Terms of Service

1. These terms, and the documents that go with them

These Terms of Service govern access to and use of the websites, applications, interfaces, and protocol endpoints operated by Fold Laboratories, LLC ("Fold", "we", "us") — together, the Platform.

By accessing or using the Platform, including by machine or automated request, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform.

If you list work on the marketplace, the Seller Agreement also applies, and where it addresses a subject specifically, it governs that subject. Our Privacy Policy and our Returns, Refunds and Shipping Policy form part of these terms.

2. What Fold is

Fold operates a curated marketplace for original art, designed to be used by AI agents. Galleries and artists list works. Buyers discover and purchase them through an agent acting on their behalf.

Fold does not own, take title to, take possession of, appraise, authenticate, or resell any work. We are not a bank, broker, auction house, appraiser, or authenticator. We operate the technology, curate the catalogue, present listings to agents, take each buyer's payment through our payment processor, and pay each seller their share.

3. Eligibility and accounts

You must be 18 or older to use the Platform.

Sellers hold accounts. Buyers do not. If you open a seller account, you must give accurate information and keep it current, and you are responsible for activity under your account. Signing in uses a one-time email link or Google sign-in; we do not store passwords.

If you use the Platform for an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it, and "you" includes that organisation.

4. The sale: who sells, who pays, and what we take

4.1 The seller sells. The gallery or artist who listed a work is the seller of it. The contract of sale is between the buyer and the seller. Fold is not a party to it.

4.2 You pay Fold, and Fold pays the seller. A purchase is one payment, to Fold, taken through our payment processor, Stripe, on Fold's own account, so your card statement shows Fold. From it Fold keeps its fee under Section 4.3 and the sales tax under Section 4.4, and transfers the rest — the price less Fold's fee, plus the seller's whole delivery charge — to the seller's account with Stripe. Refunds are issued by Fold, under our Returns, Refunds and Shipping Policy, and a dispute you raise with your card issuer is answered by Fold under Section 15.

4.3 Our fee. Fold retains 8% of the sale price of a completed sale, without cap, from the payment before the seller's share is transferred. It is calculated on the price alone and excludes tax and delivery, and Fold takes no part of the delivery charge. There is no listing fee, no subscription, and no other charge by Fold. Fold pays Stripe's processing fees, including on a sale that is later refunded. A buyer pays the price, the delivery charge and the tax, and nothing to Fold on top.

4.4 Tax. Where required by law, Fold calculates sales tax at checkout, collects it with the payment, and remits it, as a marketplace facilitator. A delivery address is required: tax cannot be calculated without a destination, and it is where the seller sends the work.

5. How a sale works

5.1 Each object is sold separately. Availability is per object. Where a work is part of an edition, each impression is listed and sold individually — an edition of twelve is twelve separately sellable objects.

5.2 Approval is bound to what was presented. When a buyer approves a purchase, we record a consent mandate cryptographically bound to the exact line items and totals shown at the moment of approval. If anything about the session changes after approval, the sale cannot complete. This record is the evidence of what was agreed, and we retain it.

5.3 A hold is not a sale. Approving a purchase places a reservation lasting 180 seconds, measured from the moment of approval rather than from when the session opened. A reservation does not transfer anything and does not oblige the seller until the sale completes.

5.4 Three outcomes. Every checkout ends as completed, canceled, or expired. There is no other state.

5.5 Sold is final and permanent. Once an object is sold it is permanently removed from availability. It cannot be relisted. A resale is a new listing, with its own provenance record.

6. What may be listed

6.1 Art is allowed to be difficult. Art engages with the body, with violence, with death, with religion and politics, and with subject matter many people find disturbing. Nudity, depictions of violence, and transgressive or distressing subject matter are permitted where they are the subject of the artwork. We do not treat explicitness as a reason for removal.

6.2 What is not allowed. The following may not be listed, offered, or transmitted through the Platform:

• Hatred. Work that promotes, celebrates, or incites hatred or violence against people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation, or that dehumanises them. Hate symbols presented approvingly, rather than documented or examined critically, fall within this.
• Gratuitous vulgarity. Material whose evident purpose is shock, degradation, or offence rather than artistic expression.
• Sexualised depictions of minors. This is absolute. It admits no artistic, historical, or contextual exception, and such material will be removed and reported to the appropriate authorities.
• Unlawful works. Anything unlawful to sell, including stolen, looted, or illegally exported works, forgeries, and anything subject to sanctions or export restriction.
• Misrepresentation. Impersonating an artist, a gallery, or their representative, or misstating authorship, authenticity, title, provenance, or condition.

6.3 Checks we run. Checks run automatically when a work is submitted. A listing may be held before publication where it appears to impersonate a verified creator, where a gallery has no recorded representation for the artist, or where it duplicates a published unique work. Others may be flagged for review while remaining available.

We review works against Section 6 on report and at times of our own choosing, and the methods we use for that will change as the Platform develops. Nothing in this section limits our right under Section 7 to remove anything at any time.

No check is a guarantee. We do not undertake to review every work, no check catches everything, and the absence of removal is not approval. If something breaches Section 6, tell us at studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com.

7. Removal, refusal, and suspension

We may remove, refuse, hold, suspend, or delist any work, listing, account, or agent credential at any time, for any reason or for no reason, with or without notice, and without liability to you.

We will generally give notice and a chance to respond where the circumstances allow, but we are not obliged to.

Accounts may be suspended or rejected. Either status prevents publishing new works, and we may in addition withdraw works already published, individually or across an entire account.

If you believe something on the Platform breaches Section 6, tell us at studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com.

8. Authenticity

8.1 Everything is as stated by the seller. Artist, title, medium, dimensions, date, edition, condition, and provenance are as the seller has stated them. Fold does not authenticate, verify, appraise, or independently confirm any of it.

8.2 We do not issue or handle certificates. Only an artist, an artist's estate, or a gallery authorised to act for them can attest to a work. Fold never issues its own certificate of authenticity, and does not collect, keep, or pass on a certificate issued by anyone else. A seller may make a statement about a work in their own name. Where one is made, our role is to record it, host it, and present it.

8.3 The public record. Where a seller has made a statement about a work, it is published at /verify/:id, including whether the seller's identity had been verified at the time the statement was made. That page is the record — not our endorsement of it.

8.4 Your recourse. What happens if a work turns out to be counterfeit, forged, misattributed, or not the seller's to sell is set out in our Returns, Refunds and Shipping Policy. That obligation belongs to the seller.

9. Access by AI agents

The Platform is built to be used by AI agents, on these conditions.

9.1 Use is acceptance. Using our endpoints constitutes acceptance of these terms, both by the agent and on behalf of the principal the agent acts for. An agent that transacts represents that it is authorised to bind that principal.

9.2 Credentials. Credentials are issued per agent and may be revoked at any time, for any reason, without notice.

9.3 Rate limits. Unidentified traffic is limited to 60 requests per 60 seconds, shared across /mcp, /ucp/mcp, and /a2a/v1. Discovery documents are exempt. A credential raises the limit. Circumventing or attempting to circumvent these limits is a breach of these terms.

9.4 Policy links. Every checkout response we return includes links to our privacy policy, terms of service, refund policy, and shipping policy, in keeping with agentic commerce standards. An agent must make these available to the buyer before the buyer approves a purchase. This is a condition of access, and buyers depend on it: it is how someone who never visits our site receives notice of the terms they are agreeing to.

9.5 We do not control agents. We do not operate, endorse, or vouch for third-party agents or the surfaces they run on, and we are not responsible for an agent's judgement, ranking, recommendations, or errors.

9.6 Other automated access. Except through our published endpoints and in accordance with this section, you may not scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-extract Platform content, or use automated means to evade authentication or rate limits.

10. Intellectual property

10.1 Ours. The Platform, its software, protocol implementations, curation, catalogue compilation, structured data, trademarks, and related intellectual property belong to Fold or our licensors. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive licence to use the Platform for its intended purpose. All other rights are reserved.

10.2 Buying a work does not transfer copyright. Purchasing an artwork transfers ownership of the object only. Unless the seller expressly agrees in writing, the artist retains copyright, and the buyer may not reproduce, publish, or commercially exploit the work or make derivative works from it. An owner's ordinary rights — to display the object and to resell it — are unaffected.

10.3 No training on Platform data. You may not use Platform content — including catalogue data, images, descriptions, structured attributes, or embeddings — to train or fine-tune any machine-learning model, or to build a competing catalogue or dataset.

10.4 Sellers. The licence sellers grant us over their listing content is set out in the Seller Agreement.

11. Copyright complaints

If you believe material on the Platform infringes your copyright, write to studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com with: your signature, physical or electronic; identification of the work you say is infringed; identification of the material you say infringes it and where it is; your contact details; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by the owner, its agent, or the law; and a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for them.

If your material was removed and you believe that was an error, you may send a counter-notice to the same address containing the elements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

12. Disclaimers

The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted or error-free, that any work will be discovered, recommended, or sold, that any level of agent distribution will continue, or that information shown by a third-party agent is current.

We make no representation about the authenticity, attribution, provenance, condition, title, value, or investment merit of any work.

Nothing here disclaims a warranty that cannot lawfully be disclaimed.

13. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or anything else that cannot lawfully be limited, including rights under consumer-protection law.

Subject to that, Fold is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, punitive, or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or the value a work might have had. Fold's total liability arising from these terms or the Platform will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid through the Platform in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars.

14. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Fold, its affiliates, and their officers, members, and employees against any claim, loss, liability, cost, or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the Platform, anything you submit to it, your breach of these terms or of any law, your infringement of anyone's rights, or the acts of any agent acting for you.

15. Payment disputes and chargebacks

Because Fold takes the payment, a dispute you raise with your card issuer is raised against Fold, and Fold answers it. We answer once, with our own records of the sale and the seller's record of sending the work, and the card network decides. What we send is set out in our Privacy Policy. A dispute with your card issuer is not a claim under our Returns, Refunds and Shipping Policy and does not extend its periods; writing to us first is usually quicker. What a seller bears when a dispute is lost is set out in the Seller Agreement.

Initiating a chargeback in bad faith — for a work received as described — is a breach of these terms and may result in suspension.

Nothing here limits your right to dispute a charge with your card issuer under its rules.

16. Disputes and arbitration

This section affects how disputes are resolved and includes a class-action waiver. You may opt out within 30 days.

16.1 Talk to us first. Before any formal proceeding, you and Fold will try in good faith to resolve the dispute. Write to studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com and allow 30 days.

16.2 Arbitration. If that fails, any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms or the Platform will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator, seated in Denver, Colorado — or, at your election, in your home county or by remote proceeding.

16.3 Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or address unauthorised access to the Platform.

16.4 Class-action waiver. Disputes may be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over a representative proceeding.

16.5 Opting out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com within 30 days of first accepting these terms, stating your name and that you opt out. Opting out affects nothing else and will not disadvantage you.

16.6 Governing law and venue. Colorado law governs these terms, without regard to conflicts of law principles. Where a dispute proceeds in court, the exclusive venue is the state and federal courts in Denver County, Colorado, and both parties consent to that jurisdiction.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Where a change is material, we will give notice — by email or through the Platform — at least 30 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Platform after that date is acceptance. The version in force at the time of a purchase governs that purchase.

18. General

Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our written consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

Entire agreement. These terms, together with the documents named in Section 1, are the entire agreement between you and Fold regarding the Platform.

Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, it is modified to the least extent necessary or severed, and the rest remains in force.

No waiver. Not enforcing a provision does not waive it.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

No agency. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or franchise relationship.

Notices. We may send notices to the email address on your account. Notices to us go to studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com.

19. Contact

studioassistant@foldlaboratories.com Fold Laboratories, LLC · Denver, Colorado, United States