Terms
These are the terms for the CottonDB apps, the relay, and this website. They are short because there is no service to subscribe to: the software runs on your own machines.
What CottonDB is
CottonDB is free software: a Mac app that runs a personal database server, an iPhone app that connects to it, and a relay that lets the two reach each other. You install it, you run it, and the data it holds is yours in every sense, including the ordinary sense that it is on your disk.
Price
CottonDB is free to use, for anyone, with no paid tier. Nothing here creates a subscription, a licence fee, or an obligation to pay. Contributions to the people who build it are welcome and never required.
Model calls made with an API key you supply are billed by that provider under its own terms. CottonDB does not bill you and does not see the bill.
Your content
Everything in your database is yours. CottonDB claims no licence over it and never receives a copy. What you choose to share with another person's database, or to expose to an assistant, is your decision, and you are responsible for what you authorise an assistant to read or change.
Connected assistants
An assistant you connect can read your data and, if you tick the write checkbox when approving it, create and change records. It acts under its own provider's terms once your data reaches it. Review what you have connected from the app; revoke anything you no longer want.
The relay
The relay at relay.cottondb.com is operated on a best-effort basis. It forwards encrypted traffic and stores no content. It may be unavailable, rate-limited, or changed without notice; your data on your Mac is unaffected by any of that. A relay name, the address your Mac answers on through the relay, is assigned to your Mac when it first connects and is not a trademark, an identity, or a promise that the name is yours in any other context.
No warranty
CottonDB is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. It is built by one person; things change, and some of them break. Keep backups, which the Mac app will make for you, and keep the key it shows you.
To the extent legally permissible, the makers of CottonDB are not liable for any loss arising from its use, including lost data, missed reminders, or actions taken by an assistant you connected.
Support
None is promised. The code is open source and goes public with the first build; issues are welcome, feature pull requests are not, and there is no promise of help running it anywhere but on your own Mac. Email reaches hello@cottondb.com and is read, without a service level.
This website
The site is informational. The one thing it can store is an email address you submit to be told about a build; see Privacy. Do not submit an address that is not yours.
Changes
These terms change when the software does. The date at the top is the version.