Bot Terms & Privacy

These terms cover the Discord applications operated by the Kova project, including any official Kova-branded bot. The bots are built on the open-source Kova project and are run by the project maintainers. By using a bot, or by participating in a channel where one is present, you agree to these terms.

Each bot is an AI assistant. It reads messages addressed to it, and in some channels the surrounding conversation, and replies using third-party AI models. Replies are generated by software and may be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Do not rely on a bot for legal, financial, medical, or safety-critical decisions, and verify anything that matters.

You agree not to use a bot to:

• break Discord's Terms of Service or Community Guidelines, or any applicable law;
• harass, threaten, defame, or impersonate anyone;
• generate or distribute malware, spam, or content that sexualises minors;
• attempt to extract credentials, secrets, or other users' private data; or
• deliberately disrupt the service, for example by automated flooding.

We may rate-limit, ignore, remove, or block any user, channel, or server at our discretion, with or without notice.

The bots are provided free of charge, as-is and as-available, with no warranty of any kind. We may change, suspend, or discontinue any bot at any time, and we do not guarantee uptime, response quality, or retention of any conversation. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Kova project and its maintainers are not liable for any damages arising from use of the bots.

You keep any rights you have in what you write. You grant us permission to process your messages as described in the Privacy Policy below, for the purpose of operating the service.

We may update these terms. The effective date above changes when we do. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised terms.

• Message content in channels and threads where a bot is present and permitted to read, and in direct messages you send to a bot. In most channels a bot only receives messages that mention it; where a server operator has enabled it, a bot may receive other messages in that channel as context.
• Identifiers and metadata: Discord user, channel, server, and message IDs, display names, timestamps, and the roles relevant to access control.
• Attachments and links you send to a bot, when the bot needs them to answer.

We do not request or store your Discord password, email, or payment details.

To generate replies, to maintain conversation context, to operate access controls and abuse protection, and to diagnose faults. We do not use your messages to train our own models, we do not sell or rent your data, and we do not run advertising or third-party analytics inside the bots.

To produce a reply, message text and relevant context are sent to third-party AI model providers, which currently include OpenAI and Anthropic. Their handling is governed by their own terms and privacy policies. Server operators and maintainers with administrative access to the machine running a bot can read stored conversations for that bot.

Conversations are stored on servers controlled by the project maintainers, currently hosted with Hetzner in the United States and Germany, and on maintainer-operated machines. There is no central Kova cloud that aggregates bot conversations across unrelated servers.

Conversation history is retained so a bot can maintain context, and is kept until it is no longer needed for operating the service or until deletion is requested. Diagnostic logs are kept for a shorter period. We may retain records where we are legally required to.

You can stop sharing data with a bot by not addressing it and by leaving or muting channels where it is present. You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of the data we hold about you, and depending on where you live you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR. Requests that would require deleting other people's messages, or that conflict with a legal obligation, may be limited in scope.

The bots are not directed at children. You must meet Discord's minimum age requirement for your country to use them.

For privacy requests, security reports, or questions about these terms, contact [email protected], or open an issue at github.com/OpenKova/kova.