Terms of service

Last updated 2026-05-13

These terms are the agreement between you and Minimal Systems LLC, a Texas limited liability company, for your use of Trophic — the meal-planning tool at trophic.app. By creating an account or using the service, you agree to them.

If anything here is unclear, email support@trophic.app.

What Trophic is

Trophic is a tool for designing meals from raw ingredients and seeing their nutrition. You build meals and meal plans; we calculate the numbers from USDA FoodData Central and store your work so you can come back to it. Our Privacy policy, which is part of these terms, covers what data we collect and how we handle it.

Trophic is not a diet tracker, a medical device, or a source of medical or dietary advice. The nutrition values we show come from USDA reference data and are best-effort estimates of what's in the foods you select — not a guarantee of what's in the specific item on your counter. If you have a medical condition, a food allergy, or specific dietary requirements, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian. Don't rely on Trophic for decisions where being wrong could harm you.

Who can use Trophic

You can use Trophic if you can form a legally binding agreement where you live. Trophic is operated from and primarily intended for the United States; in the US, you must be at least 13 years old. If you use Trophic from the EU, UK, or EEA, you must be at least 16. By signing up, you confirm that the information you give us is accurate and that you meet these requirements.

You also confirm that you're not located in a country the US government has placed under a comprehensive embargo (currently Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine), and that you're not on any US government list of restricted or prohibited parties.

If you're a parent or guardian and you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email us at support@trophic.app and we'll delete the account and the data associated with it.

Your account

You're responsible for what happens under your account. Keep your email secure — we use it to sign you in, so anyone who can read your email can sign in as you. If you think someone else has accessed your account, email us and we'll help.

You can delete your account at any time from the Account page. We may also suspend or end your account at our discretion — for example, for violations of these terms, abuse of the service, when the law requires it, or because we're shutting down a feature or region. Except where your conduct presents an ongoing risk or the law tells us otherwise, we'll give you a reasonable opportunity to export your meals and meal plans before we close your account.

Plans and billing

Free. You can use Trophic for free, with the limits described on the pricing section of trophic.app.

Pro. Pro removes those limits and unlocks Pro-only features. Pro is $4/month billed monthly, or $3/month billed yearly ($36/year). Prices are in US dollars and exclude any taxes that may apply where you live.

How billing works. Payment runs through Stripe. By subscribing, you authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method for the plan you chose and to renew it automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel. You can change your payment method, switch plans, or cancel at any time from the Stripe-hosted Customer Portal, reached from the Account page.

Renewal reminders. For yearly subscriptions, we'll email you between 15 and 45 days before each renewal to remind you of the renewal date and price so you can decide whether to continue.

Cancellation. When you cancel, your subscription stays active until the end of the current billing period; we don't pro-rate or refund the remainder. After that, your account drops to Free — your existing meals and meal plans stay visible and editable, but you can't create new ones until you're under the Free limits or upgrade again.

Refunds. Except where the law requires otherwise, we don't offer refunds for partial periods. If something has gone wrong on our end, email us and we'll make it right.

EU/UK consumers. If you're a consumer in the EU, UK, or EEA, by starting a Pro subscription you expressly ask us to begin providing the service to you immediately, and you acknowledge that you'll lose your statutory 14-day right to withdraw from the contract once we do. You can still cancel future renewals at any time as described above.

Price changes. We may change the price of Pro. If we raise the price for your existing subscription, we'll email you at least 30 days before the next renewal so you can decide whether to continue.

Your content

The meals, meal plans, names, labels, groups, and targets you create in Trophic are yours. You keep all rights to them.

To run the service — to store your meals, show them to you, calculate their totals, and back them up — you grant us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host and process that content, sublicensable to our service providers solely to operate the service on our behalf. This license exists only so we can operate Trophic for you, and it ends when you delete the content or your account, except as described in our Privacy policy.

We don't use your content to train AI models, and we don't share it with anyone outside of the processors named in our Privacy policy.

Acceptable use

Trophic is a small, focused tool. Don't use it to do things that would make it worse for everyone else. Specifically, don't:

• Use Trophic to do anything illegal, or to harm or harass another person.
• Try to break, overload, or probe the service for vulnerabilities outside of a good-faith report to support@trophic.app.
• Scrape, crawl, or programmatically pull data from the app at a scale beyond what a normal user would generate.
• Resell access to your account, share credentials, or use Trophic to provide a competing service to third parties. Using Trophic in the course of your own work — for example, a private chef planning meals for clients, or a dietitian designing plans for patients — is fine, as long as you're not reselling access or wrapping Trophic into a competing service.
• Reverse-engineer or copy the app to build a substantially similar product.
• Upload content that infringes someone else's rights or that is unlawful.

If you find a security issue, please email us — we'd rather hear it from you than read about it later.

Our content

Trophic — the name, the wordmark, the design, the code, and everything else that makes up the app — is ours, or licensed to us. These terms don't give you any rights to it beyond using the service as intended.

The nutrition values shown in the app come from the USDA FoodData Central public dataset, used under its public-domain terms.

Copyright complaints

We respect copyright. If you believe content in Trophic infringes a work you own, send a notice to our designated agent at support@trophic.app (subject line: "DMCA notice") that includes:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed.
• Identification of the material in Trophic you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it.
• Your contact information (name, address, phone, email).
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use of the material isn't authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you're the copyright owner or authorized to act for them.

We respond to valid notices in line with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, may remove or disable access to material we believe is infringing, and will terminate accounts of users we determine to be repeat infringers. If you believe content of yours was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice to the same address with the elements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

Service changes and availability

We work to keep Trophic running, but we don't promise uninterrupted service. We may update, change, or remove features, and we may take the service down for maintenance. For material changes that affect what you can do with the app — retiring a feature you rely on, or changing how Pro works — we'll give reasonable notice by email.

If we ever shut Trophic down, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice and a way to export your meals and meal plans before it goes away.

Disclaimers

TROPHIC IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." WE DON'T WARRANT THAT IT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT THE NUTRITION VALUES SHOWN WILL BE ACCURATE FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

Nothing in Trophic is medical, nutritional, or dietary advice. You're responsible for the food you choose to prepare and eat.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Minimal Systems LLC and its officers, directors, employees, agents, affiliates, and contractors (together, the "Trophic parties") will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of your use of Trophic — even if we've been told such damages are possible.

Our total liability to you for any claim arising out of or relating to Trophic or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) US $50.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, willful misconduct, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that can't be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Some jurisdictions don't allow these limitations; in those places, they apply to the maximum extent the law permits.

Indemnification

If your use of Trophic, or your violation of these terms, causes any of the Trophic parties (defined above) to be sued by a third party or to incur expenses, you agree to defend the Trophic parties against that claim and to cover the reasonable costs, including attorneys' fees and amounts paid in settlement.

We may take over the defense and settlement of any such claim at our own expense, and you'll cooperate with us if we do. You won't settle any claim in a way that imposes any obligation on us without our prior written consent.

This section doesn't apply to claims caused by our own misconduct.

Arbitration and class action waiver

Read this section carefully — it affects how disputes between us are resolved.

Informal resolution first. Before filing anything, please email support@trophic.app describing the dispute and what you'd like us to do. We'll try to resolve it informally within 60 days.

Binding arbitration. If we can't resolve a dispute informally, you and we agree to resolve it through binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, rather than in court — with two exceptions: (a) either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and (b) either of us may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property.

Arbitration fees. We'll pay all AAA filing, administrative, and arbitrator fees that the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules assign to us. If those rules don't address a particular fee, the parties will split it as the arbitrator directs.

Location. Arbitration may proceed by phone, video, or written submissions where the AAA rules allow. Any in-person hearing will be held in your county of residence or another location we both agree to.

Class action waiver. You and we each agree to bring disputes only on an individual basis. Neither of us may participate in a class action, class arbitration, or representative action, and the arbitrator may not consolidate the claims of more than one person without our and your consent.

Coordinated mass filings. If 25 or more substantially similar arbitration demands are filed against us by or with the coordination of the same lawyer or group of lawyers within a 60-day period, you and we agree the demands will be administered in staged batches: the first 10 cases proceed individually, and the remaining demands are stayed until those first cases resolve. The parties will work with AAA in good faith to administer the batches efficiently. This provision is meant to manage cost and pace, not to deny any individual their day in arbitration.

Severability of class waiver. If the class action waiver is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — will be brought in court rather than in arbitration; the rest of these terms, including the rest of this section, stay in effect.

30-day opt-out. You can opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing support@trophic.app within 30 days of first creating your account, with the subject line "Arbitration opt-out." If we later materially change this arbitration agreement, we'll re-open the 30-day opt-out window and tell you how to use it. Opting out doesn't affect any other part of these terms.

Exceptions. This section doesn't apply to the extent the law where you live prohibits pre-dispute arbitration agreements or class action waivers for consumers.

Survival. This Arbitration and class action waiver section survives termination of your account and of these terms.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Subject to the Arbitration and class action waiver section above, any dispute that isn't resolved informally or by arbitration will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Travis County, Texas, and you and we each agree to that jurisdiction.

If you're a consumer in a jurisdiction whose law gives you mandatory rights that override this section — for example, the right to sue in your local courts — those rights still apply.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we do, we'll update the date at the top of this page. If a change is material — meaning it changes your rights, what you pay, what you can do with the app, or how disputes between us are resolved — we'll email everyone with an active account at least 30 days before the change takes effect. Non-material changes (typos, clarifications, reorganizing language) take effect when posted.

Continuing to use Trophic after the change takes effect means you accept the new terms. If you don't agree, you can cancel your subscription and delete your account before then.

California consumers

California Civil Code § 1789.3 requires us to provide the following notice to California residents: the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs may be contacted in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210.

General

Notices to you. We give legal notice by email to the address on your account. You consent to receiving notices, agreements, and disclosures from us electronically, and agree that they satisfy any legal requirement that those communications be in writing.

Notices to us. Send legal notices to support@trophic.app. For service of process, contact Minimal Systems LLC's registered agent on file with the Texas Secretary of State.

Assignment. You can't assign these terms or your account without our written consent. We can assign these terms — for example, in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or part of the business — and we'll let you know if we do.

Severability. If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.

No waiver. If we don't enforce a right under these terms, that isn't a waiver — we can still enforce it later.

Force majeure. Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as outages at infrastructure providers, network failures, natural disasters, or government action.

Relationship. Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship between you and us.

Entire agreement. These terms, together with our Privacy policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about Trophic and replace any prior agreements on the same subject.

Survival. The sections that should reasonably survive termination — including Your content (the license you grant), Acceptable use, Our content, Copyright complaints, Disclaimers, Limitation of liability, Indemnification, Arbitration and class action waiver, Governing law and disputes, and this General section — survive termination of your account and of these terms.

Headings. Headings are for convenience only and don't affect how these terms are interpreted.

Contact

Questions, requests, or anything else: support@trophic.app.