Terms of Use · v1.1 · last updated 2026-05-19

Terms of Use

These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Cairn macOS application ("Cairn", "the App") and the website at cairn.software ("the Site", and together with the App, the "Services"). The Services are operated by Anton Platonov, sole trader, Bologna, Italy (P.IVA 04308291204) ("we", "us", "our"). By installing, launching, or otherwise using the Services, you ("you") agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not install or use the Services.

1. Definitions

• "Capture" means a screenshot, voice note, and any derived transcript, tag, embedding, or metadata produced by Cairn on your device.
• "User Content" means all Captures and any other data you create, import, or store using Cairn.
• "App Store" means the Apple Mac App Store.
• "Apple EULA" means Apple's Licensed Application End User Licence Agreement.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least sixteen (16) years old to use the Services. By using the Services, you represent that you meet this requirement and that you have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms. If you use the Services on behalf of an organisation, you represent that you have authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.

3. The Services

Cairn is a macOS application distributed through the App Store. It captures screenshots and voice notes locally on your Mac, processes them on-device using machine-learning models bundled with or downloaded by the App, and stores the resulting data in a local database within Cairn's macOS App Sandbox container. Detailed behaviour is described in the Privacy Policy and the Privacy Pledge.

4. Licence to use Cairn

Subject to your compliance with these Terms and the Apple EULA, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to install and use Cairn on Apple-branded Mac computers that you own or control, for personal use or internal business use. Distribution and installation of the App through the App Store are also governed by the Apple EULA, which is incorporated by reference; in the event of a conflict between these Terms and the Apple EULA in respect of distribution or installation, the Apple EULA controls.

5. Reservation of rights

Except for the licence granted in Section 4, no rights are granted to you in or to Cairn, its source code, design, trade marks, or any other of our intellectual property. You may not (i) copy, modify, translate, or create derivative works of Cairn except as expressly permitted by these Terms or by the open-source licences of its components; (ii) reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble Cairn except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law; (iii) remove or alter any proprietary or attribution notices; or (iv) use Cairn to develop a product that competes with the Services.

6. Open-source components

Cairn incorporates third-party open-source software. A list of components and their licences is available in the in-app Acknowledgments screen and in the NOTICES.txt file distributed with the App. Where an open-source licence grants you broader rights than these Terms in respect of a component, that licence controls for that component.

7. Your content

You retain all right, title, and interest in your User Content. We claim no licence to your User Content. Because Cairn does not transmit User Content off your device, we do not host, process, or have access to it. You are solely responsible for your User Content and for any consequences of capturing, storing, or sharing it.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Services to capture, store, or process:

• content you are not legally entitled to capture, including, in jurisdictions with two-party-consent recording laws, another person's voice or private communications without their consent;
• material protected by third-party intellectual-property or privacy rights in a manner that exceeds applicable exceptions (such as quotation, fair use, or fair dealing);
• child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery, or any other content prohibited under applicable criminal law;
• material whose capture or storage would breach workplace policies, non-disclosure agreements, professional-confidentiality duties, or applicable data-protection law to which you are subject;
• material used for the purpose of harassing, defaming, stalking, or unlawfully surveilling another person.

You are solely responsible for the legality and propriety of the content you choose to capture. We have no technical means to monitor or moderate your User Content and assume no such obligation.

9. AI-generated outputs

Cairn uses on-device AI models to generate transcripts of voice notes, OCR text, and short descriptive tags of screenshots. These outputs are statistical estimates produced by third-party open-source models and may be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or otherwise unsuitable for your purposes. They are provided for indexing and search convenience only. Do not rely on them for any decision where accuracy is material, including legal, medical, financial, employment, or safety contexts. The accuracy and behaviour of the underlying models are outside our control.

10. Third-party services

On first launch, Cairn downloads model weights directly from Hugging Face Inc. ("Hugging Face"). That download is a direct connection between your Mac and Hugging Face and is governed by Hugging Face's terms and privacy policy. The App Store may check for updates to Cairn and is governed by Apple's terms and privacy policy. We are not responsible for the acts, omissions, content, or practices of these third parties.

11. Feedback

If you send us suggestions, bug reports, ideas, or other feedback about the Services ("Feedback"), you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to use the Feedback for any purpose, including to improve the Services. You waive any right to compensation for Feedback. Feedback is not your confidential information unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

12. Purchase, price, and right of withdrawal

Cairn is a paid application distributed exclusively through the App Store. The applicable price is the price displayed on Cairn's App Store listing in your country at the time of purchase, inclusive of any VAT or local taxes that Apple is required to collect. The purchase is made between you and Apple, who acts as the merchant of record under the Apple EULA; Apple issues the receipt, handles payment processing, and administers refunds in accordance with its own policies. Cairn does not require an account, login, or registration in addition to the Apple ID you use for the App Store.

Right of withdrawal (EU consumers). Under Articles 50 and following of Italian Legislative Decree 206/2005 (Codice del Consumo), which transposes Directive 2011/83/EU, consumers habitually resident in the European Union ordinarily have fourteen (14) days to withdraw from a distance-purchase contract. For digital content delivered without a tangible medium — such as the Cairn application — the right of withdrawal is lost once performance has begun with the consumer's prior express consent and acknowledgement of the loss of that right, in accordance with Article 59(1)(o) of the Codice del Consumo. By initiating the download or installation of Cairn from the App Store, you provide that prior express consent and acknowledge that your right of withdrawal lapses upon the start of the download. This does not affect any more favourable refund right that Apple may grant at its discretion under its App Store policies.

If we introduce additional paid features or subscriptions in the future, the applicable price and payment terms will be presented at the point of purchase and will be charged by Apple under the Apple EULA; these Terms will be updated accordingly before the new terms take effect.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Services are provided "as is" and "as available", with all faults and without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty arising out of any course of dealing, course of performance, or usage of trade. We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that any defects will be corrected.

Mandatory consumer-protection rights under European Union law (including those preserved by Directive (EU) 2019/770 and the Italian Consumer Code, Legislative Decree 206/2005), and analogous mandatory rights in your country of habitual residence, are not affected by this Section.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• (a) we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use, loss of data, business interruption, or cost of substitute services, arising out of or in connection with these Terms or the Services, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages; and
• (b) our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services shall not exceed the greater of (i) the amount you paid us for the Services in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (ii) fifty euros (€50).

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for: (i) death or personal injury caused by negligence; (ii) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; (iii) gross negligence or wilful misconduct; or (iv) any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. For consumers in the European Union, statutory remedies under EU and national consumer law remain available regardless of this Section.

15. Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify, and hold us harmless from and against any third-party claim, liability, damage, or reasonable legal cost arising out of or related to (i) your User Content, (ii) your breach of these Terms, or (iii) your unlawful use of the Services. This Section does not apply to the extent applicable law (including EU consumer-protection law) prohibits such indemnification by a consumer.

16. Suspension and termination

Your licence under Section 4 terminates automatically (i) when you uninstall Cairn, or (ii) upon your material breach of these Terms. We may discontinue the Services, in whole or in part, at any time, with or without notice; on discontinuance, the local data on your Mac is unaffected and remains under your control. Sections 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, and 21 survive termination of these Terms.

17. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected with a new version number and effective date at the top of this page and, where the change materially affects your rights, we will provide notice in-app or on the Site before the change takes effect. Continued use of the Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not accept an update, your sole remedy is to stop using the Services.

18. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Italy, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules and excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. For consumers habitually resident in the European Union, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of habitual residence.

19. Forum and dispute resolution

You agree to attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute informally by contacting us at [email protected] at least thirty (30) days before commencing formal proceedings. For consumers habitually resident in the European Union, the European Commission's Online Dispute Resolution platform is available at https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr; we are not obliged to, and do not commit to, participate in alternative dispute resolution before any consumer arbitration board.

For non-consumer users, the ordinary courts of Bologna, Italy have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services. For consumer users, the courts of the consumer's country of habitual residence and, alternatively, the courts of Bologna, Italy, have jurisdiction in accordance with Regulation (EU) 1215/2012.

20. Export controls and sanctions

You represent that you are not located in, and will not use the Services from, any jurisdiction subject to a comprehensive embargo by the European Union or the United States, and that you are not listed on any applicable EU or US sanctions list. You agree to comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions laws when using the Services.

21. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Privacy Pledge, and the Apple EULA, constitute the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Services and supersede any prior agreements on the same subject.
• Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force, and the unenforceable provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable while preserving its intent.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets, provided the assignee assumes our obligations.
• No agency. Nothing in these Terms creates any agency, partnership, joint venture, or employment relationship between you and us.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure or delay in performance to the extent caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labour disputes, governmental action, internet or utility outages, or pandemics.
• Notices. We may provide notices to you in-app, by email if you have provided one, or by posting on the Site. You may send notices to us at [email protected].
• Language. These Terms are concluded in English. Any translation is provided for convenience only; the English version controls, except where applicable consumer-protection law requires otherwise.

22. Contact

Questions about these Terms: [email protected]. Full operator details: legal notice.