Terms of Service

1. Who you are agreeing with

PantherByte is a trade name of BLKPVNTHR LLC, a limited liability company based in Germantown, Maryland, United States ("PantherByte," "we," "us," or "our"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") apply to your use of pantherbyte.org (the "Site") and to any consultation, development, automation, audit, or retainer service you request through it (the "Services").

By using the Site or submitting an inquiry or booking request, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site.

2. What the Site is — and is not

The Site describes services and price ranges. Nothing on it is a binding offer, a fixed quote, or a guarantee of availability. Prices shown are indicative ranges; the price for your project is the one stated in the written scope or invoice you receive.

Content on the Site is general information about software, automation, and technical practice. It is not legal, financial, tax, accounting, or investment advice, and you should not rely on it as such.

3. Engaging services

Submitting the contact or booking form is a request, not a contract. An engagement begins only when we confirm it in writing — by email or a signed scope document — and it covers the deliverables described there and nothing more.

• Scope. Each engagement is defined by a written scope: what will be built, what is excluded, and what you need to provide.
• Changes. Work outside the agreed scope is quoted separately and begins only after you approve it in writing.
• Your responsibilities. You agree to provide timely access to accounts, systems, data, and decision-makers we need. Delays on your side may shift the timeline and, for fixed-scope work, may affect the price.
• Third-party costs. Hosting, domains, API usage, software licenses, and similar third-party fees are your responsibility unless the written scope says otherwise.

4. Payment terms

Consultations and diagnostics are billed after delivery. Introductory consultations, website consultations, and paid diagnostics require no deposit — you are invoiced once the session or diagnostic is complete.

For all other project work, unless your written scope states otherwise:

• 50% deposit up front. Half of the agreed project fee is invoiced when the scope is confirmed and is due before work begins. The deposit reserves your place in the schedule.
• 50% on completion. The remaining half is invoiced when the deliverables described in your scope are complete and handed over.
• Nothing is charged at the moment you submit a booking request — the deposit invoice follows once we have confirmed scope in writing.
• Invoices are due Net 15 from the invoice date.
• The deposit is non-refundable once work has begun, except as described in Section 5.
• Retainer and care-plan engagements are billed monthly in advance instead, and continue until either party cancels with 30 days' written notice.
• Larger projects may be split into milestones, each billed 50% at the start and 50% at completion of that milestone, as set out in the scope document.
• Overdue invoices may accrue interest at 1.5% per month, or the maximum rate permitted by Maryland law if lower. We may pause work on any engagement while an invoice is more than 15 days overdue.
• All fees are exclusive of applicable taxes, which you are responsible for where they apply.

5. Cancellation and rescheduling

Scheduled consultations and diagnostics can be rescheduled or cancelled at no cost with at least 24 hours' notice, and nothing is owed for a session that does not take place. Repeated no-shows may end an engagement.

Either party may end an ongoing engagement with written notice. If you cancel mid-project, you are responsible for work performed and costs incurred through the cancellation date; your deposit is applied against that amount. If the work performed is worth less than the deposit, we refund the difference. If it exceeds the deposit, we invoice the balance. Either way, we deliver whatever has been completed and paid for.

If we cancel an engagement for a reason other than your non-payment or material breach, we refund any portion of the deposit not yet earned.

6. Ownership of work

Once you have paid in full for an engagement, you own the custom deliverables produced specifically for you — the source code, configurations, documents, and designs described in your scope.

We retain ownership of anything pre-existing or general-purpose: our tools, libraries, templates, internal frameworks, methods, and know-how, including improvements to them. Where those are embedded in your deliverables, you receive a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive license to use them as part of those deliverables.

Third-party and open-source components remain governed by their own licenses. We will tell you which ones your deliverables depend on.

Until an engagement is paid in full, all deliverables remain our property.

7. Confidentiality

We treat non-public information you share — business data, credentials, customer records, internal documents — as confidential. We use it only to perform the Services, share it only with anyone we need to involve to do the work (bound by the same obligation), and protect it with reasonable care. This obligation survives the end of the engagement.

This does not apply to information that is already public, that you make public, that we already had, or that we are legally required to disclose.

8. Portfolio rights

We may describe the general nature of work performed — the problem, approach, and outcome — in a portfolio, case study, or proposal, without naming you or disclosing your confidential information. If you would rather we not reference the work at all, tell us in writing and we will not.

9. Warranties and their limits

We warrant that the Services will be performed in a professional and workmanlike manner consistent with industry standards. For fixed-scope development work, we will correct defects in our deliverables reported within 30 days of delivery at no additional charge, provided the deliverable has not been modified by someone else.

Beyond that, the Site and the Services are provided "as is". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all other warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Site will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any software will be free of every defect.

We do not guarantee business outcomes. Revenue, traffic, efficiency, and cost figures discussed in any conversation or proposal are estimates, not promises.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption, even if advised such damages were possible.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to an engagement will not exceed the total fees you paid us for that engagement in the twelve months preceding the claim. For use of the Site alone, where no fees have been paid, our total liability will not exceed USD $100.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud, gross negligence, or willful misconduct.

11. Your data and backups

You are responsible for maintaining your own backups of your systems and data. While we take reasonable care when working in your environment, you agree to keep current backups before we begin work that touches production systems. We are not liable for data loss where no usable backup existed.

12. Acceptable use of the Site

You agree not to use the Site to break the law, to submit false or misleading information, to send spam or malicious code, to scrape or harvest data at scale, to attempt to gain unauthorized access to it, or to interfere with its operation.

13. Site content

The Site's text, design, code, logos, and the PantherByte and BLKPVNTHR marks are owned by BLKPVNTHR LLC and protected by intellectual property law. You may view and share the Site, but you may not copy, republish, or use its content commercially without written permission.

14. Third-party services

The Site uses third-party services — including form delivery and analytics providers — and may link to sites we do not control. We are not responsible for the content, practices, or availability of third-party sites. See the Privacy Policy for the specific providers we use.

15. Independent contractor

We act as an independent contractor. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, employment relationship, or agency between us. Neither party may bind the other.

16. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Montgomery County, Maryland, and both parties consent to that jurisdiction.

Before filing anything, both parties agree to try to resolve the dispute in good faith by direct discussion for at least 30 days after written notice.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The version in effect when your engagement was confirmed governs that engagement; changes are not applied retroactively. Continued use of the Site after an update means you accept the revised Terms. The effective date is shown at the top of the sidebar.

18. General

• If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• You may not assign an engagement without our written consent; we may assign in connection with a merger or sale of the business.
• Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
• A written scope or signed agreement, together with these Terms, is the entire agreement between us. Where a signed agreement conflicts with these Terms, the signed agreement controls.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms: contact@blkpvnthr.com, or BLKPVNTHR LLC, Germantown, Maryland, United States.