Terms & Conditions

1. Membership & eligibility

ShadowClan is an invitation-only community. Access is granted solely through a valid invitation code followed by admin review and approval of your application.

You must be at least 18 years old to apply for or hold membership, and you confirm this when you apply.

What you put in an invitation request or application (name, profession, CV, links, skills) must be true and your own. Misrepresenting who you are or your work is grounds for refusal or removal.

One person, one account. Keep your sign-in secure: don't share your account or codes, use two-factor sign-in, and tell us at info@shadowclan.in straight away if you think someone else got in.

Member ranks (Shadow Pawn, Shadow Ninja, Shadow Khan) rise automatically from reputation (endorsements, shipped projects, verified skills); they can't be bought, and admins may lower them for misconduct. Platform admin roles are assigned by the founders and are not earned through reputation.

We reserve the right to decline, suspend, or revoke membership at any time for violations of these terms or the code of conduct below.

2. Code of conduct

Members must treat one another with respect in all organizations, projects, messages, and wiki pages.

Harassment, discrimination, impersonation, spam, or sharing of invitation codes with unvetted individuals is prohibited and may result in immediate deactivation.

Content posted to the wiki, blog, portfolios, posts, or messages must not infringe on the rights of others or violate applicable law.

Members may flag posts, events, and other content that violates these terms; flagged content is reviewed by admins, who may dismiss the report or remove the content.

Protecting other members: don't copy, scrape, export or harvest other members' profiles, contact details, CVs or messages (by hand or with bots, scripts or browser extensions); don't use what you see on ShadowClan to spam, cold-sell or build lists; and don't share anything a member showed only to you without their permission.

Don't try to get around security or limits: no probing for vulnerabilities outside the responsible-disclosure process below, no automated sign-ups or requests, no fake or multiple accounts, no endorsement rings or trading of endorsements to inflate rank.

Don't use ShadowClan to find a client or member and then take the deal off the platform to avoid review, escrow or fees. Opportunities, proposals and offers must not contain email addresses, phone numbers, messaging handles or requests to pay outside ShadowClan.

3. Recruiters

Members with the recruiter role (verified by work email and approved by the owners) may use talent search only to hire for real roles at their own company.

Contact only through contact requests. A member's contact details are shown only after they accept. Don't contact members outside the platform unless they agree, and stop if they decline.

Shortlists and notes are for your own hiring. Don't export them, share them outside your hiring team, sell them, or keep candidate data after the hiring purpose ends. Misuse ends the recruiter role and may end membership.

4. Content & intellectual property

You retain ownership of the portfolio items, case studies, testimonials, wiki contributions, posts, and other content you submit.

By submitting content, you grant ShadowClan a non-exclusive, worldwide license to display it within the platform, including on public portfolio pages you choose to make visible.

You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to share any content you upload, including project links, images, and testimonials from third parties.

5. Payments, subscriptions & marketplace features

Beta: ShadowClan is in Beta and no plans or paid extras are sold. Each approved member is given Beta access once: every feature is included for a set number of days (currently 31) from their first sign-in after approval, and the end date is shown in the app. When Beta access ends, your profile, feed and browsing stay available; other features, including messaging, proposals, freelancer listings, creating clans, company pages, hiring packages and Elite access, show as 'Available after beta'. Plans that members activated during our earlier founding beta stay active until billing starts.

We may change the length of Beta access for members who haven't received it yet, or what is included in it, and we'll announce plans and prices at least 15 days before billing starts. No money is collected or held on your behalf through any flow during the Beta.

If and when a live payment gateway is introduced, these terms will be updated in advance, pricing will be clearly disclosed before checkout, and you will need to take a further action (e.g. confirming a real charge) before any live payment is processed.

Escrow balances shown during beta are not real, withdrawable funds; they become real only once online payments are enabled and announced.

Project opportunities: any approved member may post paid work. Every post is reviewed by our team before it goes live and may be approved, sent back for changes or rejected with a reason. The client's expected budget is shown only to the client and ShadowClan admins; other members see a masked figure. Approved members with Beta access may send proposals with their own quote (after beta this may need a paid plan). When one side accepts the other's offer, the project is awarded and the agreed price is shown only to the client, the chosen member and admins.

Freelancers: approved members may list themselves in the Freelancers directory with a headline, services and availability. Listings show 'Rate on request'; prices are agreed directly in chat. A quote request must describe real work and must not contain contact details; the freelancer may accept (which opens a chat) or decline. Listings and requests follow the code of conduct, and ShadowClan may hide a listing that misleads clients. The agreement for the work is between the client and the freelancer.

Platform fee on opportunities: a percentage of the agreed price, based on its value (10% up to ₹25,000; 8% up to ₹1,00,000; 6% up to ₹5,00,000; 5% above), shown on the agreement before any payment and added for the client. Admins may use the private budget and agreed price to check fairness and to decide disputes.

ShadowClan is a platform that connects clients and members; the contract for the work is between the client and the member. We don't guarantee the quality, legality or delivery of work, or a client's ability to pay, but we review posts, offer escrow and help resolve disputes.

Each purchase on ShadowClan generates an invoice, with GST where applicable. When a refund is approved we issue a credit note against the original invoice.

See our Refund & Cancellation Policy (/refund-policy) for how refunds and cancellations will work once a live payment gateway is enabled.

6. Data & privacy

Account authentication is handled via Firebase Authentication (email/password and Google sign-in), with optional two-factor sign-in and passkeys.

Profile data, portfolio content, messages, and uploaded files are stored using PostgreSQL and Google Cloud Storage.

We use this data solely to operate the platform — matching members, enabling collaboration, and maintaining trust and safety records (including audit logs for admin actions).

See our full Privacy Policy (/privacy) for a detailed breakdown of what we collect, how it's used, how long we keep it, how we protect it, and your rights.

You can download your data at any time from Settings > Privacy > Export my data, and erase it from Settings > Privacy > Erase my data.

We do not sell member data to third parties.

7. Reputation & ranks

Your reputation and rank are calculated from endorsements, shipped projects and verified skills. Admins may adjust them to correct abuse (for example, endorsement trading) or misconduct.

Certain features (organizations, projects, wiki editing, blog publishing, mentoring) may require a minimum rank or plan.

8. Security & responsible disclosure

If you find a security issue, email info@shadowclan.in (subject "Security") with the steps to reproduce it, give us reasonable time to fix it, and don't access, change or keep other members' data beyond what is needed to show the problem. If you do that in good faith, we won't take action against you for the research.

We tell affected members and the authorities about personal-data breaches as described in the Privacy Policy.

9. Third-party services

ShadowClan relies on third-party infrastructure to operate, including Firebase (authentication, hosting, storage) and Google Cloud (compute, database). Your use of ShadowClan is also subject to the terms of these providers where applicable.

Where members paste external links (e.g. a meeting link for a live event, a portfolio media URL), ShadowClan is not responsible for the content or availability of those third-party destinations — click and share links at your own discretion.

To show a preview card for a link in a post or message, our servers fetch the page's public title, description and image. Previews come from the linked site; we don't endorse them.

Events listed by members, clans and companies are governed by the Event Listing Terms (/event-terms): ShadowClan lists them and their organisers run them. ShadowClan organises only events labelled "Organised by ShadowClan".

10. Disclaimers & limitation of liability

ShadowClan is provided "as is" and "as available." We do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation, and features may change, be added, or be removed as the platform evolves.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, ShadowClan and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the platform, including reliance on any beta payment, escrow, or subscription feature described in Section 5.

Nothing in these terms limits liability where it cannot lawfully be limited.

11. Termination

You may deactivate your own account at any time from Settings > Privacy > Delete my account, or by contacting an admin.

ShadowClan may deactivate or delete accounts and organizations that violate these terms, with or without notice, at its sole discretion, including as the outcome of a reviewed content report.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Any disputes arising from your use of ShadowClan will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located in India, unless applicable law requires otherwise.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time as the platform evolves. Material changes will be reflected by an updated "last updated" date on this page and announced to members before they take effect. Continued use of ShadowClan after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

14. Contact and grievances

Questions about these terms, complaints about content or conduct, and grievances under the IT Rules or the DPDP Act go to our Grievance Officer at info@shadowclan.in (subject "Grievance"). We acknowledge within 24 hours and aim to resolve within 15 days. You can also reach any admin through Messages.