Virtual Competence Platform

Terms and Policies

Effective as of 2026-10-20.

Virtual Competence Platform, LLC (“VCP,” “we,” “us,” “our”) provides these Terms and Policies for our websites (the “Site”) and the online services we provide through them, including our personas (the “Services”). They have four parts: the Privacy Policy, the Terms of Purchase and Access, the Terms of Use, and the COPPA Notice.

By using our Services, or by allowing your child to use them, you accept these Terms and Policies, which together make up this agreement.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use information through the Site and Services.

We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”). We obtain parental consent before children under 13 use our Services, and we encourage parents to talk with their kids about sharing Personal Information (defined below) online.

Information We Collect.

Personal Information

We do not collect any Personal Information from you unless you voluntarily provide it to us.

When you create an account, we ask for Personal Information such as your first name and email address. We also store your time zone, read from your browser, so that a persona knows the time of day where you are, and so that the one email described below states your local time. For users under 13, we don’t collect Personal Information without prior parental consent (other than the contact info needed to request that consent). If we learn we’ve collected Personal Information from a child under 13 without consent, we’ll delete it as quickly as possible. To report a concern, email legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com.

Technical Information

We use no analytics, tracking, or advertising, and we set no cookies; your sign-in is held in your browser’s session storage and cleared when you close the tab or sign out. Our hosting provider, Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), sees the IP address and browser information sent with each request and uses it to deliver the Services and protect them from abuse, such as by limiting how many requests one address can make and by screening sign-ins against known compromised passwords. AWS’s sign-in service also keeps its own history of each sign-in, including IP address and device information, for two years. Each time you sign up, sign in, or reset your password, your IP address and browser identifier are recorded, linked to your account identifier, in our security audit log (see Data Retention). Our application logs and other records hold no IP address or browser information.

When you accept this agreement, we record your account, the date and time, and the exact text and version of the agreement you accepted, as a legal record of your consent.

Payment Information

If you buy access to a persona, Virtual Competence Platform, LLC is the seller, and Stripe, Inc. (“Stripe”) is our payment processor. You enter your email address, card and billing details directly on Stripe’s payment page, and Stripe collects and processes them (“Payment Information”). We never see or store your card details. We give Stripe only an account identifier that means nothing outside VCP, the persona, and the term you are buying. We do not give Stripe your name or the email address on your VCP account. Stripe handles your Payment Information, and the technical information and cookies it collects on its own page, under its own privacy policy (stripe.com/privacy).

How We Use Your Information.

We use your Personal Information and technical information to:

Stripe uses your Payment Information to process the payments you authorize. From Stripe, we receive reference numbers and dates for each payment, refund and payment attempt, which we keep as described under Data Retention below.

The notice that your access is ending

About five days before a term you bought ends, we send you one email saying so. It goes to the address you use to sign in, which is also used for this purpose, and it uses the first name you gave us and the time zone stored from your browser. It is sent once, not repeated, and it is not marketing. We keep no separate copy of your address, name or time zone for this purpose; each is read from your account at the moment the email is sent. Replies go to support@virtualcompetenceplatform.com.

Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties.

We do not disclose your Personal Information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

We hire service providers for business functions such as hosting, databases, mailing, and payment processing. We share only the information they need to perform their function, which may include Personal Information.

To generate persona responses, the content of your conversations is processed by an AI model run through Amazon Bedrock, a service of AWS, inside VCP’s own AWS account. AWS, which also hosts the Services, acts as our service provider for this purpose. No other company receives the content of your conversations, including the company that developed the model. Bedrock is configured so that nothing is retained after a response is generated. That setting is enforced by a policy that no administrator in that account can override, and we will not use any model that would require your conversations to be retained. To keep the Services available, Bedrock may route a request to AWS data centers in other regions, including outside the United States; your conversation is processed there only to generate the response, and nothing is kept there.

If our business or substantially all of our assets are acquired, the license under which this product operates does not transfer automatically, and we will not transfer your conversation data to an acquirer that does not assume the same commitments. If no such acquirer is approved, your conversation data is deleted rather than transferred.

We will not sell, rent, or trade your information, and there is no advertising in the Services. We do not use your conversations to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI model — ours, our AI provider’s, or any third party’s — and we do not build derivative, aggregate, or “anonymized” data products from them. Your conversation data is held to do your work and is not repurposed.

We may disclose your Personal Information and technical information when required by law — including in response to court orders or subpoenas — or when we believe disclosure is needed to address harm or interference with our rights, our users, or others.

How We Protect Your Information.

We take commercially reasonable steps to protect Personal Information against loss, misuse, and unauthorized access. No system is impenetrable, however, and we can’t guarantee data sent over the internet is secure. Email in particular may not be secure, so be careful what you send us by email.

If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and tell you what was affected and what you can do, within the time required by law. We commit to telling you what happened rather than minimizing it.

Your conversations and the synthesized participant document are encrypted with keys unique to each persona, and our systems are configured so that our administrators cannot read them in ordinary operation. Retrieving that content would require deliberately removing a security control, and that action is logged. In normal use, only the automated service that runs the persona can read your conversations.

Data Retention

We keep different kinds of information for different periods. The text of an active conversation is cleared once it is summarized into your participant document. Information removed from our live systems may persist for up to 35 days in encrypted backups before it is purged.

Your participant document stays available to you while you have access to the persona, and for at least six months after that access lapses. If we ever decide to remove it, we will first email you the date it would be removed and how to download it. It is deleted when you close your account, when you ask us to delete it, or, for a Scout’s account, on the removal date the parent sets.

Our application logs note that events occurred, with your account identifier but no conversation content, IP address or browser information, and are kept for 30 days.

For security and integrity, we keep a tamper-evident audit log of administrative and system actions for seven years. It holds no conversation content. It does record your IP address and browser identifier, linked to your account identifier, each time you sign up, sign in, or reset your password, and those entries are kept for the full seven years, including after your account is deleted.

If you have bought access or used a code we issue, the record of each payment, refund and payment attempt is kept permanently, as the legal record of what you paid for or were granted; so is our record of any access ended after a refund or dispute, and the record of any term granted by a code we issue. These records hold reference numbers and dates, not your name, email address or card details, and once your account is deleted nothing we keep connects them to your name or email address. Records of your acceptance of this agreement are also kept permanently as a legal record, even after your account is closed.

Accessing and Modifying Account Information.

You can update your account information by emailing legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com.

If you have an account, you may also ask us to provide a copy of the personal information we hold about you, correct inaccurate information, delete your information and close your account, or export your participant document in a portable format. You can delete your own participant document at any time. We verify identity before acting on these requests.

You can delete your account at any time. Any time left on a term you bought ends when your account is deleted, so if you would like a refund for that time, write to us first. The records described under Data Retention as kept permanently are not deleted. Stripe keeps its own records of your payments under its own policies, and deleting your VCP account does not delete them. To ask for Stripe’s records to be deleted, write to support@virtualcompetenceplatform.com, ideally before you delete your VCP account: once it is deleted, nothing we keep connects those records to your name or email address, so we can no longer find them for you.

Parents and legal guardians of users under 13 may review their child’s Personal Information, request its deletion, stop further collection or use, or allow our use while blocking disclosure to third parties. We verify the identity of anyone making such a request.

California Privacy Rights: Shine the Light Law.

Under California Civil Code § 1798.83, California residents with an established business relationship with us may opt out of our sharing their contact information with third parties for direct marketing. To opt out, email legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com.

Important Notice to Users Outside the U.S.

The Site and Services are operated from the United States, and your account and participant document are stored there. To generate responses, your conversations may be processed briefly in AWS data centers outside the United States, and nothing is retained there (see Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties). If you’re outside the U.S., the information you provide will be transferred to the U.S., and by using the Services you consent to that transfer and to that processing.

Changes to This Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy takes effect on the date shown at the top of these Terms and Policies. Changes to it follow Changes to This Agreement in the Terms of Use.

How to Contact Us.

For questions about this Privacy Policy, email legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com with “PRIVACY POLICY” in the subject line, or mail us at: 3621 San Mateo Lane, Lincoln, Nebraska 68516.

Terms of Purchase and Access

These terms apply when you buy access to a VCP persona, or are granted a term of access by a code we issue. Virtual Competence Platform, LLC is the seller. Stripe processes payments for us and is not the seller.

What You Buy.

You buy a fixed term of access to one persona, paid once: a stated number of days with a stated persona. The price and term shown when you buy are what you buy. Everyone holding a term on a persona gets the same access; there are no tiers within a persona.

What a term buys is the conversation with the persona. Your participant document is not part of the purchase: it is yours, and you can read, edit and download it whether or not you hold a term (see When a Term Ends).

Nothing renews. There is no subscription, and we never charge you unless you are present and complete the purchase yourself.

Your term starts when your payment completes, not when you open the purchase page. A later change in price never alters a term you have already bought.

Prices are in US dollars, and the amount shown is the amount charged. Your bank or card issuer may add its own foreign-exchange fee. Any sales tax that applies is included in the price shown, and we pay it.

Personas open for purchase offer a free trial first: up to five turns in one sitting. You don’t need to take the trial before buying.

You buy for yourself. Buying access for someone else isn’t offered, and access is personal to you and can’t be transferred. Some personas are not for sale; access to them comes only from the sponsor who invited you.

Adding Time.

If you buy while you hold a term you bought, or a term granted by a code we issue, the new term begins when your current term ends, so you lose nothing.

If you hold access that was given to you rather than bought, by a sponsor or by us other than through a code, buying isn’t offered while that access runs. Once it ends, you can buy like anyone else on a persona that is open for purchase. If a purchase is completed anyway while given access runs (from a page left open, for example), its term starts when the payment completes, not after your given access. If it adds nothing to your access, we refund it.

On a persona that is not for sale, you can’t buy time, before or after your access ends. Only the sponsor who invited you can restore access that has ended.

Refunds.

To ask for a refund, write to support@virtualcompetenceplatform.com at any time during your term. We make refunds by hand. Every refund is a full refund of that payment; partial refunds aren’t offered. After a term has ended, we may still refund at our discretion.

A refund ends your access to that persona at the moment the refund is made. If you hold more than one term on that persona (for example, a second term added after the first), the refund ends all of your remaining time on it, not only the refunded term.

If you dispute a charge with your bank or card issuer, your access to that persona also ends. The quicker route is to write to us first.

Receipts come from Stripe, sent to the email address you enter on Stripe’s payment page.

When a Term Ends.

When your term ends, the conversation stops, but your participant document doesn’t. It stays yours: you can read, edit and download it as plain text for at least six months after your access lapses. If we ever decide to remove it, we will first email you the date it would be removed and how to download it.

About five days before a term you bought ends, we send you one email saying so (see the Privacy Policy). There is nothing to cancel.

You can delete your account at any time. Any time left on a term ends when your account is deleted; the Privacy Policy describes what is kept.

Scholarships and Other Codes.

If cost is a barrier, write to us at support@virtualcompetenceplatform.com. We may, at our discretion, grant a term of access by a code we issue.

We may also give out codes to introduce people to a persona, for example at an event or through an organization we work with. Each code can be used once, a code may carry the dates between which it can be used, and a person can use only one such code on a persona. Where a code is given out through an organization or event, we do not record that connection with your account.

A term granted by any code we issue works like a term you bought, and the grant is recorded and kept the same way a payment is.

Terms of Use

These terms govern your use of the Site and Services. Together with the Privacy Policy, the Terms of Purchase and Access, and the COPPA Notice, they make up the whole agreement between you and Virtual Competence Platform, LLC.

Who May Use VCP.

You must be 18 or older to create your own account. A younger person may use VCP only through an account a parent or guardian sets up, on a persona built for that purpose, as described in the COPPA Notice. One account is for one person; don’t share your sign-in.

Your Account.

Give us accurate information, keep your password to yourself, and tell us at support@virtualcompetenceplatform.com if you think someone else has used your account. You are responsible for what happens under your account unless it was used without your permission.

What a Persona Is.

A persona is an AI. It is built to think alongside you and help you see your own situation more clearly, not to decide for you. It can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date, even when it sounds sure. What you do with a conversation is your decision.

A persona brings real competence in its field, and it is meant to be useful in your work. But it is not a lawyer, doctor, therapist, financial adviser, or pastor, and it can’t stand in for one. Nothing it says is legal, medical, mental-health, or financial advice; where that kind of advice matters, talk with a qualified person.

VCP is not an emergency service. If you or someone else is in danger, call 911 in the United States, or call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Your Content.

What you write, what you attach, and your participant document belong to you. You give us permission to store and process them only as needed to provide the Services to you, as described in the Privacy Policy, and that permission ends when the content is deleted. We use your content for nothing else: not to train any AI model, not for marketing or advertising, and not to build or sell data products of any kind.

Our Material.

The Site, the Services, the personas, and the instructions behind them belong to VCP or its licensors. You may use them for your own purposes under this agreement. Don’t copy, resell, or redistribute them, and don’t try to extract a persona’s instructions or reverse engineer the Services.

Acceptable Use.

Don’t use VCP to:

Feedback.

We welcome suggestions and feedback at support@virtualcompetenceplatform.com. If you send us some, we may use them without owing you anything for them.

Suspending or Ending Access.

You can stop using VCP and delete your account at any time.

We may suspend or end your access if you break this agreement, if the law requires it, or to protect someone’s safety or the Services. Where it is safe and lawful to do so, we will tell you why.

If we end your access, or stop offering a persona, while you hold a term you bought, and not because you broke this agreement, we refund that payment in full.

Disclaimers.

We work hard to keep VCP running and its personas sound, but we provide the Services “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or uninterrupted availability.

Limitation of Liability.

To the fullest extent the law allows, VCP is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or opportunities, arising from your use of the Services. Our total liability for any claim relating to this agreement or the Services is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or US$50, whichever is greater. Some places don’t allow these limits; where they don’t, they apply only as far as the law permits.

Indemnity.

If you break this agreement or the law in using VCP, and someone brings a claim against us because of it, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of that claim, including legal fees.

Governing Law and Disputes.

Nebraska law governs this agreement, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Lancaster County, Nebraska, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring it elsewhere. Before filing anything, please write to us at legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com; most things can be put right by asking.

Changes to This Agreement.

When we change this agreement, we publish a new version with a new effective date and ask you to accept it before you continue using the Services. A change never alters a term you have already bought.

General.

If any part of this agreement is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce a part right away, we haven’t given it up. You may not transfer this agreement to someone else; we may transfer it only as described under Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties. We send notices to the email address on your account.

COPPA NOTICE

Which persona serves children under 13

Stan — the Eagle Project Coach persona — is the persona most likely to work with participants under 13. No child under 13 can use any VCP persona without a parent or guardian setting up the account and giving consent first. If we ever discover a child under 13 has been using VCP without that consent, we’ll delete their information immediately and close the account.

What we collect from children under 13

We only collect what’s necessary:

We don’t collect location data, health information, financial information, or anything else from children under 13.

How we use it

We use this information only to run the persona sessions, maintain the participant document, share transcripts with parents and guardians as described below, and comply with safety and legal requirements. Nothing else.

How we get your consent

Before your child’s account is activated, we request consent from the parent or guardian. That request explains what we collect and how we use it, links to this notice, and asks you to confirm consent. We don’t activate the account until the parent or guardian consents.

What you can always see

As a parent or guardian of a child using VCP, you have full access to:

This isn’t a special request process. It’s built into the design. Nothing in your child’s VCP relationship accumulates that you can’t see. This reflects the same two-deep accountability principle that governs in-person youth programs.

Your rights

You have the right to:

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com. We’ll respond within 30 days of a verified request.

A note on the AI vendor

Your child’s conversations are processed by an AI model run through Amazon Bedrock, inside VCP’s own AWS account, as described in the Privacy Policy. Nothing is retained after a response is generated, no other company receives the conversations, and they are never used to train any AI model. We select vendors whose practices are consistent with COPPA requirements, and if that arrangement changes, we will update this notice.

Contact for COPPA questions

Virtual Competence Platform, LLC (legal@virtualcompetenceplatform.com)

We will respond to all parental requests within 30 days.

The agreement above is the one every account holder accepts: when they sign up, and again whenever it changes. Version 5.

The exact text, as published: terms-and-policies-2026-10-20.md, SHA-256 e7f77119472f693944611d5356e4c7228f035a2562dd1c8e2172477cc09ce34c.