Terms of Service | Donkey Build

Who this agreement is between

This agreement is between Donkey Build ("we", "us") and the parent or legal guardian who books the service ("you"). Our students are under 18, so the contract is with you, not with your student.

Donkey Build is a trading name. If you want the full legal name and address of the person or company behind it — before you book, or at any point afterwards — ask us at support@donkeybuild.com and we will tell you. You should never have to guess who you are contracting with, and we would rather answer that in an email than have you find out it matters later.

By booking a consultation or a session you confirm that you are 18 or over, that you are the parent or legal guardian of the student, and that you can agree to these terms on their behalf. Where a clause below places an obligation on the student — attendance, the authorship rule — you accept responsibility for it.

What Donkey Build is

One-to-one technical mentorship for high school students building real software. A mentor with professional engineering experience works with your student on their own project: defining it, designing it, building it, and shipping it, with written code review in between sessions.

The method has ten stages, covering a project from defining the problem through to shipping it and defending the decisions behind it. Not every student needs all ten. A student arriving with a project already half-built does not start at stage one, and a project with no database does not need the database stage. Which stages apply to your student is worked out at the consultation and set down in writing before anything begins.

Work is delivered in 60-minute one-to-one sessions — one or two a week, agreed with you before the work starts — with written review on your student's own repository in between. The program is defined by the scope we agree rather than by a fixed number of weeks: a larger project simply takes more sessions to carry through it.

What you are buying is that agreed scope, through to completion of the agreed project. It is what defines "the project" for the fee in section 6. If your student later wants to build something materially larger, that is a new arrangement rather than an extension of this one, and we will say so at the time rather than let you discover it at the end.

What Donkey Build is not

We would rather be plain about this before you pay than argue about it afterwards.

Not an admissions consultancy. We do not advise on applications, essays, school selection, or strategy, and we are not affiliated with any university, school, or competition.
Not a guarantee of any outcome. We make no claim about admissions, prizes, placements, or grades, and nothing said in a consultation should be taken as one.
Not homework help. We do not work on graded coursework.
Not a development shop. We do not build your student's project for them, in whole or in part. See section 9.
Not a substitute for school, and not accredited by anyone.

The consultation

The first consultation is free and carries no obligation on either side. Its purpose is to work out whether we can genuinely help — and we will tell you if we cannot, including when the project needs a skill none of our mentors has professional depth in.

We may decline to take a student on. Reasons include a project outside our practice areas, a student who is not yet writing code independently, or an expectation that we would produce work on their behalf.

Who teaches your student

Mentoring is delivered to a stated standard, and these are commitments rather than marketing: a minimum of 15 years of professional engineering experience; currently working in the industry, or recently enough that they are teaching how software is built now rather than how it was built once; and working by review — the student writes the code and the mentor questions it.

You meet the person who will teach your student on the consultation call, before you pay anything, and you can decline the match. If the person teaching your student has to change, we will tell you before it happens and the standard above still applies.

Fees and payment

The program is sold as a single package in US dollars, covering the stages agreed at the consultation through to completion of the agreed project. It is not a subscription and it is not priced per session. Nothing renews automatically and there is no recurring charge to cancel.

The price depends on the scope, so we quote it after the consultation — a three-stage sprint on a half-built project and a full ten-stage build are not the same piece of work and should not carry the same fee. You get the figure in writing, alongside the scope it covers, before you are asked to pay anything and before any work starts. If you do not want it, the consultation was free and that is the end of it.

Payment is in up to three installments, agreed with you at the same time as the scope: the first before work begins, and the rest spread across the program. How many there are depends on how big the scope is — a three-session sprint does not need a payment plan, and for a short scope a single payment is normal. You will know the number of installments, and when each falls due, before you agree to anything.

If more is needed than we agreed. Sometimes a project runs past the scope we set — a student falls behind, or the work turns out bigger than it looked at the consultation. If you and the mentor both want to carry on, we send you a new quote for the additional sessions, and it works exactly like the first one: you see the figure in writing, alongside what it covers, and nothing continues and nothing is charged until you accept it. Sessions never roll on automatically, and you are never billed for work you did not agree to.

Stopping at the agreed scope is always an option and is a normal ending rather than a failure: your student keeps everything they have built, and the refund terms below apply to anything not yet delivered. Where the extra work is because your student wants to build something materially larger than what was agreed, that is the new arrangement described in section 2 rather than an extension of this one.

Refunds. If the arrangement ends at any point, for any reason, we refund the fees for every session not yet delivered, in full and pro rata. We keep nothing for sessions that have not happened, and there is no cancellation charge. Where an installment you have already paid covers sessions still to come, that money comes back to you.

Prices include or exclude tax as stated at the point of sale. If a payment fails we will contact you before pausing sessions, rather than cancelling on you without warning.

Quoted after the consultation is not the same as hidden. A price that depends on scope has to be quoted against a scope — but you will never be asked to commit to a number you have not seen in writing, and there is no charge of any kind before you accept one. The cancellation and refund rights above are set by California consumer law, and they override anything we write that is less generous.

Sessions, rescheduling, missed sessions

Sessions are booked in advance through Google Calendar and run over Google Meet.
You can reschedule with at least 24 hours' notice, as often as you need to.
A session missed without that notice is treated as delivered — the mentor held the time and cannot get it back. You get one exception per program: the first session missed without notice is rescheduled at no cost, and we will not ask you why.
If a mentor has to cancel, the session is rescheduled at no cost, and if we cannot reschedule it within seven days it is credited back to you.
Written code review between sessions is part of the service, not an extra.

What we expect from your student

The method only works if the student does the work. We ask that they:

Attend sessions, on time and ready to show what they built.
Put in five to eight hours of building a week, between sessions.
Act on review rather than collecting it.
Be willing to be told what is wrong with their work. This is the part most students find hardest and it is the part that produces the improvement.
Keep their code in their own repository, where the change history is visible.

If a student consistently does not build between sessions, we will raise it with you rather than quietly continue billing.

The authorship rule

The student writes every line of code in their project. This is the center of the service and the one rule with no exceptions. Our published authorship protocol sets out what a mentor does and does not do; it forms part of these terms.

In short: a mentor asks questions that expose a design flaw, reviews code the student has already written, explains trade-offs, and requires the student to defend every decision. A mentor never tells a student what to type, never writes or pastes code into their project, never hands over a finished design to copy, and never ghostwrites anything carrying the student's name.

Authorship is verified, not assumed: the code lives in the student's own account, every change is recorded under their name, guidance is given in writing where anyone can read it, and the student defends their own code each week. On request we will provide a signed letter stating exactly what was and was not provided, suitable for a school or a competition.

If you ask us to break this rule, we will say no. A request to write, fix, or finish a student's project — for a deadline, a competition, or a submission — will be declined. Repeated requests end the engagement under section 16, and fees for sessions already delivered are not refunded.

AI use

Our AI-use policy forms part of these terms. The standard is one sentence: a student must be able to explain and defend every line in their project, regardless of how it was written.

We teach students to use AI tools the way professional engineers use them. We also teach them to disclose that use where the rules of a competition, school, or institution require it — and it is your and your student's responsibility to know what those rules say. We will not help anyone misrepresent how a piece of work was produced.

We use AI tools ourselves, and we would rather you heard it here. Our mentors use GitHub Copilot and Claude on Business, Team, or Enterprise subscriptions — plans on which the vendor does not train models on what we send. A mentor may use them to read or reason about code your student has already written. They are never used to write code for your student, and your student's work is never used to train anyone's model. Our Privacy Policy sets this out in full.

Who owns the work

Your student owns all the code and intellectual property they create. We claim no ownership, no license to commercialize it, and no share in anything it becomes. This is unconditional and does not depend on fees being paid up to date.

We keep ownership of our own materials — the curriculum, the review method, worked examples, and anything we wrote before meeting your student. Where a mentor's example code is shared to illustrate a point, your student may use it in their project without restriction.

Showing work publicly

We may ask permission to show a student's work — a screenshot, a diagram, a repository — as an example of what students build. That permission is separate from these terms, opt-in, and refusing costs you nothing.

If given, it can be withdrawn at any time and we will remove the work from anything we control. We anonymize by default: no surname, no school, and no identifying detail beyond what you agree to.

Third-party tools and accounts

Building real software means using real tools: a code host, possibly a cloud provider, possibly an app store. Those accounts belong to your student or to you, are governed by their own terms, and often carry their own minimum-age requirements and costs.

You are responsible for opening them, for any charges they incur, and for meeting their age requirements — several require a parent to hold the account for a minor. We will tell you before your student needs one, and we will always name a free option where a realistic one exists.

Safeguarding and conduct

Sessions take place on Google Meet, through accounts we administer. Mentors do not hold private, off-platform contact with a student.
A parent or guardian may observe any session, and may ask for session notes at any time.
Sessions are not recorded. No recording of your student exists, so there is nothing to request, nothing to lose, and nothing to leak. Safeguarding here rests on your right to observe any session and on the written notes the mentor keeps.
If anything about a mentor's conduct concerns you, contact support@donkeybuild.com. We will take the mentor off the engagement while we look into it, not afterwards.

We may end the engagement immediately, without refund for sessions already delivered, if a student behaves abusively toward a mentor. This has never been a problem and we expect it never to be one — it is here so the rule exists in writing.

Confidentiality

We treat your student's project as confidential and mentors are contractually bound to do the same. We will not discuss it outside the people delivering the service, and we will sign a specific non-disclosure agreement on request.

Pausing and ending

You can pause or end the arrangement with seven days' notice. Fees for sessions not yet delivered are refunded in full and pro rata, as set out in section 6.
We can end it with the same notice — for example if a project moves outside what we can genuinely support.
Either side can end it immediately for a serious breach, including the situations in sections 9 and 14.
Ending it changes nothing about ownership: your student keeps everything they built, and their repository is theirs throughout.

Disclaimers

The service is educational. We deliver it with reasonable skill and care, and we do not promise a particular result: not an admission, not a prize, not a grade, not a working product, and not a specific standard of code.

Advice given in a session is general engineering guidance, not professional advice on law, security certification, regulatory compliance, or safety-critical systems. If a project touches any of those, get specialist advice.

Limitation of liability

What is never limited, and comes first. Nothing in this section limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. This carve-out is stated before the limits rather than after them because it matters more than usual in a service delivered to a child, and nothing below cuts into it.

The cap. Subject to the paragraph above, our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or in connection with this agreement is limited to the fees you have paid us for the program the claim relates to.

What we are not liable for. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost profits or lost opportunity, or for an outcome not achieved — an admission, a prize, a grade, or a placement. Section 17 sets out why we make no promise about any of those in the first place.

These limits apply however a claim arises, whether in contract, in negligence, or otherwise. Nothing in this section affects the cancellation and refund rights in section 6, which are separate and are not capped by it.

Governing law

The service is offered in the United States only. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, and the state and federal courts located in California have exclusive jurisdiction. Nothing here removes any right you have as a consumer under the law of the state where you live.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects an existing arrangement we will give you seven days' notice by email, and you may end the arrangement without penalty if you do not accept it. The version and date at the top of this page always identify what is in force.