Terms of service

Effective 1 September 2026. These terms are an agreement between you and Okachobi, LLC, an Indiana limited liability company (“Okachobi”, “we”, “us”), covering the JUDE desktop application, the website at heyjude.studio, and the services behind them (together, “JUDE”). By creating an account or using JUDE you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use JUDE.

The short version: JUDE is a subscription to an AI recording engineer that you talk to and that operates your DAW for you. You keep everything you make. You pay for the studio hours you use, you can cancel any time and keep what you paid for until the period ends, and because the engineer sends real commands to real software, you stay in charge of your session and your backups. The rest of this page says that carefully.

1. What JUDE is

JUDE is a macOS application in which you speak to an AI recording engineer that controls a supported digital audio workstation (DAW) on your behalf — arming tracks, rolling and stopping the transport, managing takes, and answering questions about your session. It needs a Mac that meets the published requirements, a supported DAW that you have licensed separately, a microphone, and an internet connection: the engineer's speech and reasoning run on cloud services described in our privacy policy. Which DAWs and features are supported at any time is described in the documentation, and it changes as we improve JUDE.

2. Your account

You need an account to use JUDE. You must be at least 16 years old, give us a working email address, and keep your sign-in details to yourself. An account is for one person; you are responsible for everything done through it, and you should tell us straight away at support@heyjude.studio if you think someone else has used it. We may require you to install an updated version of the app to keep using JUDE, for example when an update fixes a security or billing problem; the app will tell you when that is the case.

3. The free trial

New accounts get a free trial: 14 days and 3 studio hours, whichever runs out first, with every feature enabled and no payment details required. The trial stops when the hours are used up and never converts to a paid plan on its own — you choose a plan when you are ready. One trial per person; we may end trials that are created to get around that limit.

4. Plans, studio hours and billing

Paid plans include a monthly allowance of studio hours — wall-clock time during which your engineer is live and engaged with you, in conversation or working the session. The meter pauses when nobody is using the engineer and resumes when you speak again; leaving the app open costs nothing. The current plans, their included hours and per-hour rates for extra time, and the pay-as-you-go rate are on the pricing page; how the meter works in detail is in Studio time & plans.

• Monthly plans are billed in advance each month. Hours you use beyond the allowance are metered at your plan's rate and billed on your next invoice.
• Annual plans are billed once a year in advance at a discount. Included hours still reset every month on your billing day; any extra hours in a month are billed separately, by card, on that same day.
• Pay-as-you-go has no allowance and no subscription: you are billed for the hours you use at the published rate.
• If you would rather be stopped than billed for extra hours, you can turn on a hard stop at your allowance in the app's Account settings. Otherwise your engineer tells you, out loud, when you cross it.

Prices are in US dollars. Where we are required to collect sales tax or VAT it is added at checkout and shown before you pay. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see your card number. By subscribing you authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your saved payment method for your plan and for metered hours as described here until you cancel. If a payment fails we will retry it and email you; while it remains unpaid we may pause metered features or end the plan.

5. Cancelling, changing plans, and refunds

You can cancel any time from Account in the app — no email, no phone call. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for: the next monthly renewal, or the end of the year on an annual plan. Until then your plan and its remaining hours stay yours, and you are not billed again. Time already paid for is not refunded pro rata. Moving to a bigger plan, or from monthly to annual at the same or a bigger plan, takes effect immediately with credit for the unused part of your current period; moving to a smaller plan, or from annual back to monthly, takes effect when your current period ends, so you never lose time you have paid for.

Our prices may change. Our launch prices are marked as such on the pricing page; if we change the price of a plan you are on, we will email you at least 30 days before the new price applies to you, and you can cancel before then. Promotional codes are for new subscribers unless stated otherwise, one per account, apply only to the plans and periods they name, and may be withdrawn at any time; they never affect a discount already applied to your account.

If something has gone wrong with a charge, write to us. We would rather fix it than argue about it, and nothing here limits refund rights that consumer law gives you where you live.

6. Your music and your data

Everything you make with JUDE is yours. Your recordings and project files stay in your DAW on your own computer; JUDE does not upload, read, or scan them, and we claim no rights in your work. What JUDE does send — your talkback speech and the session context the engineer needs, such as track names and transport state — is processed in real time and not kept, as our privacy policy explains. Your session history and the engineer's notes are kept for as long as you have an account, for you to look back on, and are deleted when you ask us to delete your account.

7. The engineer is an AI

Your engineer is a machine-learning system that listens, talks, and acts. It is good, and it is not perfect: it can mishear a word, misunderstand what you meant, or act on the wrong track. Its actions in your DAW are real — arming, recording, stopping, and, when you ask, discarding takes. You stay in charge of your session. Use your DAW's undo and save as you would in any session, keep the backups you would keep anyway, and check anything where a mistake would be costly. The engineer's advice on gear, technique, or music is offered to help, not as professional guidance you must follow, and JUDE is not a substitute for a human engineer's judgment.

8. Using JUDE responsibly

Use JUDE only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these terms. In particular, do not:

• share your account, or use JUDE on behalf of someone who has been suspended;
• tamper with the app, its metering, or its sign-in, or try to obtain speech-service access outside the app;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or copy the app except where the law gives you a right we cannot exclude;
• use the engineer to harass, threaten, or deceive anyone, or to generate unlawful content;
• probe, overload, or interfere with our systems, or resell or rent access to JUDE.

9. Our software

We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the JUDE app on Macs you control, for your own music-making, for as long as you have an account in good standing. JUDE, its engineers' voices and personalities, its designs, and its name are ours or our licensors'; these terms do not transfer any of that to you. The app includes open-source components, each under its own license, listed on the licenses page. If you send us ideas or feedback, you agree that we may use them without obligation to you.

10. Third-party services

JUDE depends on services we do not control: the speech model and hosting run on Amazon Web Services, payments run on Stripe, and your DAW belongs to its own maker. Their terms govern your use of their products, and we are not responsible for their availability or for changes they make. The DAW makers do not sponsor or endorse JUDE.

11. Changes to JUDE and availability

We are improving JUDE continually, so features will change, be added, and occasionally be removed; features marked as beta or experimental are offered as-is while we work on them. We aim to keep JUDE available all the time but cannot promise it will never be interrupted — by maintenance, by the providers we depend on, or by faults. If we ever decide to discontinue JUDE we will give account holders at least 30 days' notice by email and refund any prepaid time beyond the shutdown date.

12. Ending the agreement

You can stop using JUDE at any time: cancel your plan in the app, and ask us to delete your account if you wish. We may suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, do not pay, or if we are required to by law; where it is practical we will tell you first and give you a chance to put things right. If we end your access for breach, no refund is due except where the law requires one. Sections 6, 7, 9 and 13 to 16 survive the end of this agreement.

13. What we do not promise

To the extent the law allows, JUDE is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, and we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that the engineer will act as intended in every case. This does not take away rights that consumer protection law gives you and that cannot be excluded by agreement.

14. Limits on our liability

To the extent the law allows, Okachobi is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for lost recordings, lost data, or lost profits, arising out of your use of or inability to use JUDE, however caused. Our total liability to you for all claims arising out of JUDE in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the amounts you paid us in that period and fifty US dollars. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under mandatory consumer law.

15. Your responsibility to us

If your misuse of JUDE or your breach of these terms leads to a claim against us by someone else, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and losses that claim causes us.

16. Disputes and governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Indiana, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. If we have a disagreement, write to us first at support@heyjude.studio; we will try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days before either of us goes further. Otherwise, disputes are decided by the state or federal courts located in Indiana, and you and we both agree to their jurisdiction. If you are a consumer living in the United Kingdom or the European Union, nothing here removes the protections or the right to bring a claim in your own country that your local law gives you.

17. The usual provisions

These terms, together with the privacy policy and the plan you choose, are the whole agreement between us about JUDE. If any part of them turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a term on one occasion, we may still enforce it later. You may not transfer this agreement to anyone else; we may transfer it to a successor of our business, and we will tell you if we do.

18. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms we will update this page and move the effective date at the top. If a change is significant we will email account holders at least 30 days before it takes effect, so you can cancel first if you disagree. Continuing to use JUDE after a change takes effect means you accept it.

19. Contact

Okachobi, LLC
Indiana, United States
support@heyjude.studio