The Key
A few words of our own.
Terms of Us uses a few words of its own. Each is explained here once, and wherever it first appears you can tap it for the short version.
45 terms in The Key
- Amendment
- A change to a signed agreement, proposed by one of you and countersigned by the other, recorded word by word in The Log.
- Archetype
- The written profile the Survey gives you: a core and a modifier. Described in full, including what it costs the person living with you.
- One of twenty.
- Clause
- One sentence you can hold each other to. Suggested from your actual answers, readable in full before you agree to anything.
- The ClausesThe Terms
- Browse every clause. Applying them needs a plan.
- Fifteen support clauses with the trigger conditions that recommend them, readable in full at any tier.
- Contraindication
- The notice that replaces the couples-work modules where a safety flag is set on an account, routing to specialist services instead.
- Core
- The first half of an archetype: a pattern for how you hold steady under pressure. The sea’s words are names, nothing more.
- One of four: Anchor, Tide, Breakwater, Squall.
- Dimension
- One of the areas the Survey reads. Each has its own colour and its own shape, so colour is never the only carrier.
- Six: Attachment Anxiety, Attachment Avoidance, Secure Expression, Conflict Heat, Emotional Dependency, Vigilance.
- Friction band
- The gap between the two of you on one dimension, in words — close together, some distance, wide gap. Descriptive, not predictive, on every surface that shows it.
- Get help nowGet help now
- Seven tap-only questions, then the right number.
- Intake, triage and handoff. Answer seven questions — nothing typed, nothing stored — and get an urgency band, a ranked set of categories, an ordered set of actions and a printable handoff sheet.
- Hardship
- Reset and Parting Terms open for anyone on one click, whatever they have paid. Billing is settled later, or not at all.
- Held
- A page or control that is built and not yet open. A held control says why; a held page answers as if it were not there.
- The HoldingMaintenance
- Somewhere to put it down until it can be discussed.
- Queue a niggle, a request, an idea or a decision. It lands on the next Walkthrough agenda automatically.
- HorizonMaintenance
- Eight things that reorganise a life.
- Children, where we live, whose career leads, ageing parents, money long-term, how much we work, illness and incapacity, and the end of life — each with a stated position and a comparison.
- Instrument
- Always a legal document here: a cohabitation agreement, a declaration of trust, a will. A solicitor makes them; the module Legal Instruments is where they are explained.
- The LedgerMaintenance
- A record, not a scoreboard.
- A shared log of what actually got carried, split by category and by person over ninety days.
- The LogThe Terms
- Word-level diffs of every change you ever made.
- Every version of every clause, with what changed, who changed it and when.
- Modifier
- The second half of an archetype: the way the core shows up in daily life.
- One of five: Open, Fierce, Bound, Watchful, Even.
- Module
- One tool in the catalogue, in one of the suites, opening its own real screen.
- Thirty-two, in five suites.
- Pairing
- Your two cores set side by side. Named in words, never scored.
- Parting TermsSupport & Remedy
- Closed by default. The dignified exit.
- Nine sections on what gets divided and a conduct protocol for the part that does the lasting damage.
- Plan
- What you pay for: Survey, which is free, then Foundations or Structure.
- The RegisterGet help now
- Which kind of practitioner, and what to ask them.
- Matches your situation to a type of practitioner, names the accrediting body to check them against, gives you the questions worth asking on the first call, and generates a brief you can send to three of them.
- ResetSupport & Remedy
- Twelve months, five phases, gated.
- The structured process after a fundamental breach, assuming professional involvement throughout. You cannot skip a phase.
- Route
- The modules for one moment — moving in, buying, marrying, having a child — in a suggested order. Nothing locks; you can take them out of order.
- Fifteen of them.
- Schedule
- The specifics a section can’t hold — the household, money, conflict, time, phones, animals. Some numbers are reserved for schedules not yet written.
- Eleven written; five numbers reserved.
- Seat
- One person’s place on a plan. A couple has two; Structure adds seats for witnesses.
- Four witness seats on Structure.
- Second OpinionSupport & Remedy
- One outside hour, properly prepared for.
- Six questions that get the most from a single consultation, plus a two-page review pack a practitioner can read cold.
- The SigningThe Terms
- A ceremony, or a countersignature. Your choice.
- Four signing formats from a two-minute countersignature to a full ceremony with witnesses, and the steps for each.
- SoundingThe Survey
- Forty-eight statements. Twelve minutes. Six dimensions.
- The core questionnaire. Original items across attachment anxiety, distance instinct, spoken feeling, conflict heat, centre of gravity and vigilance.
- Statement
- One line of the Sounding, answered on a scale for your ordinary self.
- Forty-eight of them, on a six-point scale.
- Step
- One module inside a route, in order. Nothing locks; no step waits on the one before it.
- The Structural ReportThe Survey
- Pairing dynamics, gaps, shared load and a friction band.
- Ten pairing narratives, dimension-by-dimension gaps, shared strengths, and clause recommendations tied to your actual scores.
- Suite
- A group of modules that belong together. The names are the catalogue’s; the crisis set is always open.
- Five: Get help now, The Survey, The Terms, Maintenance, Support & Remedy.
- Survey
- The first step: you each answer the Sounding alone, and each keep the profile it gives you in Your Survey.
- The free plan and the first suite are named for it. The Survey plan is the Survey and nothing else.
- Time CapsuleMaintenance
- Letters to whoever you both are by then.
- Written now, encrypted in your browser with a passphrase, opened at a date you choose.
- Urgency band
- The first answer on Get help now: how urgent, from a few questions, before any category. Nothing typed, nothing stored.
- The VaultMaintenance
- The index your family cannot find.
- A list of what exists, where it lives, who holds it and who gets access when — with encrypted access notes.
- Vow
- A sentence you finish from a stem the Survey chose for you, read aloud at the signing.
- Vow CuratorThe Terms
- Scores your vows for whether they can actually be kept.
- Write a vow and it is checked against vagueness and concreteness markers, then scored keepable, workable or too vague.
- The WalkthroughMaintenance
- The agenda writes itself from everything else.
- Queued backlog items, weather divergence, unrepaired ruptures, horizon conflicts and an uneven load, collected into one agenda.
- Weather ReportMaintenance
- Ten seconds, once a day, three numbers each.
- Daily mood, connection and capacity, charted per dimension across a fortnight for both of you.
- Witness
- Someone both of you seat, with a defined role and read-only access to the signed agreement.
- Up to four.
- WitnessesThe Terms
- Read-only seats for the people who were there.
- Invite up to four witnesses with defined roles and read-only access to the signed agreement.
- Your SurveyThe Survey
- One of twenty archetypes, with the parts nobody enjoys.
- Your six scores, your archetype, what it costs you as well as what it gives you, and a portable profile code you can carry into any other module.
- Your TermsThe Terms
- Ten sections. Plain language. Both signatures.
- Builds the agreement itself — money, time, conflict, family, sex, autonomy, communication, the future, and the review date.
- A plan, on its own, is what you pay for.