and that it does not infringe others' rights.

5. Publishing to Circuit World

Circuit World is the public gallery inside heypcb. Publishing a board there is optional, is never automatic, and takes a deliberate action by you in the editor.

When you publish, we copy that board into a public snapshot. You keep ownership of it, and you grant heypcb and every visitor a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to view, download, copy, modify and build on that snapshot, and you grant heypcb the further right to display it in the gallery and to feature it in our own documentation and marketing. That licence exists so the gallery can work: a design somebody has downloaded cannot be recalled.

You can withdraw a snapshot at any time from its Circuit World page. Withdrawal takes it out of the gallery and stops us featuring it, and it does not reach copies other people already made.

Publish only what you have the right to publish. If a board carries somebody else's library, footprint, logo or copyrighted artwork, you are the one asserting you may share it. Boards we import from public sources stay under their own licences, which we name on the board's page.

We may withdraw, hide or refuse any snapshot — for infringement, for a breach of section 3, or because it does not belong in a public gallery of circuit boards. We are under no obligation to host anything.

6. Designs imported from public repositories

Some boards in Circuit World were not published by a heypcb user. We import them from public GitHub repositories that contain KiCad projects. An imported board is always labelled as one, on its own page and on its card in the gallery.

We do not claim to own an imported board or to have been given permission to publish it. Each one names the upstream author, links to the repository it came from, and states the licence that repository declares. Where a repository declares no licence, we say "All rights reserved" rather than guessing, and we do not offer that board for copying — there is no fork button on it. Where a repository carries a licence we could not classify, we say so and send you to the file itself. Any board you take a copy of is yours to use only on the terms its own licence gives you, which are the upstream author's terms and not ours.

An imported board is held under a placeholder profile until its author claims it. If a board was imported from your repository, you can take it over by signing in with the GitHub account it was published from and visiting the claim page. Claiming transfers the board to your account, and from then on you control the listing — including withdrawing it.

CAD World also imports designs, 3D scans and artworks published under recognized open licences, or marked as in the public domain, from public GitHub repositories, Zenodo and Wikimedia Commons. Each listing credits the maker, links to the source and identifies its licence. We host copies of the available source files and generate pictures and 3D previews from those files. Supported STEP files can be copied into Product, with their source attribution. The maker retains ownership, and reuse remains subject to the source licence, including attribution and any share-alike requirements. A preview or import is not a certification that a design is safe, complete or ready to manufacture. CAD World listings do not currently have an account claim feature.

You do not have to claim a design to have it removed, and you do not need an account to ask. Write to justin@heypcb.ai and we will take it down. You can also use the copyright process in section 11, but for your own work a plain request is enough — we do not require a formal notice to stop hosting something its author does not want here.

7. AI output and engineering responsibility

The Service uses AI models and automated tools that can make mistakes. Outputs may be incomplete, incorrect, non-manufacturable, or unsafe for your application. heypcb is a design aid, not a substitute for a qualified engineer, manufacturer review, or safety certification.

You are solely responsible for reviewing, testing, validating, and approving designs before fabrication or deployment. We disclaim liability for boards fabricated from Service outputs, except boards you buy from heypcb, which section 21’s limited warranty covers for how they were made. A fault in the design itself remains yours.

8. Third-party services and models

Sign-in may use Google, GitHub, email providers, or other identity services. Agent features may send prompts and design context to third-party model providers. Hosting, auth, and payments may involve other vendors. Your use of those services may be subject to their terms. We are not responsible for third-party services we do not control.

If you bring your own model keys or endpoints, you are responsible for compliance with that provider's terms and for any costs they charge you.

9. Plans, usage, and payment

Free and paid plans, usage limits, and pricing may be described on our website or in-product. Fees are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated. We may change pricing or limits with reasonable notice for ongoing subscriptions. Failure to pay may result in suspension.

Automatic renewal

A paid plan is a subscription. It renews automatically at the end of each billing period — monthly or yearly, whichever you chose — and your payment method is charged the plan’s then-current price at each renewal until you cancel. The price, the interval and this renewal are shown to you on the plan you pick before you are sent to checkout, and again on the checkout page, and we send a receipt to your email after each charge. For a yearly plan we also email you a reminder between 15 and 45 days before it renews.

Cancelling

You can cancel online at any time, in the same place you subscribed: Settings → Plan → Manage billing → Cancel plan. It takes no more steps than subscribing did, and you do not have to contact anyone. A cancelled plan stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for and then stops; nothing further is charged. If you prefer, email justin@heypcb.ai and we will cancel it for you.

Free trial

The free trial is a fixed allowance of Inky work on one board. It needs no payment method, never converts into a paid plan on its own, and never charges you. When it is used up the composer says so and offers a plan; nothing happens unless you choose one.

10. Intellectual property

The Service, including software, branding, UI, documentation, and non-user content, is owned by heypcb and its licensors. These Terms do not grant you rights to our trademarks or source code, except the limited right to use the Service as offered.

KiCad and other third-party tools remain the property of their respective owners and may be subject to their licenses.

The module library includes footprints and symbols authored by other people and redistributed under their own open-source licences, some of them share-alike. We name every one, with its author, licence and source, at Open-source library attribution. Those files stay under their own licences; we have not relicensed them.

Placing a part from that library on a board does not put your design under any of those licences. The KiCad library licence and several others carry an exception saying exactly that, and your boards, schematics and exported manufacturing files remain Your Content under section 4.

11. Copyright complaints

We respond to notices of claimed copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and comparable laws. Send them to our designated agent at justin@heypcb.ai, with "DMCA" in the subject.

A notice has to contain all of the following, or we cannot act on it:

• your physical or electronic signature
• identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed
• identification of the material on heypcb you want removed, with enough detail for us to find it — a link to the board or page
• your address, telephone number and email address
• a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
• a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorised to act for them

We remove or disable material that is the subject of a valid notice and tell whoever posted it. They may send a counter-notice with the elements the statute requires, and unless the complainant files suit we may restore the material after ten to fourteen business days.

Misrepresenting that material is infringing carries liability for damages under the statute. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers, and we may terminate any account we conclude is infringing, in appropriate circumstances and at our discretion.

12. Feedback

If you send ideas or feedback, we may use them without obligation to you. Feedback does not include Your Content (your boards and project files).

13. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DESIGNS WILL MEET ANY SPECIFICATION OR REGULATORY REQUIREMENT.

Boards you buy from heypcb are the exception: section 21 gives them a limited warranty, and this section does not disclaim the implied warranties on them.

14. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HEYPCB AND ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) AMOUNTS YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US $100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations; in those cases, our liability is limited to the fullest extent permitted.

15. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify heypcb against claims, damages, and expenses arising from Your Content, your use of the Service, or your violation of these Terms or applicable law.

16. Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend or terminate access if you violate these Terms, if we discontinue the Service, or as required by law. Upon termination, your right to use the Service ends. Provisions that by nature should survive (including ownership, disclaimers, limitations, and indemnity) will survive.

We encourage you to export Your Content before closing an account. Subject to our Privacy Policy, we may delete account data after termination.

17. Changes to the Service or Terms

We may modify the Service or these Terms. We will post updated Terms on this page and update the "Last updated" date. Material changes may be communicated in-product or by email when appropriate. Continued use after changes become effective constitutes acceptance.

18. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, excluding conflict-of-law rules. Courts in San Francisco County, California will have exclusive jurisdiction, except that we may seek injunctive relief in any jurisdiction.

19. Disputes, arbitration, and class-action waiver

Read this section. It affects how any dispute between us is resolved, and it gives up your right to a jury trial and to take part in a class action. It applies only where the law lets it. If you are a consumer in the EEA, the UK, or anywhere that makes pre-dispute arbitration unenforceable against you, none of it binds you and section 18 governs instead.

Talk to us first

Before starting arbitration, email justin@heypcb.ai describing the dispute and what you want. We will do the same for a dispute we have with you. Neither of us may begin arbitration for 60 days after that notice, and most disputes end here.

Arbitration

Any dispute arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms that we do not resolve informally will be settled by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before one arbitrator, in English. The arbitration may be held by telephone or video, on written submissions, or in the county where you live. The arbitrator decides the claim and the scope of this section, and may award whatever relief a court could award to you individually. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.

What is carved out

Either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead, and either of us may ask any court for an injunction to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property. Bringing one of those does not waive the rest of this section.

No class actions

Claims are brought individually. Neither of us may bring a class, collective, consolidated or representative action, and the arbitrator may not preside over one or award relief to anyone who is not a party. Both of us waive any right to a jury trial. If this paragraph is held unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim alone leaves arbitration and goes to the courts named in section 18; the rest of this section still applies to every other claim.

Opting out

You can refuse this section without giving up anything else. Email justin@heypcb.ai within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, saying that you opt out of arbitration and giving the email address on your account. That is all it takes, it will not affect your account, and if you opt out, section 18 governs any dispute.

Any claim must be brought within one year of when it arose, or it is permanently barred, unless the law where you live forbids shortening the period.

20. Miscellaneous

These Terms are the entire agreement between you and heypcb regarding the Service and supersede prior agreements on that subject. If a provision is unenforceable, the remainder stays in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, employment, or agency relationship, and there are no third-party beneficiaries.

Neither of us is liable for a failure or delay caused by something outside our reasonable control — an outage at a hosting, model, or payment provider, a network or power failure, an act of government, a labour dispute, or a natural disaster. This does not excuse you from paying what you owe.

21. Ordering boards from heypcb

You can order printed circuit boards from heypcb, for a board in the editor or from a board’s page in Circuit World. When you do, heypcb is the seller: your contract for the boards is with heypcb, and you deal only with us. Our manufacturing partner, a circuit-board factory in China, makes the boards from the manufacturing files the order sheet prepared, and they are shipped from China to the address you give on the payment page. For anything about an order, write to justin@heypcb.ai with its order number.

The price

The order sheet prices the board you are ordering, from its own measured size and layer count: the boards and their options, any import taxes collected in advance, shipping, and heypcb’s service fee, each on its own line. That total, plus any sales tax the payment page adds, is what you pay, and it is final for the boards, options, quantity, shipping and destination the sheet priced. If the price changes between the sheet and the payment page, we show you the new one and charge nothing until you accept it. You pay by card, through Stripe. The one way the price of a paid order can change is the factory’s review below, and it never charges you more without your agreement.

Quotes

Some orders need a person to price them: assembly, and options, sizes or quantities the sheet cannot price on its own. The sheet says which, and never shows a total that leaves something out. Sending one is a quote request: nothing is charged and nothing is ordered. We email you the price and the date it holds until — usually a week, because factory and part prices move. You order by paying that price from the order page before that date. A payment page you opened before it can still be completed for a short while after it, never more than an hour after you opened it. After that, the quote can no longer be paid, and we will price it again if you ask.

Your files and your design

Your boards are made from the exact files the order sheet prepared; changing the board afterwards does not change the order. For a board in your editor, heypcb checks the files automatically before you pay, but you are responsible for the design and for whether the boards work (section 7). If the check reported problems and you chose to order anyway, the boards are made as the files are, and what follows from those problems is not a manufacturing defect. A board from Circuit World is made from its author’s files as they were published; we do not run our design check on it.

The factory’s review

We place each paid order with our manufacturing partner, usually within one business day, and the factory reviews the files before it makes anything. That review can find something the files did not show before — a feature it charges extra for, or something it cannot make as ordered. When it does, we hold the order and tell you what it found before anything is made. You then choose: pay the difference, as a separate payment you agree to on its own payment page, or cancel the order for a full refund of everything you paid, by replying to our email. We never charge more without that agreement. If you have not answered within 30 days, we cancel the order and refund it in full.

Cancelling

You cancel from the order page. An order you have not paid for, and a quote request, are cancelled at once and nothing is charged. A paid order can be cancelled there for a full refund of everything you paid until we have placed it with our manufacturing partner. Once we have placed it, the factory makes the boards to your order, and it can be cancelled only as the factory’s review above and “Delivery and delays” below provide: then reply to our email, and we cancel it and refund you in full. Otherwise write to us and we will ask whether the factory can still stop it, but we cannot promise that it can. No board of an order exists before you order it: each is made new, from the design, options and quantity you choose. So the 14-day right to withdraw from a distance purchase that consumers have in the EU and the UK does not apply to them; the right to cancel before we place the order is given instead. Refunds go back to the card you paid with.

Delivery and delays

The order sheet shows how long the boards take to make and to arrive. We ship by the end of the making time shown, counted from your payment and our review day. If we cannot ship by then — or within 30 days of your payment, where no time was shown — we write to you before that date with a new date and the choice to cancel for a full refund. If the new date is no more than 30 days later and you do not answer, the order goes ahead on it; if it is later than that, or we cannot give one, we cancel the order and refund it in full unless you tell us to keep it.

We are responsible for the boards until they are delivered to the address you gave. If the carrier loses the parcel, or it has not arrived 30 days after the last day of the arrival estimate the order sheet showed, tell us and we will send the order again or refund it, whichever you choose.

Import taxes and customs

How import taxes work depends on the shipping line you choose:

• Where a line collects import duty or VAT in advance, that is its own line in the price, paid on your behalf. If a carrier still bills you for a tax we collected, send us the bill and we will refund what you paid it.
• Where a line does not, your country’s customs or the carrier may charge duty, VAT or GST and a handling fee when the parcel arrives. Those are yours to pay, to them.
• Some countries’ customs need the importer’s ID number. Where yours does, the payment page asks for it, and a parcel without a correct one can be held.

A parcel refused at the door, left unclaimed, or undeliverable because of the address or ID you gave is not refunded, because the boards were made to order. If the carrier returns it to us or our partner, we will offer to send it again for the cost of the new shipment. We ship only to the countries offered at checkout, and never where the law forbids it.

Limited warranty

heypcb gives this limited warranty on boards you buy from us. If boards arrive damaged, or were not made as their files and the options you paid for say, tell us within 30 days of delivery and we will have the affected boards made again and sent to you at no cost, or, if you prefer or a remake is not possible, refund what you paid for them and their shipping. To claim, email justin@heypcb.ai with the order number and photos of the problem. We do not need the boards back unless we ask, and if we ask, we pay the postage.

It does not cover a fault that comes from the design or its files, whoever made them (section 7); problems the check reported before you chose to order anyway; or damage after delivery, including from assembling, soldering or using the boards.

Section 13 does not disclaim the implied warranties, including merchantability, on boards you buy from heypcb; they last as long as the law where you live provides. Section 14 applies to orders, and for a claim about an order, the amounts you paid us include what you paid for it. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so that part of section 14 may not apply to you. This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights which vary from state to state. Nothing in this section takes away a right the law where you live gives you, such as a legal guarantee that goods match the contract.

Designs made by someone else

You can order a board somebody else designed — one published to Circuit World, or one you opened from there into the editor, edited or not. For those, we check the design’s licence and offer the order only where it lets others make and sell copies: never for a board with no licence, a licence we could not classify, or one that forbids commercial use. The order then records the design’s author, its licence and where its source is published, and the email confirming your order or your quote request names them. Some licences — CERN-OHL among them — ask that the source location go with every product made from the design; if you pass the boards on, pass it on with them, and follow the rest of the licence too.

A board you forked or copied is your own project, and we may not know whose design it started from. When an order does not name a design’s author and licence, you are the one telling us the copies are allowed: section 4’s promise covers it, and the design’s own licence binds you whether or not we checked it. We may refuse any board, or cancel an order for one with a full refund, when we cannot confirm its licence or have reason to think the copy is not allowed.

You make no promise about a design somebody else made when the order names it as theirs: for such an order, section 4’s promise about your rights and section 15’s indemnity cover only the changes you made to it. The design comes from its author under its licence, and neither we nor you vouch that it works.

22. Contact

Legal and privacy questions: justin@heypcb.ai
Website: https://heypcb.ai
Related: Privacy Policy