Terms of Service

Effective 23 September 2026

These terms are an agreement between you and David Ackerman, an individual who runs Cairn ("we", "us"). They cover your use of Cairn, at cairn.dack2.workers.dev and any successor domain (the "Service"). By using the Service you agree to them, and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. The Service

Cairn turns podcast episodes into pages you can read, search and play: transcripts, summaries, quotes, highlights and related tools. Most of it is available without an account. Signing in adds a library, voting and feedback, and, for accounts we approve, AI features that answer questions about episodes. The Service is free and provided for your personal, non-commercial use.

2. Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 13 years old to create an account, or older if the law where you live requires it.
• Accounts use Google sign-in. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your Google account secure.
• Access to AI features is at our discretion. We may grant, limit or withdraw it at any time, for example to manage cost.
• You can stop using the Service at any time, and ask us to delete your account as described in the Privacy Policy.

3. Podcast content

Episodes, audio, artwork, show names and the words spoken in them belong to their creators and rights holders. Cairn presents transcripts, excerpts and audio of publicly available episodes for personal reference, study and commentary, with links to the original episodes. These terms give you no rights in that content. Do not download, republish or redistribute audio or transcripts from Cairn except as the law allows (for example, brief quotations with attribution).

Cairn's own software, design, and the summaries and other text it generates are ours, and you may use them only as part of using the Service.

4. Transcripts and AI-generated content

Transcripts are produced by automatic speech recognition and may contain errors, including misheard words, wrong speaker labels and timing drift. Summaries, headlines, digests, section outlines and answers to your questions are written by AI language models. They can be incomplete or wrong, and they are not statements by the people on the podcast; do not attribute them to the speakers. Nothing on Cairn is professional advice (legal, medical, financial or otherwise). Check the original episode before relying on anything you read here.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• scrape, crawl or bulk-download the Service, or use it to build a competing dataset or service, other than ordinary search-engine indexing;
• overload, disrupt or probe the Service, or bypass its sign-in, rate limits or access controls;
• use the AI features to generate unlawful, harmful or abusive content, to try to extract their instructions, or to run automated or high-volume queries;
• submit anything unlawful, infringing, harassing, or containing other people's personal information through the request form or feedback notes;
• impersonate anyone, or use the Service in violation of any law or anyone else's rights.

6. What you send us

You keep any rights you have in the requests, votes, notes and questions you submit. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use them to run and improve the Service; for example, votes and notes shape what Cairn shows. If you send suggestions or ideas, we may use them without any obligation to you.

7. Copyright and takedown requests

If you are a podcast creator or rights holder and want an episode or show removed, or believe something on Cairn infringes your rights, email cairn-support@ackermansoftware.com with: the work concerned; the Cairn page (URL) where it appears; your contact details; and a statement that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them. We aim to act on valid requests promptly, generally by removing the material.

8. Changes and availability

Cairn is a personal project. We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of it, including which shows and episodes it carries, at any time and without notice. We are not obliged to keep any content or account data available. We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms or if we need to in order to protect the Service or others.

9. Disclaimer

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, or that transcripts, summaries or AI answers will be accurate.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or any loss of data, profits or goodwill, arising out of or relating to the Service or these terms. Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service or these terms is limited to fifty US dollars (US$50). Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations, so they may not all apply to you.

11. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, losses and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your misuse of the Service or your breach of these terms.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Hampshire, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from them or from the Service will be heard only in the state or federal courts located in New Hampshire, and you and we consent to their jurisdiction. If you are a consumer in a country whose law gives you the right to bring claims in your own courts or under your own law, nothing here takes that right away.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. We will post the new version here with a new effective date, and for significant changes we will give notice on the site or by email before they take effect. If you keep using the Service after changes take effect, you accept the new terms.

14. General

These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not enforce a term, that is not a waiver. You may not transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours to a successor operator of the Service.

15. Contact

David Ackerman, operator of Cairn: cairn-support@ackermansoftware.com.