Terms of service
These terms are the contract between you and AK Foundry Ltd ("Phrasemill", "we", "us") for the website and product at phrasemill.com. By using Phrasemill you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.
We are registered in England and Wales (Company No. 16882461). Contact: hello@phrasemill.com.
The service
Phrasemill helps authors find literary agents. We collate information from public agent and agency websites, match it to a description of your book, and give you tools to save lists and track queries. Some pages are public. Search, dossiers, and saved work need an account. Paid features need a Pro subscription. How we source data is on How Phrasemill sources data. How the crawler works is on How it works.
Phrasemill is a research aid. It is not legal advice, not an introduction to an agent, and not a guarantee that anyone will request your work.
Accounts
You must be 18 or over. Keep your login to yourself. You are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us if you think someone else is using it.
You can close your account from Account settings, or by emailing us. Closing the account deletes your lists, searches, and query tracker, and cancels any Pro subscription immediately — you do not keep access until the end of the billing period. We may keep records we need for billing, security, or the law. We do not have to refund unused time unless the law says we must.
Using Phrasemill
Use Phrasemill for your own querying and research. Do not:
- Copy, scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-download the agent or agency catalogue — by bot, script, or by hand — to build a competing dataset, to republish it, or to bypass sign-in, paywalls, or rate limits.
- Circumvent technical limits (including anonymous search caps) or probe the service for other people's data.
- Share an account, resell access, or let a tool sit on your session.
- Use Phrasemill to spam agents or agencies.
- Interfere with the site or with other people's use of it.
Ordinary browsing, signing in, and using search as designed are allowed. Public search-engine indexing of pages we choose to make public is allowed, in line with our robots.txt. That is not permission to vacuum the compiled index.
Our data, your use
The compiled Phrasemill index — tags, matches, lists of agents, and how they are organised — is ours. Quoted text from an agent or agency website remains theirs. You may use what you see to decide whom to query. You may not republish the catalogue, license it, or feed it into another product or model.
Automated and AI-assistant access
AI assistants — for example ChatGPT or Claude — can connect to Phrasemill through a standard connector we run (an "MCP server") at www.phrasemill.com/mcp. That connector is the only automated way into Phrasemill we allow. Reaching the service by any other automated means — scripts against the website, headless browsers, or undocumented endpoints — is not allowed, as set out in "Using Phrasemill" above.
Automated access is there to help a person with their own querying and research. It is subject to rate limits and quotas that we set and can change. Without an account it returns a limited, shortened view; fuller results need an account or a Pro subscription, the same as on the website.
You, and any assistant acting for you, may show Phrasemill's answers to the person who asked and act on them for that person's own querying. You may not:
- Store, cache, or collect our responses to build up or top up a separate dataset.
- Redistribute, publish, license, or resell our responses.
- Use our responses, or the connection itself, to train, fine-tune, or evaluate a model, or to build a product that competes with Phrasemill.
- Remove the source, provenance, and "last checked" details we attach, or present our data as your own.
- Run bulk or batch jobs, or rotate sessions, keys, or IP addresses to get around the limits.
When you match against a book description or synopsis, we use that text only to answer that request. We do not need it stored and do not keep it beyond serving and logging the request. Do not send us a full manuscript, and do not send anyone else's work.
Keep the canonical Phrasemill link and the "data from Phrasemill" marker we return with each answer, so the person can check the source and come to the site for the rest.
We may rate-limit, suspend, or block any client, key, or account that uses the connector, and we may change or withdraw the connector, its tools, or this access at any time. Automated access is provided as-is, with no warranty of accuracy, completeness, or availability — the "Accuracy" and "Liability" sections apply in full, and matches are relevance indicators, not a prediction that an agent will represent you.
This section sits on top of the rest of these terms. If an assistant or tool connects to Phrasemill for you, you are responsible for how it uses the service under your direction, and these terms apply to that use.
Accuracy
We collate automatically, about once a week. We can get things wrong. Where we make a call, we surface the evidence so you can check. Always confirm submission details on the agent or agency's own site before you query. If you spot a mistake, please tell us — flag the evidence when you are signed in, or email hello@phrasemill.com.
Subscriptions
A free account can use Phrasemill with the limits shown in the product. Pro is a paid subscription billed through Stripe at the price shown at checkout. Payment is handled by Stripe, not by us storing your card.
Cancel in the billing portal or by emailing us. Cancellation stops the next renewal; you keep Pro until the end of the period you have paid for. We do not have to refund unused time unless the law says we must.
If you are a consumer, you have statutory rights we cannot take away, including (where they apply) a cooling-off period for distance contracts. Those rights sit alongside these terms.
Joining a waitlist, if we still run one, is not a subscription and does not oblige either of us to a launch date or a price.
Your content
Book descriptions, tags you choose, saved lists, query notes, and feedback stay yours. You give us a licence to host and process them so we can run Phrasemill for you. We do not claim your manuscript. Do not upload anything you have no right to share.
Privacy
How we handle personal data is in our Privacy policy.
Other people's websites
We read public pages on agent and agency sites. Those sites have their own terms. Links out of Phrasemill are not an endorsement. If you are an agent or agency and you have a concern about our crawler, email us.
Changes, suspension, closing
We may change these terms. The date at the top will move when we do. If a change is material and you have an account, we will try to email you. Continued use after the change is acceptance. If you do not agree, stop using Phrasemill and close the account.
We may suspend or close an account, or limit access, if we think these terms are being broken, if we have to for security or the law, or if we stop offering the service. We will be proportionate where we can.
Liability
We provide Phrasemill as-is. We do not warrant that matches are complete, current, or right for your book. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for lost queries, lost chance, or decisions you make from the data.
Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or anything else the law does not let us limit. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights remain. For anything else we can limit, our total liability in a twelve-month period is capped at the amount you paid us in that period, or £50 if you have paid nothing.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that if you are a consumer you may also bring a claim in the courts of the place where you live.