Compass · Legal

API Terms & Data License

Effective June 27, 2026·Last updated August 9, 2026

These API Terms govern access to and use of the Enginerds Compass Signal API (the "API"), operated by Spike-Buster Media LLC ("Company", "we", "us"). They supplement, and are part of, our Terms of Service and Subscription Terms. The public endpoint reference is at /compass/api. By using the API or an API key, you agree to these terms.

The Signal Feed is a paid plan and is offered in some regions and not others; where paid plans are and are not offered is set out under Where These Terms Apply in the Subscription Terms.

License Grant

Subject to your plan and these terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license — revocable as provided under Suspension & Termination below — to call the API and to use the measured signals it returns to you (the "Outputs") for the permitted uses below.

Permitted Uses

You may use Outputs for:

  • Internal use — briefing bots, internal dashboards, alerts triggered when coverage shifts, research pipelines, enrichment of internal memos, and monitoring of topics inside your own organization's systems; and
  • Professional deliverables — incorporating individual measurements into advisory work, briefings, or reports you prepare for your own clients or audience, provided that in each case you (a) attribute the data to Enginerds Compass and preserve the measurement framing and any source links (see Attribution), (b) present Outputs as an input to your own analysis rather than as a standalone product, and (c) do not put the recipient in a position to obtain the feed itself.

You may use and cite measurements in your own work, including work you share with clients; you may not redistribute the feed or make Outputs available for others to query, download, or resell. Public-facing data products, standalone datasets, and resale are not covered by this plan and require a separate written license.

What the API Is — and Is Not

The API serves pre-measured coverage signals (movement, emergence, connections, persistence, per-entity profiles) computed over a longitudinal, source-linked corpus. It is not a raw-article firehose, a scraping endpoint, a market-data feed, or a prediction service. Outputs are measurements of how the technology press covers subjects over time — not statements of product quality, adoption, investment value, compliance, technical truth, or future outcomes. See the Terms of Service for the full measurement-not-ground-truth, no-advice, and no-prediction terms.

API Keys

  • You are responsible for keeping your API key(s) secure and for all activity under your key.
  • Do not share, publish, embed in client-side code, or otherwise expose keys publicly.
  • Notify us promptly if you believe a key has been compromised; we may revoke keys to protect the service.

Rate Limits & Quotas

Each plan has a scoped quota and rate limit. We may impose, change, or enforce request and rate limits, and we may throttle or temporarily suspend access in response to usage spikes that threaten service stability. Remaining allowance is returned on each authenticated response (for example, via an X-RateLimit-Remaining header).

Caching

To reduce redundant calls, you may cache an Output value within your own systems for up to twenty-four (24) hours from the time you retrieved it; you may retain it longer only where it is embedded in a specific internal record or delivered work product as described under Derived Data & Records. Caching must not be used to build a persistent or standalone copy of the dataset, to serve Outputs to third parties as a feed, or to circumvent rate limits or quotas. Each response carries a computedAtUtc timestamp — surface or respect it so you do not present a cached value as more current than it is. On termination, cached Outputs must be deleted as described under Suspension & Termination.

Derived Data & Records

You may compute and store derived metrics from Outputs — your own rollups, indices, scores, or flags calculated from the signals — for your permitted internal use and professional deliverables, and you may keep a reasonable archive or point-in-time snapshot of the specific Outputs you relied on for recordkeeping, reproducibility, audit, or compliance. These rights do not permit you to: (a) reconstruct, mirror, or approximate the Compass corpus, registry, or feed from stored Outputs; (b) accumulate snapshots into a standalone historical dataset that is offered or usable as a substitute for the API; or (c) redistribute derived data or snapshots except as an attributed input within a permitted deliverable. Derived metrics that are genuinely your own creative work remain yours, subject to these terms and your continuing obligation not to redistribute the underlying feed or its measurements as data.

Redistribution & Restrictions

Except as expressly permitted by your plan, you may not:

  • resell, sublicense, rent, or redistribute the API or its Outputs as a standalone dataset, feed, or product;
  • mirror, bulk-export, or systematically reconstruct the Compass corpus or registry;
  • build or assist in building a product, dataset, or feed that competes with Compass;
  • use the API as a substitute for scraping articles, or to assemble a Compass-like corpus;
  • use Outputs to train machine-learning models or to create derivative datasets for redistribution;
  • remove, obscure, or alter attribution, source links, or measurement caveats; or
  • present Outputs as ground-truth conclusions, predictions, or recommendations generated by Compass.

Attribution

Where Outputs are displayed externally or shared beyond your organization, you must credit the data as "Data: Enginerds Compass" (or as otherwise specified in the response's attribution field), and you must preserve the measurement framing and any source links.

Acceptable Use

You may not use the API to: violate law or third-party rights; attack, overload, probe, or circumvent the security or limits of the service; reverse engineer the API beyond what is necessary to interoperate; or generate spam, manipulation, or misleading claims. We may suspend access for abusive or excessive use.

Versioning & Changes

The API is versioned (currently v1). We may add endpoints and fields at any time; you should code defensively so that additive, non-breaking changes — new fields, new endpoints, new enum values — do not break your integration. For a breaking change to a stable version (removing or renaming an endpoint or field, or changing the meaning or type of an existing field), we will give at least ninety (90) days' prior notice to your account contact and, where practical, in the API responses or a changelog, and we will keep the prior behavior available during that window. We may make a change on shorter notice only where necessary to address a security, legal, or data-integrity problem, in which case we will notify you as soon as reasonably practical.

Availability & Status

The API is provided "as is" and "as available," without an uptime or service-level guarantee unless a separate SLA is agreed in writing. We may perform maintenance and may modify or discontinue the API, subject to the breaking-change notice commitment above. The keyless discovery endpoint (GET /v1/signal) reports the service's current status and the corpus as-of date, and we will communicate material service incidents or changes to your account contact by email.

Security & Support

  • Transport. All API traffic is served over HTTPS/TLS; do not attempt to access the API over an insecure channel.
  • Keys. Your key is a secret tied to your account, and is stored only as a one-way hash. You can rotate a key at any time by creating a replacement and revoking the old one, and we may revoke a key to protect the service (see API Keys).
  • Support. Support is provided on a reasonable-effort basis by email at support@enginerds.com; this plan does not include a guaranteed response time.
  • Your responsibilities. Keep your key secure, handle any personal data in your own systems in accordance with applicable law, and review the cited sources before relying on a measurement.

Suspension & Termination

We may suspend or terminate API access for violation of these terms, the Terms of Service, or the Subscription Terms, for non-payment, or to protect the service or other users. On termination:

  • your right to call the API ends immediately — you must stop making requests and delete cached Outputs held under Caching;
  • measurements you already lawfully incorporated, before termination, into your internal records or into a professional deliverable already provided to your own client or audience may remain in those records and deliverables — you are not required to claw them back — provided they stay attributed, keep their measurement framing, and are not redistributed as a feed or dataset; and
  • all other rights end, and the restrictions on redistribution, derived data, and reconstruction of the corpus survive termination, along with the attribution, disclaimer, and limitation-of-liability terms.

Disclaimers & Liability

The measurement, accuracy, corpus-limitation, recomputation-and-revision, no-advice, no-prediction, warranty, and limitation-of-liability terms in our Terms of Service apply to the API and its Outputs. You are responsible for decisions you make based on Outputs and for reviewing cited sources.

Changes to These Terms

Changes to these API Terms are governed by the "Changes to These Terms" section of the Terms of Service: for a material change we give at least 30 days' notice by email before it takes effect, and if you do not agree you may cancel before the effective date and receive a pro-rata refund of any prepaid, unused fees. Non-material changes (clarifications, corrections, new optional features) take effect when posted, with the "Last Updated" date revised.

Contact

  • Email: support@enginerds.com
  • Spike-Buster Media LLC
    13157 Mindanao Way #188
    Marina del Rey, CA 90292
    United States