Terms of Service

Effective Date: June 29, 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") cover three things, with different rules for each:

Each section below makes clear which it applies to.

Part A — The Open-Source Desktop App

A1. License

The Project Kestrel desktop application is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). The license text governs your rights to use, modify, and redistribute the software. The license text is included with the application and available at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html.

A2. AS-IS warranty disclaimer

THE DESKTOP APP IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. THIS LANGUAGE IS REQUIRED BY AGPLv3 AND IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.

This is important: the desktop app makes decisions about which of your photos to keep and which to discard. It will sometimes be wrong. Always review its recommendations before deleting anything. Keep backups.

We have made our best effort to ensure that Project Kestrel itself cannot delete your photos: the code is designed never to delete your original photos — any deletion is initiated by you. Note that analyzing your photos creates additional files (thumbnails, metadata, exports stored in a .kestrel/ subfolder of the analyzed directory) that take some disk space; by using Kestrel, you accept this disk space usage.

A3. Limitation of liability (Desktop App)

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE AUTHORS AND MAINTAINERS OF PROJECT KESTREL SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PHOTOS, LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, OR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE DESKTOP APP.

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, including liability for fraud, gross negligence, or willful misconduct.

A4. Telemetry

The desktop app sends a small amount of anonymous telemetry. This is documented in detail in the Privacy Policy. The non-optional portion (machine UUID, OS, version, daily-active heartbeat, analysis image count, analysis speed stats) is required to use the app. Optional, detailed telemetry can be enabled or disabled in settings. Crash reports can also be disabled.

A5. Acceptance for the desktop app

By installing and using the desktop app, you accept these terms.

Part B — Hosted Services (Perch and Cloud Compute)

Parts B through I apply only if you create an account and use Perch or Cloud Compute. If you only use the desktop app locally, none of this section applies to you.

B1. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By creating an account, you represent that you meet the minimum age requirement and that you are legally able to enter into these Terms.

B2. Account creation and security

You must provide accurate information when creating an account. You are responsible for the activity that occurs under your account and for keeping your password secure. Notify us immediately at support@projectkestrel.org if you suspect unauthorized access.

Electronic communications. By creating an account you consent to receive account, security, billing, and service notices electronically, at the email associated with your account, and you agree these satisfy any legal requirement that such notices be in writing. These are transactional messages needed to operate your account; consistent with B4, we will not send you marketing email without your separate opt-in.

B3. Acceptable use

When using the hosted services, you agree:

And you agree NOT to:

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules.

Our right to remove content. We may remove, disable, or restrict access to any content, or refuse or limit service, at our discretion — for example if we believe it violates these Terms, creates legal or safety risk, or is not appropriate for the service. We are not obligated to host any particular content, and may act without prior notice where appropriate.

If we detect abuse, we may require phone-number verification before you continue using the hosted services.

Official app only. Perch and Cloud Compute may be used only through the official Project Kestrel application as distributed by Project Kestrel LLC. If you access these services using a modified build, an unofficial distribution, your own build of the source code, or any other unofficial client, you do so entirely at your own risk. To the extent permitted by law, you assume all risk arising from or caused by your use of that unofficial client — including any unintended exposure of metadata or other data that the official app would not have transmitted — and we are not liable, and owe no refund, credit, or other remedy, for harm caused by the unofficial client. This does not waive any liability for harm caused by our own conduct independent of your use of an unofficial client.

B4. Your content and ownership

You retain ownership of every photo, comment, and other piece of content you upload to Perch ("Your Content"). We do not claim ownership of your photos.

Responsibility for Your Content. You are solely responsible for the content you upload, post, or share through the hosted services, and for ensuring you have the rights to share it. Project Kestrel does not pre-screen, endorse, or assume responsibility for user content, and any opinions or material in Your Content are those of the user who posted them, not of Project Kestrel LLC. We act as a neutral host and exercise our right to remove content (B3) at our discretion, but we are under no obligation to monitor content.

You grant Project Kestrel a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, resize, transcode, and display Your Content solely to provide the hosted services to you and to the audience you have selected. The scope of this license is bounded by your visibility setting: a "draft" perch is licensed only to display to you; a "restricted" perch only to display to the people you've shared it with; a "public" perch to display to the public.

This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except where retention is required by law or for reasonable backup periods (no longer than 30 days).

No-marketing clause. Project Kestrel will not feature, promote, advertise with, or otherwise use Your Content in any marketing material, social media post, press communication, or external promotion of the Project Kestrel services without your separate, express, written permission. This includes Your Content even where its visibility is set to "public" — public visibility grants display rights within Perch; it does not grant marketing rights to us.

Feedback. If you send us suggestions, feature ideas, or bug reports, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them without restriction or any obligation to you. You are never required to provide feedback, and we are not obligated to use it.

B5. DMCA / copyright

We respect copyright. If you believe content on Perch infringes your copyright, submit a notice at perch.projectkestrel.org/dmca (or email support@projectkestrel.org) including:

We will remove or disable infringing content and notify the uploader. The uploader may submit a counter-notice. Repeat infringers will have their accounts terminated.

B6. Perch — service description and limits

Perch is a photo-sharing service for bird photographers. At launch:

We may change these limits with notice.

You choose which scenes to upload when you create a perch; do not upload scenes you consider sensitive or would not want others to see.

Beta. Perch is in beta. Features, limits, and availability may change, and bugs — including in sharing and visibility controls — are possible. See the risk acknowledgment below.

Perch is not a backup service. You are responsible for keeping your own copies of your photos. Do not rely on Perch as your only copy of anything.

Beta risk acknowledgment. We have made a careful effort to implement Perch's privacy controls correctly, but Perch is in beta and its code is still changing. By uploading to Perch you accept that there is a residual risk of unintended data exposure (including from a bug in our sharing or visibility controls) that we cannot fully rule out, and that — to the extent permitted by law — Project Kestrel LLC is not liable for such exposure.

Possible discontinuation. We hope to operate Perch indefinitely, but may discontinue it. If we do, we will email account holders in advance and provide at least a 30-day window to export your perches as a self-contained local HTML file you can keep and view offline.

B7. Cloud Compute — service description, billing, refunds, cancellation

Cloud Compute is a paid service that runs the Project Kestrel analysis pipeline on our GPU infrastructure.

Beta. Cloud Compute is in beta. Throughput is not guaranteed (see Service availability below) and availability may change.

Billing. Cloud Compute is billed through Stripe, our third-party payment processor. We offer recurring monthly subscription plans and one-time image-credit purchases (“Backlog Packs”). The current pricing is shown on the Cloud Compute page at sign-up. Pricing may change with at least 30 days' notice to existing subscribers.

You are billed only for results your client successfully downloads. Cloud Compute meters usage by the images whose results are delivered to you. Images or jobs that fail to process are not counted against your plan and do not consume your credits. If we determine that you are analyzing too many images without downloading their results, we may temporarily suspend your access to Cloud Compute at our discretion. If this occurs, please contact support@projectkestrel.org.

Taxes. Applicable sales tax, VAT, or similar taxes are calculated by our payment processor (Stripe) based on your location and, where required, are included in the price shown at checkout. You are responsible for any such taxes that apply to your purchase, and we may add or adjust applicable taxes as required by law.

Refunds. No refunds are issued once a billing cycle has started. We strongly encourage testing Cloud Compute on the free plan and local analysis options before subscribing. If you need help or encounter issues, contact support — we may assist you or offer a refund for the affected billing period at our discretion.

Cancellation. You may cancel at any time from the MyAccount dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you retain access until then.

Chargebacks. If you initiate a chargeback or payment dispute on a valid charge, we may suspend or terminate your account and treat it as a breach of these Terms. Please contact support first — we would rather resolve it directly.

Service availability. We do not commit to a specific uptime SLA at launch. We will make a reasonable effort to keep the service available.

Your results are transient. Cloud Compute deletes your uploaded images promptly after analysis and deletes your results shortly after your client downloads them, and in any case within 30 days. The only things we retain are your job's records — the filenames you uploaded, per-image status, and event history — never your image content or analysis results. See the Privacy Policy for details.

Account holds. Running Cloud Compute costs us real money per job. To keep the beta sustainable, we may place a temporary hold on your account if we observe an unusual volume of failed jobs or failing images consuming our compute resources. We will work with you to resolve it.

Discontinuation. If we discontinue Cloud Compute, the free local desktop app stays free — you can continue to browse results you have already downloaded and analyze new photos locally. For active subscribers at that time, we will provide at least 30 days' notice or a prorated refund of unused credits for the current billing cycle. If Project Kestrel LLC permanently ceases operating Cloud Compute, we will additionally refund any Backlog Pack (one-time image-credit) purchases on a prorated basis, according to the unused portion of those credits at the time of discontinuation.

Pipeline version. We only guarantee offering Cloud Compute on the latest version of the Project Kestrel analysis pipeline, and may not offer Cloud Compute on previous pipeline versions. Accordingly, we may require you to update the desktop app to the latest official version before running Cloud Compute jobs.

Sub-processor. Cloud Compute uses Modal.com for GPU execution. By using Cloud Compute, you consent to your submitted images being processed by Modal in accordance with the Privacy Policy.

B8. Hosted-services AS-IS / limitation of liability

THE HOSTED SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THE HOSTED SERVICES SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE 30 DAYS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF DATA, EVEN IF WE WERE ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

Third-party dependencies and events beyond our control. The hosted services rely on third parties including Clerk, Stripe, Cloudflare, Modal, and Resend. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any delay, failure, data loss, or unavailability caused by a third-party provider or by any event beyond our reasonable control — including outages, network failures, acts of God, war, or government action. If a sub-processor outage interrupts a Cloud Compute job, the failed images are not counted against your plan (see B7).

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, including liability for our own fraud, gross negligence, or willful misconduct.

B9. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Project Kestrel LLC from any claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from:

B10. Termination

You may stop using the hosted services or delete your account at any time from MyAccount. Account deletion removes your profile and your perches, and scrubs personal information from your Cloud Compute job history.

We may suspend or terminate your account for violation of these Terms, for fraudulent or illegal activity, or for non-payment (for paid services). We will provide reasonable notice except where doing so would risk harm to other users or to us.

Inactive accounts. We may deactivate or reclaim storage from accounts that have been inactive for an extended period (more than 12 months), with at least 30 days' email notice and a chance to sign in and download your content first (and export your perches if that feature is available).

B11. Governing law and disputes

Talk to us first. Before filing any claim, you agree to contact us at support@projectkestrel.org and give us 30 days to resolve the issue informally. Most disputes can be resolved this way. This step is a precondition to litigation, except for a claim seeking only injunctive relief.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of the hosted services will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Texas, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

Time limit on claims. To the extent permitted by law, any claim arising out of or related to the hosted services must be brought within one (1) year after the claim arose, or it is permanently barred.

If you are a consumer resident in the EU, UK, or another jurisdiction whose law gives you non-waivable rights to the protection of your local courts or to a longer limitations period, nothing in this section deprives you of those mandatory rights; the Texas-forum and one-year provisions above apply only to the extent the law applicable to you permits.

B12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. When we do, we will:

Material changes will be summarized in an in-product notice.

B13. Open-source software vs. hosted services — separation

For clarity: Parts A and B are distinct. The desktop app's AGPLv3 license is not affected by these hosted-service Terms. Nothing in Part B restricts your AGPLv3 rights to the desktop source code. Likewise, AGPLv3 does not entitle you to use the hosted services without an account, without paying applicable fees, or in violation of the acceptable-use rules in B3.

Our intellectual property and brand. The "Project Kestrel", "Perch", and "Cloud Compute" names, the logos, and our other brand and visual-identity assets are owned by Project Kestrel LLC, all rights reserved. Although these brand assets are included in the open-source desktop app, the AGPLv3 license in Part A covers the app's source code only — it does not grant you any right to use our names, logos, or brand assets, including to present a modified or unofficial build as an official Project Kestrel, Perch, or Cloud Compute product. The hosted-service backends and the content of our websites are likewise owned by Project Kestrel LLC and are not open-source. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right to our brand, our proprietary hosted-service code, or any trademark rights we may hold.

B14. General terms

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any pricing shown at sign-up, are the entire agreement between you and Project Kestrel LLC regarding the hosted services, and supersede any prior statements or understandings.

No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision of these Terms on a given occasion — for example, by granting a courtesy refund or overlooking a limit — that does not waive our right to enforce it later.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, it will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will stay in full force and effect.

Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms or your account without our consent. We may assign these Terms to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets, and will notify account holders of any such transfer.

No partnership. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, employment, or fiduciary relationship between you and Project Kestrel LLC, and neither party may bind the other.

Survival. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination will do so — including B4 (content license and the limited backup-retention period), B8 (AS-IS and limitation of liability), B9 (indemnification), B11 (governing law and disputes), this B14, and any payment obligations that accrued before termination. Deleting your account does not relieve you of obligations that arose before deletion.

B15. Contact

support@projectkestrel.org