Goable — Liability Framework

Version: 2026-06-26.

Decisions made 2026-05-20, updated 2026-06-26 to reflect the Italy-of-establishment governing-law alignment. Covers the advisory/authoritative distinction, ToS language, API response design, marketing guardrails, and jurisdiction.

This document is a positioning and policy statement that explains the reasoning behind the liability clauses in the Terms of Service. It is not a legal opinion or a definitive interpretation of any law. Where the Terms and this document conflict, the Terms control.

1. Core position: advisory tool, not decision system

Goable is, by design, a decision support tool. The operator sees the score and makes the final go/no-go decision. That separation, the operator choosing to cancel or go, is central to how the product is positioned: the score informs, the operator decides. Goable does not make the operational decision and does not present itself as an authoritative safety system.

This is a positioning choice, not a claim that any particular legal outcome is guaranteed. Product-liability and AI law continue to develop, and how they apply depends on the facts. Goable's aim is to keep the human operator clearly in the decision loop, disclose uncertainty, and allocate responsibility clearly in the Terms.

This position should be reflected consistently across the product, the Terms, and the marketing. Where any one is missing, the positioning weakens.

2. Terms of Service — the primary legal protection

2.1 Core liability clause

"Goable scores and verdicts are informational outputs based on weather forecast data and activity-specific models. They do not constitute operational directives, safety certifications, or guarantees of any kind. The operator is responsible for all go/no-go decisions regarding any activity. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Goable disclaims liability for outcomes resulting from decisions made in reliance on its scores, including but not limited to personal injury, property damage, or economic loss. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited."

The phrase "responsible for all go/no-go decisions" is the operative allocation: it positions the operator, not Goable, as the decision-maker. The liability disclaimer is expressly subject to what applicable law permits.

2.2 Forecast uncertainty clause

"Weather forecast data is inherently uncertain. Score accuracy degrades with forecast lead time. Goable does not guarantee that forecasted conditions will match observed conditions at any specific location or time. The confidence field in every API response quantifies this uncertainty; operators should treat low-confidence scores with additional caution."

2.3 Governing law

Italian law (the place of establishment). Chosen because Goable is operated by Fabio Carucci, an Italian sole proprietor; aligning governing law with the place of establishment is the simplest, most defensible posture. The Terms are governed by the laws of Italy, with disputes before the competent courts of Italy, subject to any mandatory consumer-protection or data-protection law that applies. Review when Goable expands beyond the EU or when Scale-plan enterprise clients with US/UK legal requirements appear.

3. API response — the technical protection

3.1 Existing fields that already help

• confidence: quantifies forecast uncertainty. Low confidence = higher uncertainty. Already implemented.
• verdict: a label (favorable, marginal, unsafe…) not a command. Never "go" or "cancel".
• alerts: array of specific warnings. Surfaces the model's own uncertainty signals.

3.2 Fields to add

Add advisory: true as a static boolean in every score response. Serves two purposes:

1. Makes the advisory nature machine-readable for integrators
2. Creates an audit trail: every API response on record contains an explicit advisory marker

In the OpenAPI spec description for the score object, add:

"All scores are advisory. The integrating application must not present this score as a guaranteed condition assessment or as a substitute for professional judgment."

This contractually constrains the B2B client's UI framing — they cannot strip the advisory context when surfacing the score to their operators.

3.3 Phase 1 addition: safety_caveat on low confidence

When confidence < 0.6, include a safety_caveat string in the response:

"Forecast confidence is low for this window. Conditions may differ significantly from predicted. Exercise additional caution."

This was listed as a Phase 4 feature in the mission doc but should move to Phase 1 — it is a liability protection measure, not a product enhancement.

4. Marketing language guardrails

This is where liability risk accumulates invisibly over time — in pitch decks, tweets, landing page headlines, Product Hunt descriptions.

4.1 Never say

4.2 Always say

Rule of thumb: if the subject of the sentence is the operator ("you decide", "your team acts"), it's safe. If the subject is Goable or "the AI" ("it decides", "AI tells you"), rewrite it.

5. The operator responsibility chain

Weather provider (Stormglass, Open-Meteo)
    ↓ returns raw forecast data
    ↓ their own liability: forecast accuracy, uptime
Goable
    ↓ scores and interprets forecast data
    ↓ liability: model correctness, system uptime, accurate confidence signaling
    ↓ NOT liable for: forecast inaccuracy, operator decisions, student safety
Booking platform (Sealect, others)
    ↓ surfaces the score in their UI
    ↓ liability: how they present the score (must not strip advisory framing)
Operator (kite instructor, surf school)
    ↓ makes the go/no-go decision
    ↓ solely responsible for: student safety, on-site conditions assessment,
       operational judgment that cannot be delegated to software

This chain must be visible in the Goable ToS and in the DPA with booking platforms (which must not allow platforms to present Goable scores as authoritative).

6. EU Product Liability Directive II (PLD II) — how we think about it

The revised Product Liability Directive extends product-liability concepts to software and AI. This section records how Goable approaches that landscape; it is a positioning statement, not a legal conclusion that Goable is or is not liable in any given case.

Factors that increase risk, and that we avoid:

• Making autonomous decisions that cause harm without human review.
• Marketing that warrants accuracy the product cannot deliver.
• Shipping a defect (bug, wrong formula) that causes a predictably dangerous output.

Practices we follow to reduce risk (they support the positioning, they do not guarantee an outcome):

• Keep a human operator reviewing the output before acting: the operator reviews the score, then decides.
• Treat uncertainty as inherent and disclose it (confidence field, forecast caveats).
• Allocate responsibility to the operator clearly in the Terms.
• Avoid any express warranty of accuracy in marketing.

None of the above excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

7. Risks Goable positions as outside its responsibility

The following describes how Goable positions responsibility for common failure modes. It is a positioning statement, not a legal conclusion about any specific case; the actual allocation is governed by the Terms, and nothing here excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited (including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, gross negligence, or under mandatory product-liability or consumer-protection law).

• Forecast inaccuracy: weather forecasts are probabilistic by nature. Goable interprets provider data; it does not produce the underlying forecasts.
• Microclimate events: sudden local conditions (thermal gusts, localized storms) that global models cannot resolve at fine spatial scales. Disclosed through the confidence model.
• Equipment failure: a score indicates favorable conditions and equipment nonetheless fails. Goable positions this as outside the scope of what the Service provides.
• Operator negligence: an operator disregards a low score and proceeds anyway. Goable positions the operator as responsible for that go/no-go decision; the score surfaced the low rating.
• Student or customer decisions: an adult student or customer who overrides on-site professional judgment.