Terms of service

• The app is free and open source under the AGPLv3. You can use it, read it, and modify it under that license. These terms are about the hosted service we run, not a restriction on the software.
• Your research data is yours. It lives in a folder on your own machine, we do not claim any ownership of it, and you are responsible for keeping your own backups.
• The paid parts are the cloud-service plans, which are a base fee plus your actual cloud usage, and the metered AI assistant, and all of them are free during the beta. You can stop using them at any time, with no lock-in.
• ResearchOS is a tool, not a guarantee. Always check an analysis, a calculated value, or anything the AI hands you before you rely on it in your work or a publication.
• The service is provided as-is, especially during the beta. We do the work to make it correct and reliable, but we cannot promise it is error-free or always available.

ResearchOS is built by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and operated by ResearchOS LLC, a registered Wisconsin company. The public website is research-os.app, and the source code is public on GitHub. You can also run it yourself from that source.

The ResearchOS software is licensed to everyone under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPLv3). That license governs your rights to use, study, modify, and redistribute the code, and nothing in these terms takes those rights away. You can read the full license and the third-party credits on the open source page.

These terms instead govern the optional service we operate for you, the website at research-os.app, the sharing and collaboration features, and the paid cloud-service plans and AI assistant. If anything here ever appears to conflict with the AGPLv3 as it applies to the software itself, the license controls for the software.

When you use the everyday app, your notes, experiments, methods, images, and other files are written directly to a folder you pick on your own computer. You own that content. We do not claim any license to it. For local-only work, we do not receive or analyze it, and there is no copy on our servers, because there is no database we control that holds it.

Because your data is yours and lives with you, keeping backups is your responsibility. We recommend storing your folder somewhere that is itself backed up, such as a synced drive. If you turn on optional sharing, live collaboration, publishing, or hosted AI, data needed for those features is processed on our side, and exactly what and why is spelled out in the privacy policy.

ResearchOS is a tool for researchers and is meant for people who are at least 13 years old. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you use ResearchOS on behalf of a lab, department, or institution, you confirm that you have the authority to agree to these terms for that group.

ResearchOS is a tool for research, and we ask that you use it that way. By using the hosted service you agree not to do the following.

• Break the law, infringe someone else's rights, or use the service to store or send content you have no right to.
• Misuse the sharing relay or collaboration features to send unwanted, harmful, or abusive content to other people.
• Attempt to disrupt, overload, reverse the security of, or gain unauthorized access to the service or other users' data.
• Use the service in a way that violates your own institution's rules or any regulatory obligations that apply to your work.

You are responsible for the compliance side of your own research. ResearchOS is a place to do the work, but decisions about regulated data, human-subjects rules, your institution's data-management requirements, and similar obligations remain yours.

We respect intellectual property. Because the everyday app keeps your files on your own machine, most content never touches us. If you believe something shared or collaborated through our service infringes your copyright, write to gnickles@wisc.edu with enough detail to identify the work and where it appears, and we will remove or disable access to infringing material. We may end the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe. If you believe something was removed by mistake, you can write back to explain and we will take another look.

The local app is free forever. The paid plans cover cloud services on a pay-for-what-you-use basis, and the AI assistant is metered separately. Both are free right now during the beta.

• Cloud services. Paid plans are a small base fee plus your actual cloud usage at a fair markup, with storage billed at roughly cost. Larger tiers carry a higher markup for the enterprise value they get. There is a real free network tier, not a trial. Cloud services are free during the beta.
• The AI assistant. BeakerBot is metered because each task calls a hosted model that costs real money. Every account starts with a free batch of tokens, and after that you buy prepaid top-ups priced near our actual cost. You always see your balance and what the last task cost. The AI assistant is free during the beta.

You can cancel, downgrade, or stop buying at any time, with no annual contract and no lock-in. Because consumed AI tokens and used storage reflect costs we have already paid to provide them, they are generally not refundable, but stopping is always immediate and you are never billed for a period you did not use. Final prices for the paid plans are still being set from real usage data, and we will show them clearly before any charge ever applies. For the full pricing picture, see the pricing page.

We also run a hard monthly budget cap on our side. If cloud spending ever approaches it, cloud writes pause while your local-first app keeps working, so a runaway bill cannot be run up and handed to you.

ResearchOS is under active development. Features can change, be added, or be removed, and during the beta especially you should expect rough edges and occasional downtime. We do not currently offer an uptime guarantee or service-level commitment. We will give reasonable notice of a significant change where we can, and because the app is local-first, your data stays with you even when the hosted service is unavailable.

The software and the service are provided as-is and as-available, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. This mirrors the no-warranty terms of the AGPLv3 (sections 15 and 16) for the software itself, and it applies to the hosted service too.

This matters most for the science. We validate our analytical engines against established references and we work hard to get the numbers right, but you are responsible for checking any statistical result, calculated value, sequence operation, or anything the AI assistant produces before you rely on it in your research or a publication. The AI can make mistakes, so treat its output as a draft to review, not a final answer. ResearchOS does not provide professional, medical, or legal advice, and nothing it produces is a substitute for your own professional judgment or your institution's review.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, ResearchOS LLC and the project's contributors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for any loss of data, loss of research, or lost profits, arising out of or related to your use of the software or the service. Because your data lives in your own folder and backups are your responsibility, please keep your own copies.

Where liability cannot be excluded by law, the total liability of ResearchOS LLC for any claim arising out of or related to the software or the service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain damages, so some of the above may not apply to you. In those places our warranties and our liability are limited to the fullest extent permitted by law, and nothing in these terms takes away a consumer right you have that cannot be waived.

You can stop using ResearchOS at any time. For the everyday app you simply disconnect the folder or quit, and your data stays on your disk untouched. You can cancel any paid service whenever you like.

We may suspend or end access to the hosted service for an account that abuses it, breaks these terms, or puts other users or the service at risk. If we ever discontinue the hosted service, your local data is unaffected, because it was never dependent on us to begin with.

If these terms change in a meaningful way, we will update the effective date at the top and, where appropriate, note the change in the app. Because ResearchOS is open source, the full history of this page is visible in the public repository. If you keep using the service after a change takes effect, that means you accept the updated terms.

If you send us feedback, ideas, or bug reports about ResearchOS, we may use them to improve the product without any obligation to you and without owing you anything for them. You never have to send feedback, and doing so does not hand us any rights to your own research, only permission to act on the suggestion.

These terms, together with the privacy policy and the AGPLv3 license where it governs the software, are the whole agreement between you and ResearchOS LLC about the hosted service, and they replace any earlier understanding on the subject. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect and the unenforceable part is narrowed only as far as the law requires.

If we do not enforce a part of these terms right away, that is not a waiver of our right to do so later. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our consent. We may transfer ours to a successor, for example if the project or company changes hands, in a way that does not reduce your rights. We are also not responsible for a failure or delay caused by something outside our reasonable control, such as a network outage, an upstream provider, or another event we cannot prevent.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be handled by the state or federal courts located in Wisconsin. We would much rather sort out any problem directly, so please reach out first and we will do our best to make it right.

Questions about these terms, the paid services, or anything else covered here can go to gnickles@wisc.edu. ResearchOS is operated by ResearchOS LLC, a registered Wisconsin company.