Permitude LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company, entity number 0015814252 ("Permitude", "we"), provides software that helps you design a residential deck and prepare permit application documents. These terms are the agreement between you and Permitude LLC for that service.
1. Accepting these terms
You accept these terms by clicking "I agree" where we present them, or by checking the terms box at checkout. Each version of these terms is identified by a version code shown on the page you accept; the version you accepted, and when, is recorded against your account.
Your account and your tools act for you. Permitude is built to be used through software agents — including AI assistants — that you run and direct. Anything done through your account, by you or by software you direct, is done by you, including accepting these terms and making purchases. Those agents are your tools, not ours: we do not provide, control, or supervise them, and their mistakes are yours exactly as your own would be — the review-and-adopt step in Section 3 is where you catch them before anything prints. Keep control of your account and the agents you connect to it.
If we change these terms, the service will ask you to review and accept the new version before you continue using it. The version in force is always at permitude.com/terms, and we keep the exact text of every version we have published; the version code on your acceptance record identifies the text you accepted.
2. What Permitude is — and is not
Permitude is a design tool. You — with the software agents you direct — design the deck with it; the service checks your design, renders your drawings, and assembles your permit application documents. The design is yours, and you adopt it as your own before buying a packet (Section 3).
Permitude is not an engineer, architect, or contractor, and using it does not create a professional relationship. The software checks your design against building-code provisions (for example, the International Residential Code as adopted in your jurisdiction), but the documents certify nothing, and:
- Only the project's local building department decides what it will
approve. Verify requirements with the building official.
- We do not inspect or survey the project property. Site data we provide — public
records and public aerial/lidar data — is a design reference shown in the viewer; it does not appear in your documents, and it can be outdated or wrong. Where your permit application needs a site plan or survey, you supply it. You are responsible for confirming site conditions — dimensions, slopes, setbacks, easements, and everything underground.
- A permit is not guaranteed. A packet that is complete and code-cited can
still be rejected, modified, or conditioned by your jurisdiction.
- Where a licensed professional's review or seal is required, that work is
performed by an independent licensed firm, not by Permitude, and that firm is responsible for its professional work.
3. Your responsibilities
- Give accurate information — the property address, what exists on the
site, and what you intend to build.
- The design is yours. Everything in your project — including all text
placed on the drawings by you or by software you direct — is your design. Before you can buy or print a packet, you review the drawing set and adopt it as your own; every packet you receive is one you adopted. That review includes the designer name printed on the cover: you are responsible for its accuracy, and adopting the set confirms it is the name you intend to sign under.
- Designing for property you do not own — as a contractor for a
client, or for anyone else — is designing all the same: the design is yours, and these terms are yours to carry. You represent that the property's owner has authorized the project, and you are responsible for passing the documents — including their notice sheet and its cautions — to the owner and to whoever builds.
- Ensure all required permits and approvals are obtained before building,
and that construction follows the permitted drawings.
- Ensure underground utilities are located before digging (call 811).
- Construction is dangerous. Use qualified people, follow the drawings and
the hardware manufacturers' instructions, and stop and get professional help when conditions on site don't match the drawings.
4. Free preview and the paid packet
Designing and checking is free. The full drawing set is available free as a watermarked preview. Buying a project's packet removes the watermark and includes every later reprint of that packet as you amend the design — one purchase per property address.
Payments are processed by Stripe; we never hold your card details.
Refunds: full refund on request within 30 days of purchase, provided the packet has not been submitted to a building department. After submission, the amendment process is the remedy — that is what it exists for. We can always refund beyond this at our discretion.
5. Ownership and the license you give us
Your project is yours. You own the design inputs you provide, and you receive a perpetual, unrestricted right to use the documents we produce for your project — submit them, build from them, modify them, share them. We own the service: the software, the checking systems, the drawing templates, and document formats.
Packets may include manufacturer documents (for example, connector data sheets). Those belong to their manufacturers and are included under their permissions; use them with the packet.
What you license to us. So the service can work, you grant us a non-exclusive license to store, process, and analyze your designs, check results, and feedback — to run your project, to keep it available to you, and to fix and improve the service. Reusing your designs beyond your own project — as examples, templates, or training material — happens only if you separately agree when we ask; this agreement by itself never grants that. We do not sell your designs and we do not share them with advertisers. If you delete your account, we stop using your designs and delete them as described in the Privacy Policy; improvements already derived from aggregate analysis are not reversible, and a design you have shared under a separate sharing agreement stays shared as that agreement provides — sharing is not undone by deleting the account.
6. Electronic dealings
You consent to doing business electronically: these terms, your acceptance records, purchase receipts, and all project documents are electronic records, and your click or your directed agent's action is your signature.
7. Acceptable use
Use the service lawfully and for real projects. Do not misrepresent our output as professionally sealed when it is not, do not interfere with or probe the service beyond its published interfaces, and do not resell access to the service itself.
8. Disclaimer of warranties
The service and every document it produces are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions; where the law grants you rights we cannot exclude, those rights remain.
9. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent the law allows: our total liability for all claims arising out of the service or these terms is capped at the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim (or $100 if you paid nothing); and we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, including the costs of construction, demolition, repair, delay, or lost use of the property.
The decisions are yours, never ours. Permitude provides documents and information; you, the property's owner, and the professionals engaged decide what to build and how.
10. Indemnification
If a third party brings a claim against us arising from your design or a build from it, your breach of these terms, or your violation of law, you will defend and indemnify us — except to the extent the claim results from our own breach of these terms.
11. Suspension and ending the agreement
You can stop using the service at any time and can delete your account as the Privacy Policy describes. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these terms or abuse the service. Sections 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12 survive termination; your license to your own project documents survives everything.
12. Disputes, governing law
These terms are governed by Pennsylvania law, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. If the law of the place you live gives you consumer rights these terms cannot change, those rights remain yours.
PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY — IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS. EXCEPT FOR SMALL-CLAIMS CASES, YOU AND PERMITUDE AGREE TO RESOLVE DISPUTES THROUGH BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION, AND EACH OF US WAIVES THE RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL AND TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION.
Talk to us first. Before starting arbitration or a small-claims case, send a written description of the dispute to support@permitude.com and give us 30 days to resolve it with you. Most problems with the service are fixed this way, faster than any formal process.
Small claims. Either of us may bring an individual case in small claims court instead of arbitration, in the county where you live or in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, as long as it stays an individual small-claims case.
Arbitration. Any other dispute arising out of the service or these terms will be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules — including its Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules where they apply — before a single arbitrator. The rules and forms are at adr.org. Arbitration fees are allocated as those rules provide; the arbitration will be conducted in the county where you live, or remotely by video or documents, at your choice. The arbitrator — not a court — decides all disputes about the interpretation, applicability, or enforceability of this arbitration agreement, except that only a court may decide whether the "Individual claims only" paragraph below is enforceable. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction.
Individual claims only. Each of us may bring claims against the other only in an individual capacity — not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, consolidated, or representative proceeding, and the arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any form of class proceeding. If a court finds this paragraph unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim — and only that claim — proceeds in court, not in arbitration, and the rest of this section stands.
Your right to opt out. You may reject this arbitration agreement, with no effect on the rest of these terms or on your use of the service, by emailing support@permitude.com within 30 days of first accepting these terms, stating that you opt out of arbitration.
Any dispute not subject to arbitration (other than small-claims cases) will be brought in the state or federal courts sitting in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and each of us consents to their jurisdiction.
13. Boring but necessary
If part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest stands. These terms plus the Privacy Policy — together with any separate agreement you accept for a specific project, such as a design-sharing agreement, which adds to these terms for that project — are the whole agreement for the service. We may assign this agreement as part of a sale or reorganization of the business; you may not assign it. Our records of acceptance, purchases, and project activity are presumed accurate absent evidence of error.
14. Contact
Permitude LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company Entity number 0015814252 Registered office: 710 Parkview Blvd, Pittsburgh, PA 15215 support@permitude.com