The working agreement

The short version

These terms exist so that nobody is surprised later. If anything below is unclear, email hello@secondbellstudio.com before you apply — that's what the inbox is for.

Who we are & what these terms cover

Second Bell Studio ("we") is a founder-run studio operated by Chris Meehan, based in Massachusetts. These terms are an agreement between the studio and you, and they cover the website at secondbellstudio.com, the field manuals, the newsletter, the Build with AI teacher cohort, and the Summer Build Studio student cohort.

Using the site or enrolling in a program means you accept these terms. Two documents can add to them: the enrollment packet you (or your parent or guardian) sign at acceptance, and — for schools — a written partnership agreement. Where a signed document is more specific than this page, the signed document wins.

The website & field manuals

The site and the field manuals are free to read and are written for real use — but they're orientation, not professional advice:

• Pricing, free tiers, and tool comparisons are snapshots. Platforms change constantly; confirm anything that matters on the vendor's own site before committing a project or a budget.
• Nothing here is legal, financial, or compliance advice. That includes the student data & the law manual — it's a plain-English map, and for real decisions about your school or product you should talk to your administration or a lawyer.
• The content is ours; the use is yours. Site content and field manuals belong to Second Bell Studio. Read them, share links to them, use them in your classroom or with your team. Don't republish them as your own or sell them.

Applying & enrolling

Who the programs are for

• Build with AI (teachers) is for adults 18 and over. Applying is the whole process — there's no interview, and acceptance comes by email.
• Summer Build Studio (students) is for builders ages 14–18. The application includes a required parent section, the fit call includes the student and a parent or guardian together, and enrollment is completed by the parent or guardian.

Minors enroll through a parent

If a participant is under 18, the agreement for the program is between the studio and the parent or guardian: the parent accepts these terms, signs the enrollment packet (including written consent for the student to participate and, where applicable, a media/testimonial release), and handles payment. We don't enroll a minor on a student's signature alone.

Honest applications, both directions

Tell us the truth on the application — age, schedule, experience — and we'll do the same: seats are real, capacity is real, and if the fit isn't right we'll say "not this summer" rather than take the money. We may decline an application for fit, schedule, or capacity, and an application isn't a seat until you've received an acceptance and completed enrollment.

Pricing, plans & refunds

Paying

• Prices for each cohort are listed on the program pages. Some seats are offered at a reduced rate (founding seats, for example) in exchange for a candid testimonial and permission to feature the project on the build wall — always documented in a signed release at acceptance, never assumed (see section 07).
• Payments run through Stripe. The student cohort offers a payment plan (four payments of $275); a plan spreads the price, it doesn't change it — or the refund schedule below.
• Schools paying for a teacher's seat get a formal invoice and W-9 for the business office. Purchase-order workflows are welcome.

Refunds, plainly

The same schedules published on the program pages, restated here so they're binding:

On a payment plan, a refund nets out what's owed for the portion of the program already delivered. Refunds go back the way the money came, within 10 business days of the request. And the standing exception that overrides all of it: if we cancel a cohort, or can't deliver what you paid for, you get a full refund of everything unearned — no schedule, no questions.

How the programs run

• Live, on Zoom, recorded. Every session is recorded — for catch-up, and for parent transparency in the student cohort. Recordings are handled as described in the Privacy Policy and kept for one year after the cohort. By enrolling and participating, you (and for minors, the parent or guardian) consent to sessions being recorded for those purposes. Nothing from a recording is published or used in marketing except as the signed media/testimonial release allows — a testimonial quote or a short clip of a build, identified the way the release specifies.
• Student-cohort communication is transparent by design. No private DMs — written communication runs through a shared project space parents can join, and parents may sit in on any session without notice.
• Show up. The live hours are where the work happens. Recordings cover the occasional miss, but the program assumes attendance — six weeks of 1:1 only works if the student is in the room, and we'll tell a family honestly if attendance is putting the ship date at risk.
• What "done" means. The structural commitment is one working, deployed project per participant, scoped realistically in week one. That commitment is why scope stays small on purpose.

Your work is yours

"You own what you make" is the studio's whole thesis, so here it is as a term of service:

• Participants own their projects — entirely. The code, the repository, the deployed app, the accounts it runs on, and any rights in it belong to the participant (or, for minors, the participant and their family). We claim no ownership and no ongoing license beyond what's in this section.
• Our teaching materials stay ours. Templates, guides, and session materials are licensed to you for your own use — personal projects, your own classroom, your own school. Don't resell them or repackage them as a competing course.
• The build wall and testimonials run on a signed release, not fine print. Featuring a project (name, what it does, how the builder is identified) or quoting a participant happens only under the media/testimonial release signed at acceptance — these terms don't grant that permission by themselves, and a parent can limit how a student is identified or revoke future use at any time.
• Respect other people's ownership too. Don't build with assets, data, or code you don't have the right to use, and don't put other people's personal information into a project. If a project is built for a school or club, who owns it is worked out with that school up front — we'll help you have that conversation.

Third-party tools & accounts

Building real things means real accounts — GitHub, a hosting platform, an AI assistant. Those services aren't ours, and three things follow from that:

• Their terms are their terms. Each service has its own terms, privacy policy, and minimum age — commonly 13+ with parental permission for minors, sometimes stricter. We flag age rules during setup and, for students, recommend the parent create or co-manage accounts. It's the family's call (and responsibility) which accounts to open.
• Their costs are yours unless a program page says otherwise. Most cohort work runs on free tiers, but some tools have paid plans (a ~$20/month AI subscription is the common one). Tuition covers the program; third-party subscriptions, domains, and hosting bills are the participant's, and we'll always steer toward the cheapest setup that genuinely works.
• Their outages aren't ours to fix — but we'll adapt. If a platform changes pricing, breaks, or disappears mid-cohort (it happens), we'll re-route the build. We're not liable for third-party services, but we won't shrug either.

What we don't promise

The honesty section of the site, restated with legal weight:

• No admissions outcomes. A shipped project is a real thing to talk about; it is not a promise about selective admissions, scholarships, or interviews, and nobody honest can make one.
• No guaranteed PD credit. Teachers receive an honest completion letter documenting contact hours. Whether your school or district accepts it for credit is their decision, not ours.
• No infallible AI. The programs teach you to direct AI tools and check their work precisely because their output can be wrong, dated, or weird. Review anything AI-built before you rely on it — especially before using a tool with real students, where your school's policies and the law apply (see the student data manual).
• No warranty on shipped projects. What you build in six weeks is real and working; it is not a commercially warranted product. The site, programs, and materials are provided "as is" to the extent the law allows — which is the lawyer-approved way of saying we promise the effort and the structure, not perfection.

Conduct & safety

Small cohorts run on trust. The expectations are short:

• Be respectful — to the mentor, to other builders, and on demo day to every presenter. Harassment of any kind ends participation immediately.
• Don't use cohort time or tools to build anything harmful, deceptive, or illegal, and don't attempt to access systems or data that aren't yours.
• Keep your account credentials to yourself, and tell us promptly if something security-relevant goes wrong with a project.

If there's a conduct problem in the student cohort, the first move is a conversation with the student and parent. If we have to remove a participant for conduct, fees for undelivered sessions are refunded on the prorated schedule in section 05. If we get something wrong, tell us — directly, please — and we'll fix what's fixable.

If plans change

• If we cancel a cohort (for example, not enough seats fill), everyone enrolled gets a full refund and the choice of first claim on the next cohort.
• If a session has to move — the studio is one person, and one person occasionally gets sick — it's rescheduled within the cohort window, or the cohort extends so the full number of sessions is delivered. The commitment is the sessions and the shipped project, not a rigid calendar.
• If you have to withdraw, the refund schedule in section 05 applies. Tell us as early as you can — an early withdrawal can free a seat for someone on the waitlist, and we'll be more flexible when there's notice.

Liability, plainly

To the maximum extent the law allows: our total liability to you, for anything arising out of the site or a program, is capped at the amount you actually paid us, and neither side is liable to the other for indirect or consequential damages — lost profits, lost data on third-party platforms, lost opportunities. We're also not liable for the acts of third-party services described in section 08.

Two honest notes on that paragraph. First, it's mutual — the cap protects you the same way it protects the studio. Second, the law doesn't allow some things to be limited (and we wouldn't want to): nothing in these terms limits liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, or anything else that can't legally be disclaimed, and nothing in them waives consumer-protection rights that apply where you live.

Governing law & disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where the studio is based, without regard to conflict-of-law rules — and disputes belong in the state or federal courts of Massachusetts, including small-claims court, which for an agreement this size is often the right venue.

But the actual dispute process is this: email us first. Both sides agree to try a direct, good-faith conversation for 30 days before anyone files anything. A studio this small has no legal department to hide behind, which means problems get solved by the same person who answers the inbox — historically, quickly.

Changes & contact

If these terms change in a way that matters, we'll update the date at the top, and enrolled participants and families get an email before changes apply to them. Changes never apply retroactively to a cohort you've already paid for — the terms you enrolled under are the terms you keep.

If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. These terms, plus your signed enrollment documents and the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement.

Contact: hello@secondbellstudio.com. Questions about these terms before applying are welcome — asking is free and a human answers.