Terms of use

Who may join

• You must be 16 or older to have an account. We ask your date of birth when you join, and we take you at your word; an account we learn belongs to someone younger is closed.
• For now, joining is by invitation only. An account can be made from a table's invitation, or from a starter invite our moderators give to a new table so that the first person at it can start it. We'll say on the site when this changes.
• You must accept these terms when you join. When we change them, we'll ask you once to accept the new version before you next add or change anything (see Changes to these terms).
• One account per person, in your own name or the name your family knows you by. Don't make an account for someone else, or a new one to get round a suspension.

Your account

• You sign in with a code sent to your email, a passkey, or your Google or Apple account. There are no passwords. Keep your email account and your devices safe: whoever can read your email can sign in as you.
• You're responsible for what's done with your account. If you think someone else has used it, sign every other device out from your account's security page and tell us at hello@onlygravy.com.
• Your profile (name, handle, photo, a short bio) is seen by the people at your tables. It's shown to everyone only if you turn on "Show my profile to everyone"; profiles are never offered to search engines.

Tables and roles

A table is a private group with its own recipes, books and the Cooks its recipes come from. You can be at several tables, with a role at each:

• Owner — everything an editor can do, and also: manages the people at the table and their roles, makes and revokes invitations and guest links, shares the table's things with everyone, exports the table's data and deletes the table. A table can have more than one owner.
• Editor — adds, edits and shares (out of draft) the table's recipes, looks after its books and the Cooks its recipes come from.
• Cook — sees the table's recipes, cooks from them, writes "I cooked this" posts and tips, helps read handwriting, and makes their own books.
• Guest link — lets a relative without an account look at the table's recipes, read-only. It can be revoked at any time and can have an end date.

A recipe's Cook is the person it comes from — a grandmother, an uncle — and isn't an account (not the Cook role above). Someone at the table can be linked to a Cook ("This is me") once an owner confirms it. Owners choose whom they invite and which role they give; an invitation never gives more than the role written on it.

Who sees what

Everything you add has one of four levels, always shown beside it:

• Only me — only you.
• The table's name — the people at the table it belongs to, and that table's guest links.
• Anyone with the link — anyone who has its secret link. You can make the link anew (the old one stops working) or let it run out after 7 or 30 days.
• Everyone — everyone, including search engines.

New table recipes and books start at the table's name; your own start at Only me. Only a table's owners can share the table's things with everyone; you can share your own recipes and books with everyone. While joining is by invitation only, nothing is shared with everyone until a moderator approves it — and each time you share something with everyone we'll ask you to confirm that you have your family's permission, and whether there are children in its photos. If there are, the photos stay with the table unless you confirm again that they may be shown to everyone.

A post or tip is never seen by more people than its recipe. A book shows each viewer only the recipes in it they may see. A version of a recipe ("My version") is never shared wider than its original could be shared by whoever shares it.

What you post stays yours

You keep every right you have in what you put on OnlyGravy: your recipes, the photos you take, your stories, posts and tips. We don't become the owner of any of it, and we don't sell it or use it for advertising.

The licence you give us

So that we can run the site, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, show and make available what you post, to the people its level allows, and to adapt and translate it — for example, to resize and clean a photo, lay a recipe out for print or for a phone, convert its units, and translate it between Greek and English so that both sides of a family can read it.

• We use this licence only to run OnlyGravy and the features you use on it. We may let the companies that host and process data for us use it on our behalf (listed in the privacy notice); nobody else.
• It lasts while your content is on the site. It ends when you delete the content or your account, except: for copies in our backups, which disappear within 30 days; for copies of pages shared with everyone in our edge cache, which disappear within a day; and for table recipes that stay with the table after you leave or delete your account (see Deleting your account), for as long as the table keeps them.
• Kitchens add a licence of their own, for selling (see Kitchens).

Draft: the licence wording is for our lawyer to confirm.

Sharing cards, photos and other people's words

When you add a recipe, you say where it comes from: your own, a handwritten card, or adapted from somewhere else, with its credit. By adding it, you confirm that:

• for a handwritten card — you have your family's permission to put it here, and, if its writer has died, the permission of their heirs to share it as widely as you choose;
• for an adapted recipe — you credit its source, and you've written it in your own words rather than copying a book or a website;
• for photos — you took them or may use them, and the people in them (or their parents, for children) don't mind them being shared with the audience you choose.

If you're not sure, keep it at Only me or at the table. Sharing something with everyone asks you to confirm it each time.

Credit and moral rights

Every recipe credits the Cooks it comes from, and the site never removes that credit. A recipe shows who wrote it down, and a version always credits the original Cook. You may not remove or change a credit to make someone else's recipe look like yours. We don't ask you to give up your moral rights (your right to be named as the author and to object to distortion of your work, as Greek law, Law 2121/1993, protects them).

Draft: how moral rights apply here is for our lawyer to confirm.

AI assistance

Some features use artificial intelligence (AI), provided by Anthropic:

• Reading cards: AI transcribes a photographed recipe card, and you check it word for word against the photo.
• Printed pages: AI picks out the ingredients from a photo of a cookbook page.
• Suggestions: from a dish photo, AI suggests a name, tags and a description of the photo for people who can't see it; it also points to a word that's hard to read.
• Translation: AI translates recipes once shared (at any level) between Greek and English.

What AI writes from a photo or a document is only a suggestion until an account holder accepts it on the Share page; nothing it writes there is shared without that. The one exception is a translation: a recipe's other language is made by AI from the words shared at its level, and shown without anyone checking it, and you can report it like anything else. What AI writes is always labelled: "Transcribed with AI, checked by …", "Suggested by AI", "Translated with AI". AI never writes a Cook's story, a recipe's introduction or notes; never estimates nutrition; never makes pictures of food; and never identifies the people in a photo. AI can be wrong: check what it suggests before you accept it.

Every photo is also checked automatically before anyone sees it, for safety: see Moderation.

Conduct

You agree to follow our community guidelines in everything you post, send or do on OnlyGravy. They are part of these terms. In particular, you agree not to:

• post anything illegal, or anything that breaks one of the guidelines' rules;
• post someone else's private information, or photos of people who wouldn't want them shared;
• post work that isn't yours to share, or remove someone's credit;
• harass, threaten or bully anyone, or keep contacting someone who has blocked you;
• pretend to be someone else, or make a second account to get round a block, a limit or a suspension;
• send spam or advertising, or use the site to promote a business without being asked;
• copy the site in bulk, scrape it, or use automated tools on it, except search engines that respect our robots.txt;
• try to get round its security, its access rules, its limits or its robot checks, or to see what you aren't meant to see;
• report people or content in bad faith, or appeal a decision with information you know to be false.

Trust levels and daily limits

To protect tables from floods and spam, every account holder has a trust level, decided by time alone:

• New — for an account's first 7 days, and again for 30 days after a strike (see Moderation). Each day a New account holder may upload up to 5 photos, write up to 10 "I cooked this" posts and up to 20 tips, and may not put links in posts or tips.
• Trusted — everyone else. Each day: up to 30 uploads, 50 posts and 200 tips, and links are allowed. Reports from Trusted account holders count towards hiding an item until a moderator looks (three of them do it).

Nothing you do raises your level but time. Every account holder may make up to 20 reports a day. A table also has a monthly allowance of card readings and photos (50 cards and 300 photos unless we set it otherwise), because AI costs us money for each one. We may change these numbers; the current ones are always on this page.

Moderation, reports and appeals

• Anyone can report what they see. Our moderators — people we appoint — look at reports, at everything waiting to be shared with everyone, and at photos the automatic checks have held. We don't watch what tables share among themselves; we look at content kept to Only me or to a table only when it's reported or held, and only as much as the case needs.
• A moderator may ask for changes before something is shared with everyone, hide it (only you see it), remove it, restore it, reset your profile, warn you or suspend your account. A removal, a warning or a suspension is a strike: you're New again for 30 days.
• We email you a statement of reasons for every decision about your content or account: what we did, why, which rule, whether automation was involved, and how to appeal. You can appeal once per decision, from the link in the email or by replying to it; a different moderator decides.
• If you report something, we tell you what we decided — whether we acted — but never the sanction, and we never tell the other account holder who reported them.

How moderation works has the details.

Suspension and ending an account

We may suspend an account — until a date, or until a moderator lifts it — for a serious breach of these terms or the guidelines, for repeated breaches, or when the law requires it. While suspended, you can't sign in, post, upload or receive notification emails, and the invitations and share links you made stop working until it ends (guest links you made belong to their table and keep working). What you made stays as it was unless a moderator hides it. You can still read our statement and appeal from the link we email you, and to get a copy of your data or delete your account meanwhile, write to hello@onlygravy.com (we delete it unless the law requires us to keep it).

We may close an account for good if the breach is very serious (for example, sharing child sexual abuse material) or keeps happening after a suspension. We'll tell you why, and you may appeal.

You can stop using OnlyGravy and delete your account at any time.

Blocking and muting

• Block someone from their profile, and they can no longer see your content that isn't shared with everyone, nor post on, write a tip on, reply to, thank, add to a book or make a version of anything of yours, nor work with you on a book — and you can't with theirs. Neither of you is notified of the other. A table's owners and editors still see the table's things, which belong to the table.
• Mute someone, and their posts, tips and the notifications they cause are left out for you. They aren't told.

You can see and undo both at /me/people/. Once messages open, you can also block someone from a conversation with them.

Messages

Messages aren't open yet. This section applies only once they open, and it's a draft for our lawyer to confirm first.

• Who can write to whom. You can write to the people at your tables; to someone who follows you while you follow them; and to a cook's kitchen you follow or are a member of. A cook may choose who can write to them first — followers and members, members only, or nobody — and that choice applies to everyone, the people at their tables too; they can always write first to whom they may, and you can answer. A kitchen can write to its own followers and members, but never first to anyone under 18, and its messages to everyone never reach them; someone under 18 may write to a kitchen and be answered there. Nobody else can write to you, and nobody can write across a block, to or from a suspended account, or to someone whose profile they can no longer see. When that stops being true, the conversation closes: what was said stays for both of you to read.
• What you send. Plain text, up to 2,000 letters. Nothing in a message is ever a link. New account holders can't send web addresses, and everyone has daily limits (New account holders 20 messages and 10 new conversations a day; others 200 and 50). Our guidelines and the conduct rules apply: no harassment, no spam, no scams, and never ask anyone to pay outside the site.
• Private between the two of you. We don't read your messages, with two exceptions. If the person you wrote to reports a message, a moderator reads that conversation up to the report — and nothing else of yours — and may remove the message, with a strike and a statement of reasons. If you send the same words into five or more conversations in a day, what you send waits for a moderator before it's delivered (a kitchen writing to its own followers and members is the exception).
• Your controls. Report any message you receive; block someone from your conversation with them (it closes both ways at once); and "Delete it for me" removes a conversation from your messages (the other person keeps theirs). A message is deleted once both of you have deleted it, except while a report of it is open; a removed message's words are kept with its decision for 180 days.
• Kitchens' offers and messages to everyone. A kitchen may offer you some of its recipes at a price in a conversation (never to anyone under 18); you accept by paying, as for any purchase, until it expires. A kitchen that has sold something may write to all its followers or members at once, at most three times a day; you can mute or block it.

Deleting your account, and taking your data

• You can download everything about you at any time from /me/export/. The link works for 7 days.
• You can delete your account at /me/delete/. It deletes your profile, your own recipes and books, your posts, tips and thanks, and your photos.
• Table recipes you uploaded stay with the table, still credited to their Cooks, shown as uploaded by "someone who has left". Your recipes at Only me in a table, and drafts you never shared, go with your account.
• If you leave a table, its shared recipes, posts, tips and books stay with it; your recipes and books at Only me go with you, and your posts and tips at Only me on its recipes are deleted.

The privacy notice says exactly what is kept, and for how long. Draft: what stays with a table is for our lawyer to confirm.

Kitchens: selling, memberships and thank-yous

Kitchens aren't open yet. This section applies only once they open; we'll tell every account holder before it does. A kitchen is an account holder's selling side: they may sell recipes and packs (a book with a price), offer a paid membership of their kitchen, and receive thank-yous.

Who may sell

• You must be 18 or older, and verified by our payment provider, Stripe, to open a kitchen. While you're New, your listings wait for a moderator like anything else being shared with everyone.
• You may sell a recipe you wrote yourself, and your own version of your own recipe.
• You may sell a handwritten card's recipe only if you're an owner of its table and the table has recorded the consent of the card writer's heirs to sell it. The Cook is credited on the recipe and on every receipt.
• You may never sell a recipe marked adapted (from a book, a website or anyone else's work), nor a version of someone else's recipe.

The licence for selling

When you list something, you also give us a non-exclusive licence to sell it — to offer it, copy it to buyers, show it to them in full and translate it — for as long as it's listed, and to keep providing it to everyone who bought it for good, even after you unlist it, close your kitchen or delete your account (buyers then see it as from "a cook who left").

Who sells to the buyer, prices and our fee

• We sell to the buyer — under EU VAT law the site is the seller of digital content it delivers and charges for — and pass you your share through Stripe. We never hold your money ourselves.
• Prices include VAT (or the buyer's local sales tax); buyers see the full price before they pay.
• Our fee is 15% of the price before tax, on sales and on memberships; card costs are ours. You see what reaches you before you set a price. Minimum prices are about €3 a recipe or pack, €3 a month for a membership and €2 for a thank-you (or the same in your currency).
• Stripe pays you monthly, once your balance reaches about €25, after a 7-day delay (14 days in your first 60 days).

Buyers' right of withdrawal, and refunds

• A buyer in the EU normally has 14 days to withdraw from a purchase. For digital content they want straight away, we ask them to tick a box asking for immediate access and accepting that they lose that right; the receipt repeats it.
• We offer a refund anyway: a buyer can refund any purchase within 14 days, from the Bought tab of their Saved recipes, no questions, and loses access to it. Our fee and your share are taken back.
• If a moderator removes something you sold, its buyers are refunded and your share is reversed. A buyer who wins a card dispute can't buy again.

Memberships

Draft: for our lawyer to confirm before memberships open.

• A kitchen's membership renews every month (or year) until the member cancels, at the price they joined at; a price the kitchen changes later is for new members.
• Joining, you tick a box asking for immediate access and accepting that you lose the 14-day right of withdrawal: access begins as soon as you pay. A membership's payments aren't refunded on request.
• Cancel any time from your memberships page: it ends when the month or year you paid for ends, and everything stays open until then. You can keep it after all before that.
• If a renewal can't be paid, everything stays open for 7 days while the payment is tried again; then the membership pauses until you update your card, and ends if the payment can't be collected.
• It ends at once if its payment is refunded or disputed (a dispute also stops you buying on the site), or if you delete your account — or the cook deletes theirs (what it opened goes with their account). When the cook deletes theirs, we refund the unused part of the period you paid for, worked out for the time left in it and rounded down to the cent, and tell you by email. It ends at the end of the period paid for, without renewing, if the kitchen closes or either of you blocks the other.
• While it lasts, a member opens everything the kitchen sells, now and later; once it ends, they keep what they bought outright and lose the rest. A membership is for its member alone.
• A kitchen can't end a member's membership during a period it's been paid for (only moderation can), and sees its members by their handle (or "someone", if they hide their Saved recipes), never their email or card.

Thank-yous

A thank-you is a gift to a cook, attached to a recipe or a post. It gives nothing in return — no access, no badge, no perks — and can't be refunded, except for fraud. We take no fee; card costs come out of the thank-you, and whoever sends it sees what reaches the cook.

Your taxes

You're responsible for declaring and paying tax on what you earn where you live. We give you a monthly statement, and Stripe or we may send you a tax form where the law requires.

Draft: the kitchens' clauses — the sale, withdrawal, refunds, memberships and tax — are for our lawyer and accountant to confirm before kitchens open.

Our service, and changes to it

OnlyGravy is free to use today. We work to keep it running and your data safe, and keep backups, but we can't promise it will always be available or free of errors. We may change, add or remove features; if a change takes away something you rely on, we'll tell you first where we can, and you can always export your data.

Liability

• Recipes on OnlyGravy come from families, not professional kitchens. Check allergens, cooking temperatures and food safety yourself, especially when cooking for children, older people or anyone who is pregnant or unwell.
• Each account holder is responsible for what they post. We aren't responsible for account holders' content, but we act on reports as these terms and the law say.
• Nothing in these terms limits our liability where the law doesn't allow it to be limited, including for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury we cause, or your rights as a consumer. Otherwise, we're not liable for indirect losses, or for losses caused by events outside our reasonable control.

Draft: the liability wording is for our lawyer to confirm.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of New South Wales, Australia, and disputes go to the courts of Sydney, New South Wales. Nothing in them takes away your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. If you're a consumer living in the European Union or another country, you keep the protection of your own country's mandatory law and may also bring a claim in its courts. If something goes wrong, please write to us first at hello@onlygravy.com: most things can be put right quickly. For decisions about content, How moderation works lists the other ways to resolve a dispute.

Draft: governing law and jurisdiction are for our lawyer to confirm.

Changes to these terms

When we change these terms, we'll publish the new version here with its number and date, and email account holders about any change that matters. You'll be asked to accept the new version once, before you next add or change anything. If you don't agree, you can export your data and delete your account.

Contact

Michael Gabriel Papanikolaou, trading as Made By Michael, Sydney NSW, Australia · hello@onlygravy.com. Our contact points are on Legal notice and contacts.