OPERATOR are
facts only the operator can supply: the legal identity behind the
instance, its jurisdiction, its liability floor, where notices go,
and the date the document takes effect. Fill them in, and have a
qualified lawyer read the result, before presenting this document as
binding.
The contact points in these documents are the project's own. If you run your own
instance, replace them with yours before you publish them.
Version: 1.0 ·
Template last revised: 2026-09-20 ·
Effective on this instance:
OPERATOR: the date these terms take effect on this instance
1. Who you are agreeing to
Trycord is self-hostable software. The party you agree to when you create an account is the operator of that instance, not the Trycord project. The project publishes the software and nothing else; it does not run instances on your behalf unless the instance is an official one, which is covered in section 2.
Operator: OPERATOR: the legal name of whoever runs this instance · Notices: the project's Discord, discord.gg/dSF7eqsJuP
If you run the instance yourself, you are the operator, and these terms govern your relationship with your own users rather than with yourself. You may publish your own terms instead of these; these are the ones the software ships with.
2. Official instances and self-hosted instances
An official instance is operated by the Trycord project, or by a partner the project has appointed and published. A self-hosted instance is operated by someone else, usually a community, and is governed by that operator's own policies.
On an official instance the Terms for Official Instances apply in addition to these terms, and win where the two conflict. Nothing in them removes a right you have under these terms.
3. The service
An instance gives registered users communities, channels and direct messages, with membership, roles and permissions enforced by the server. Features are added, changed and removed over time. A capability an instance advertises is provided on an as-available basis and may be limited for capacity, for abuse prevention, or because of a legal obligation on the operator.
An instance may also be connected to other instances over federation. Federation is off unless the operator turns it on, and section 10 says what that changes for you.
4. Accounts
- You must be old enough to enter a binding contract where you live, and at least 13 years old. Younger users need an account held by a parent or guardian.
- Give accurate registration details and keep them current. You are responsible for everything done under your account.
- One account per person is the default expectation. Extra accounts are allowed only where the operator permits them.
- Keep your credentials to yourself. You are responsible for what is done with your account, including by someone you gave access to.
- You may delete your account at any time. Section 13 says what happens to your content when you do.
5. Acceptable use
You agree not to use an instance to:
- Break the law, or infringe anyone else's rights.
- Harass, threaten, stalk, defame, or incite violence against anyone.
- Distribute malware, or content that is illegal, fraudulent, or stolen.
- Impersonate others or misrepresent who you are.
- Exploit the service: scrape it, resell access, overload it, or work around rate limits, bans, or permission checks.
- Reach instances, communities, channels or messages you are not authorised to see, or ask for credentials you were not given.
- Upload content you have no right to upload.
- Use the service to send bulk unsolicited messages, or to advertise to people who asked for nothing.
Child sexual abuse material
Child sexual abuse material is prohibited on every instance, without exception, and the prohibition is not limited to what the law of one country happens to forbid. It covers any image, video, audio, text or other material that depicts, describes, or was made to depict a child in a sexual or exploitative context, and it covers every route into the instance: a message, a direct message, a file or attachment, a profile picture, an avatar, a banner, a community icon, a link or preview, an upload that no one has opened yet, the output of a bot, the result of an extension or integration, and content that arrived over federation from another instance.
Attempting it is prohibited as well. Asking for such material, offering it, arranging to obtain it, helping someone else obtain it, and setting up a bot or an integration to move it around are all covered, and none of them is excused by the material being fictional, generated, edited, or described rather than shown.
Running an instance does not create an exception. An operator who knows such material is on an instance and does not remove it, or who is told about it and does not act, is responsible for that failure under the law that applies to them. Nobody can grant permission to break this rule, and no operator, administrator, community owner or moderator can override it.
Accounts, communities, bots and integrations used for this are removed, and the operator may be required to preserve evidence or report to an authority. See Trust and Safety for how to report it.
Community rules
Communities may set further rules for their own members. Those rules belong to the community, and breaking them is a matter for that community's moderators first, and for the operator as well. A community rule may not weaken this section, and it may not make private material public.
6. Content you post, and who holds it
You keep ownership of what you post. You give the operator a licence to host, copy, transmit, display and back up your content for the purpose of running the service: showing it to the people you send it to, storing it, and moderating it. That licence ends when you delete the content, except for copies still held in backups, or copies the operator is required to keep by law.
You are responsible for your content, including whether you had the right to post it. The operator may remove content that breaks these terms or the law, and may pass it to a law enforcement authority where it is required to.
A community's moderators may also remove or edit content in that community. If you believe a moderator's decision was wrong, the appeal route in section 7 applies to you as much as to anyone else.
7. Moderation, enforcement and appeals
Operators and community moderators may act on accounts, communities and content that breaks the rules. The actions available include a warning, removal or edit of content, a timeout, suspension, and a ban. Enforcement is a decision made by a person, and people make mistakes.
For that reason an instance that takes action against an account must give that account a way to ask for the decision to be looked at again, and must answer the request. The appeal route is described on the Support page. An appeal is read by a person, and a decision that is not explained is a decision that cannot be reviewed.
Where an action is taken because content is illegal, or because a law requires it, the operator may not be able to offer an appeal, and may not be able to tell you why.
8. Security, and reporting abuse
Keep your credentials to yourself, keep your client up to date, and tell the operator if you think someone else is using your account. Report abuse of the service, of a community, or of another person to the operator, using the route on the Trust and Safety page. Where the material is illegal, report it to the operator and to the authorities in your country; the operator may be the only party able to act on it.
A vulnerability in the software is a different thing from abuse of an instance, and it has its own route, described on the Security page. Do not test against an instance that has not agreed to it.
9. Your personal data
Personal data is handled as described in the Privacy Policy, which is the operative document on what is collected, why, and for how long. The operator is the controller of that data. The project is not, except on an official instance, where the arrangement is set out in the Terms for Official Instances.
10. Federation and other instances
An instance may exchange content with other instances over federation. What is exchanged is what a community or a member has explicitly authorised, and nothing else. Direct messages are not federated unless the sender has turned that on for them, and a remote instance cannot see a private channel, a local ban, or a local permission.
You are responsible for what you publish to a federated destination, in the same way you are responsible for what you post on this instance. A remote instance is operated by someone else, under their own rules and their own law, and the operator of this instance cannot control what it does with what it receives. Read the Federation Policy before you federate anything.
11. Bots, extensions and integrations
A bot, extension or integration acts on the instance using credentials you or the operator gave it. You are responsible for what you install and for what it does: the permissions it holds, the content it posts, the people it messages, and the requests it makes on your behalf. An integration that is not maintained, or that starts behaving in a way you did not intend, is yours to remove.
The operator may remove a bot, extension or integration that breaks these terms, and may require one to be removed without telling you first where the terms give it the right to. Installing third-party code gives it access to your account, and the operator cannot vouch for code it did not write.
12. Availability, and changes to the service
The service is provided as it stands. Where an instance publishes a status page, it describes that instance at a moment, and it is not a commitment about the future. No operator can promise that a free or self-hosted service will be available without interruption, and no feature advertised on a page is a guarantee that it will always be there.
The operator may change the service, and may add, change or remove features, for any reason including capacity, security or legal obligation. Where a change removes something you rely on, the operator should tell you before it takes effect.
13. Suspension, termination and deletion
You may stop using an instance and delete your account whenever you like. An operator may suspend or terminate an account that breaks these terms, and must give that account a route to appeal under section 7, except where the law does not allow it.
When an account is closed, the operator erases the account data described in section 6 of the Privacy Policy. Messages you posted may be kept, so that other people's conversations still make sense, and so that action taken against your account, or by your account, stays on the record. Those messages are attributed to a deleted account rather than to you.
If an instance is shut down, the operator should give reasonable notice and a documented way to export your data, and should keep the export available for a stated period.
14. Intellectual property
The Trycord software is published under an open source licence, which is set out on the Licenses page and in the repository. That licence covers the software; it does not cover the content people post on an instance, and it does not make the project responsible for what an operator does with it.
You keep your content. You grant the licence in section 6, and no wider one. The operator keeps ownership of the instance's own configuration, its community names and icons, and the branding it uses. Nothing here transfers the Trycord name or logo to you, and nothing lets you use them in a way that suggests the project endorses your instance.
If you send the project feedback, a suggestion or a contribution, you give the project a licence to use it in the software under the same licence, and you say so.
15. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
The service is provided as-is. To the fullest extent the law allows, the operator makes no warranty about availability, fitness for a particular purpose, or that the service will be uninterrupted or free of error. Where a consumer law cannot be excluded, it still applies.
To the fullest extent the law allows, neither the operator nor the Trycord project is liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of data, profits or goodwill, arising from your use of the service. Aggregate liability is limited to the amount you paid the operator in the twelve months before the claim, or to OPERATOR: the liability floor that applies to users who paid nothing. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.
You are responsible for your content and for your use of the service. Where your content or your actions cause the operator a loss, you may be liable for it, as far as the law allows.
16. Governing law and disputes
These terms are governed by the laws of OPERATOR: the law that governs this instance, and disputes are subject to the courts of OPERATOR: the jurisdiction for this instance, without affecting any mandatory protection available where you live. Where you are a consumer, the protections your local law gives you are unaffected by this section.
17. Changes to these terms
These terms can change. The version and the date are at the top of this page, and a material change is announced on the instance before it takes effect. Continuing to use the instance after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms; if you do not accept them, you may delete your account and export your data first.
18. Contact
Formal notices and complaints go to OPERATOR: where complaints about this instance are sent. For anything that is not a formal notice, start on the Support page, which routes to the right place faster.