Terms of Service

Nivoraworks, sole proprietorship of Kamiel Niville, Julius en Maurits Sabbestraat 15, 8000 Brugge, Belgium. Company and VAT number BE 1041.516.417. Email kamiel@nivoraworks.com, phone +32 489 00 77 37.

Nivora is a software and AI studio based in Bruges, Belgium. We design and build custom AI systems for businesses, across three stages: consulting to find what is worth building, implementation to design and ship it, and support to keep it running and improving.

These terms apply to this website and to the services we sell from it.

Most of what follows is written for work with businesses. We also work with private individuals, and Belgian consumer law gives them rights that a set of terms cannot take away. If you are engaging us privately, outside any professional activity, read the chapter “If you are a consumer” below. That chapter overrides anything elsewhere in these terms that would give you less.

Our own applications have their own agreements. Box, Voice and the Nivora platform at app.nivoraworks.com are covered by the terms published on their own pages, not by this document.

The exact scope, deliverables, timeline, and price for each engagement are set out in a separate proposal or statement of work. Where that document and these terms disagree, the proposal wins for that project.

Before a full project, we usually prove the value on a small, real slice of your work. That means taking one concrete task and building a working version of the system around it, using your data and your process. If it clearly helps, we scope the full build from there. If it does not, you have lost a small step instead of a large one.

A proposal becomes an agreement once you accept it in writing, which includes email. We confirm that acceptance, and you receive the proposal and these terms at that point in a form you can keep.

We conclude agreements in Dutch or in English, whichever you prefer. We keep the proposal and the acceptance on file; ask for a copy later and we will send it.

Unless the proposal says otherwise:

• A quote stays valid for 30 days.
• We ask 30% on order, and the rest according to the stages in the proposal.
• Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date.
• Prices exclude VAT and any third-party costs, such as hosting, model usage, or licences.
• Recurring support or hosting is billed on the cycle agreed in writing.

If an invoice is not paid on time, interest runs by operation of law and without notice, at the statutory rate for commercial transactions under the Belgian Act of 2 August 2002, together with the fixed 40 euro compensation for recovery costs provided by that Act. On top of that, a fixed indemnity of 10% of the outstanding amount is owed, with a minimum of 125 euro. This paragraph applies between businesses only; if you are a consumer, the free reminder and the legal caps in the consumer chapter apply instead.

We can suspend work while an invoice is seriously overdue. We will tell you before we do.

To build something that works, we rely on you to give us timely access to the people, systems, data, and decisions a project needs. You confirm that you have the right to share any data and accounts you give us access to, and that doing so does not break a law or another agreement you are bound by.

Delays or missing access on your side can affect timelines and cost. We will flag this as early as we can.

We deliver in stages. You have ten working days after each delivery to report anything that does not match the agreed scope. Without a report in that window, and in any case once you start using the delivery in production, the stage counts as accepted.

For 30 days after delivery we fix defects in what we built free of charge. After that, corrections and changes run through a maintenance agreement or a new assignment. The warranty does not cover changes you or a third party made yourself, faults in third-party software, or use outside what was agreed.

Your data stays yours. The custom work we deliver for your project, including the configuration and code written specifically for you, becomes yours once the related invoices are paid in full.

We keep ownership of the general tools, libraries, methods, and know-how we bring to the work and reuse across clients. We grant you a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use these as part of your delivered system. Open-source and third-party components stay under their own licences.

Where a project calls for it, we build systems that run inside your own environment or on infrastructure you control, so your data does not have to leave your walls. Where a system runs and who can access it is agreed per project.

Where we process personal data on your behalf, we act as your processor and we sign a data processing agreement under article 28 GDPR before that processing starts.

What you give us, and what runs through a system we build for you, is not used to train or improve AI models. Not for us, not for the next client, and not to turn into a product.

We pick our providers on that too. The models we use run on business terms in which the provider contractually commits not to train on your content.

If we want to improve a system using real examples from your work, we ask separately and in writing. You can say no, and it changes nothing else about the engagement.

AI systems produce useful results but they are not perfect and can be wrong or incomplete. The systems we build are tools to support your work, not a replacement for human judgement. You are responsible for reviewing outputs before relying on them for decisions, and for keeping a human in the loop where the stakes call for it. We will tell you plainly where a system is strong and where it needs checking.

The assistant on this website is an AI system. It says so before you start, as article 50 of the European AI Act requires. Its answers are informative and never form an offer or an agreement.

Where we build an AI system for you, you are its deployer under the AI Act. We tell you which obligations that brings for your use, and we build the transparency and logging the system needs to meet them.

Each side will keep the other side’s non-public information confidential and use it only to carry out the work. This does not apply to information that is already public, that you or we already had, or that the law requires us to disclose. This duty continues for five years after the engagement ends.

We may work with freelancers or subcontractors. They are bound by the same confidentiality, and we stay responsible for their work towards you.

We may mention your name and logo as a client, and describe the work in general terms. You can object in writing at any time, and we then remove it. We never publish anything confidential about your business without your explicit approval.

We carry out our work with reasonable skill and care, as an obligation of means. Beyond what is agreed in the proposal, our services and this website are provided as is.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profit, lost turnover, lost savings, or lost data, and our total liability for an engagement is limited to the fees you paid us for that engagement in the twelve months before the event that caused the damage.

These limits never apply to:

• our own intent or gross negligence, or that of the people we bring in;
• failure to perform the essential obligations that form the subject of the agreement, except in case of force majeure;
• damage to life, limb or health;
• any liability that cannot be limited under Belgian law.

This carve-out is deliberate. Under the Belgian rules on unfair terms between businesses, a clause that excludes intent or gross negligence is presumed unlawful and is then treated as not written, which would leave no limit at all.

Tell us first. Email kamiel@nivoraworks.com or call +32 489 00 77 37, with what happened and what you would like to see. We confirm within two working days that we have read it, and within ten working days we come back with an answer or a proposal to put it right. If working it out takes longer, we say so and we say when you will hear from us.

If we cannot resolve it together, the way to court stays open. If you are a consumer, you can go to the Belgian Consumer Mediation Service free of charge first; the consumer chapter above explains how.

We are not bound by any code of conduct.

Neither side is liable for a delay or failure caused by something outside its reasonable control, such as an outage at a hosting or model provider, a cyber attack, a strike, or a government measure. If that situation lasts longer than 60 days, either side can end the engagement in writing, and you pay for work done up to that point.

A project ends when it is delivered and paid. Recurring support or hosting runs for a month at a time and renews automatically. You can end it with one month’s written notice, we with three months’ written notice.

If you end a project early, you pay for work done and for costs we already committed to. Either side can end the agreement immediately, in writing, if the other side is in serious breach and has not fixed it within 15 days of a written notice.

If you engage us privately, outside any professional activity, you are a consumer. This chapter then overrides the rest of these terms. Wherever the rest would give you less than mandatory Belgian consumer law, the law applies and our wording does not.

What you get up front. Before you order, the proposal sets out exactly what we do, what it costs including VAT, when we deliver, and what happens afterwards. You only order once you agree to that.

Your right of withdrawal. If we conclude the agreement at a distance or away from our premises, you have fourteen days to withdraw from it without giving a reason. That period runs from the day the agreement is concluded. A clear statement by email to kamiel@nivoraworks.com is enough, and you may also use the model form below. We confirm receipt and refund everything you have already paid within fourteen days.

If you want us to start sooner. At your express request we will begin within those fourteen days. If you then still withdraw, you pay only for the part already done, in proportion to the full price. If the work is fully performed at your request before the fourteen days are up, and you acknowledged beforehand that this ends your right of withdrawal, you can no longer withdraw. We always ask for both of those separately and in writing, never through a pre-ticked box.

Model withdrawal form. Copy these lines into an email or a letter:

• To Nivoraworks, sole proprietorship of Kamiel Niville, Julius en Maurits Sabbestraat 15, 8000 Brugge, Belgium, kamiel@nivoraworks.com.
• I hereby give notice that I withdraw from our agreement for the following service: (description).
• Ordered on: (date).
• Name and address of the consumer.
• Date, and on paper your signature as well.

Your legal guarantee. If what we deliver does not match what we agreed, you have the rights Belgian consumer law gives you: repair, replacement, a price reduction, or termination of the agreement. For digital content and digital services that legal conformity guarantee runs for two years, and for as long as we keep supplying where supply is continuous. Our thirty-day warranty above comes on top of that and does not limit those rights. The ten working days for checking a delivery do not run against you either: your legal rights do not lapse because you reported something later.

If you pay late. We send you a free reminder first. Costs can only be added fourteen calendar days after the day you receive that reminder, and they stay within the limits of Book XIX of the Belgian Code of Economic Law:

• up to 150 euro outstanding: 20 euro at most;
• from 150.01 to 500 euro: 30 euro at most, plus 10% of the amount above 150 euro;
• above 500 euro: 65 euro at most, plus 5% of the amount above 500 euro, capped at 2,000 euro.

Interest stays limited to the statutory rate. The 10% indemnity with a 125 euro minimum and the fixed 40 euro recovery costs from the payment chapter therefore do not apply to you.

Our liability towards you. The cap above only works as far as consumer law allows. It never applies to damage to life, body or health, and never to our own intent or gross fault.

If we cannot work it out together. You can go to the Belgian Consumer Mediation Service free of charge: North Gate II, Koning Albert II-laan 8 bus 1, 1000 Brussels, contact@consumentenombudsdienst.be, consumentenombudsdienst.be. That service mediates before a court gets involved. You can also go straight to court: the clause naming the courts of Ghent, Bruges division below does not bind you, and you can bring your case before the court where you live.

We may update these terms as our work evolves. The current version is always the one on this page, with the date it was last updated. For engagements already running, the version in force when the proposal was accepted keeps applying unless we agree otherwise.

These terms are governed by Belgian law. Any dispute falls under the courts of Ghent, Bruges division, unless mandatory law says otherwise. That reservation matters for consumers: this clause does not bind you, see the consumer chapter above. Before going to court, we will always try to sort it out in a conversation first.

Questions about these terms? Email kamiel@nivoraworks.com or call +32 489 00 77 37.