Content & AI use policy
How Hobfolk uses automated systems: what the desks are, how automated correspondence is handled, and where a person is always required.
The short version
Hobfolk is a back-office service whose desks are automated systems, and every message they send says so in its own footer. Three categories of work never happen without a human: a price leaving the building, anything contractual, and anything that spends money.
1. The desks
The service is organised as named desks — at present Enquiries, Project office, Drawing, Demand, Studio, Compliance, Assurance, Logistics and Money, with others built to order. Each has a working name and an address. Those names are working names for functions.
We use names rather than function labels for the same reason a hospital switchboard does: it is easier to write to Pria about an invoice than to Accounts Desk 4, and it makes it obvious which conversation you are in. It is not an attempt to imply a larger organisation.
2. Correspondence
A substantial proportion of the correspondence Hobfolk sends on a client's behalf is generated and sent without a person reading it first. That is the service. Three things follow, and we hold to all three:
- Every automatically sent message carries a plain line in its footer saying that it was sent by an automated system, at the first point of contact rather than later.
- No automated desk ever signs a document. A signature from something that is not a person is not a signature, and the defect surfaces years afterwards.
- No automated desk ever contacts a creditor of yours, and there is no plan under which one will. Money going out is a human decision, always, on every plan.
Where a client asks for approval before every outbound message, they get it, for as long as they want it. It is the default at the start of every engagement, and it stays on until the client turns it off.
3. Where a person is always required
| Action | Who |
|---|---|
| Issuing a quotation or any priced proposal | Named human, client side |
| Signing or agreeing anything contractual | Named human, client side |
| Committing spend of any kind | Named human, client side |
| Contacting a creditor | Client only. Never Hobfolk. |
| Publishing under a named individual's byline | That individual |
4. Imagery
Photography of real work is photography. It is not altered in ways that change what the thing is, its size or its finish. A visualisation is never presented as a photograph of existing stock.
5. Your material
Client material is used to do client work. It is not pooled across clients, it is not used to train a general model, and it is not retained after an engagement ends beyond the period set out in the privacy notice. This is in the engagement agreement, not only on this page.
6. What we are liable for
Our financial liability is limited to the implementation fees paid for the work in question. We do not underwrite commercial outcomes and we do not carry consequential loss. That cap sits in the engagement agreement in plain English.
The other half of the bargain is that we make the system provable by you: every automated action leaves a check that your own people or your auditor can run, at the far end, without us present. Your directors get the same view of the verification layer and the incident record that we use. A cap on liability is worth nothing to a client who cannot tell whether the thing is working, so we do not ask you to take it on trust.
7. When it gets something wrong
It will. What we commit to is that you hear it from us: a failure that affected your work is reported to you with what happened and what it cost, and turned into a written check so that the same failure cannot recur silently. We do not absorb errors quietly — a failure you never hear about is one you cannot price.
Questions about this policy — hello@hobfolk.com