Citipen is operated by TAK Trading Co., Ltd. (Tax ID 3600668919, Dong Nai, Vietnam). This page describes the end-to-end workflow from sign-up to receiving an AI-generated result, so you understand exactly what happens behind each click.

1. Sign-up & account provisioning

You sign up through Clerk (Google or email).
Citipen automatically creates a corresponding user record in the application database, with a welcome credit balance ($1.00).
Your locale (country, currency) is detected from your IP via Vercel geo headers, used for currency display only.

2. Top-up & credits

On /billing you select a tier (e.g. $5, $20, $50, $100).
Pick a payment method: international card (SePay), Vietnam bank transfer (VietQR), or USDT TRC-20.
For card: SePay redirects you to a secure checkout, returns success / failure via signed webhook (IPN).
For bank: a unique reference code CITXXXXXX is embedded in the VietQR payload. SePay webhook auto-detects matching deposits to the ACB account and grants credit instantly.
For USDT: each tier maps to a unique amount with a random suffix. A daily TronScan poll matches incoming transactions and grants credit.
Every grant is written to an immutable credit_transactions ledger.

3. Running a tool

You open a tool page (e.g. /image) and submit a prompt + parameters.
The browser sends the request to a Next.js server route on Vercel.
The server: (a) verifies your Clerk session, (b) checks your balance against the tool's USD cost, (c) reserves the credit.
The server forwards the job to the appropriate provider:
- Image / Video → fal.ai (primary), Z8 self-hosted ComfyUI (fallback).
- Voice → Z8 omnivoice (primary), Replicate XTTS-v2 (fallback).
- Script → DeepSeek (Chat / Reasoner) or Anthropic Claude (Premium).
- Transcript → Apify YouTube captions, or Groq Whisper for audio files.
- Analytics / channel / market research → Apify scrapers + DeepSeek for summarization.
The provider returns the result; the server writes a usage_log entry, finalizes the charge, and streams the result back to you.
If the job fails before completion, the reserved credit is refunded automatically.

4. Result delivery & storage

Most outputs (text, audio, images, short videos) are streamed directly to your browser and offered for download.
Generated media is held in temporary storage only long enough to deliver to you; we do not maintain a media archive on your behalf.
You may connect Google Drive or Dropbox in /settings to save outputs directly to your own cloud.
Your invocation history (input metadata, cost, success/failure — not full content) is kept in /history for billing transparency.

5. Pricing logic

Each tool has a database row in tool_pricing with providerCostCents and markupRatio. The displayed price equals ROUND(provider_cost × markup), in USD cents. Local currency shown in the UI is reference only — calculated daily from Vietcombank (for VND) or Frankfurter.app (other currencies).

6. Refunds & failure handling

Automatic refund: any failed run before output is delivered.
Manual refund: if a delivered result is materially defective, contact [email protected] within 7 days with the run ID. See full terms at /refund.

7. Support & escalation

General support: [email protected] — replied within 1 business day.
Billing: [email protected]
Security / abuse: [email protected]
Phone (Vietnam, business hours GMT+7): 0917 891 089

8. Compliance & legal

Use of Citipen is subject to our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Refund Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, and Security Policy. Disputes are governed by the laws of Vietnam.

How Citipen Works