Terms of Use

01Agreeing to these terms

Heirloom is published by Cutting Edge Services LLC, a Louisiana limited liability company. These terms are the agreement between you — the keeper of the archive — and us, and they apply whenever you use the Heirloom app.

By downloading or using Heirloom, you agree to these terms and to the Privacy Policy, which is part of this agreement. If you do not agree, do not use the app. You must be old enough to form a binding contract where you live — eighteen in most states — to agree to these terms and to buy anything in Heirloom.

These terms are a custom end-user license agreement and they replace Apple’s standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement for Heirloom. A few things follow from Apple’s rules for that, and they are stated here because Apple requires them stated:

• This agreement is between you and Cutting Edge Services LLC only — not Apple Inc. Apple is not responsible for Heirloom or its content.
• Your license is a non-transferable license to use Heirloom on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as the App Store Usage Rules allow.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for Heirloom. Support comes from us, at heirloom.page/support.
• If Heirloom fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the price you paid for it. Beyond that refund, Apple has no warranty obligation of any kind for Heirloom.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim relating to Heirloom — including product-liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, consumer-protection claims, and claims that the app infringes a third party’s intellectual property.
• You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a US government embargo or designated a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You will comply with any third-party terms that apply when you use Heirloom.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this agreement, and upon your acceptance, Apple has the right to enforce it against you.

02What Heirloom does

Heirloom lets you photograph family documents and have their handwriting read. The pages you scan are stored on your iPhone, and they are sent to Anthropic to be read. What comes back — a transcription, a probable date, the names mentioned — is a machine’s reading of the page, offered for you to check and correct.

We grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use Heirloom on an iPhone you own or control, for your own and your family’s archiving, subject to these terms. Heirloom requires iOS 17 or later; reading handwriting requires a network connection and a working ink balance.

Heirloom will change. We may add, modify, or retire features, change the models that do the reading, and change how ink is granted and priced — section 04 says how you will hear about the ink changes. We may also suspend or discontinue the service itself. Whatever happens to the service, your archive is on your iPhone: it does not disappear because a feature did, and the export in Settings writes your documents, images, and transcriptions to files you keep. We do not promise the service will be uninterrupted or error-free — reading depends on Anthropic’s systems and your connection, and either can be down.

03Your archive and your content

The documents you scan are yours. Heirloom claims no ownership of them and does not use them to sell anything. Your archive is stored on your iPhone; keeping a backup of your device is how you keep a backup of your archive.

So that the reading can happen, you grant us and our service providers a limited, non-exclusive license to transmit, process, and temporarily store the pages you scan, the text attached to them, and the questions you ask — solely to provide Heirloom’s features to you, and for nothing else. This license ends when the processing does; what our providers hold and for how long is set out in the Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for what you scan. Family papers involve other people — their letters, their photographs, their names — and by scanning a document you represent that you have the right to make and process a copy of it. Third-party copyrights and other people’s privacy are yours to respect; see section 07.

You are responsible for your backups and for your originals. We hold no copy of your archive and we cannot recover one — not if the phone is lost, not if the app is deleted, not if a backup was never made. Scanning a document into Heirloom does not make us a custodian of the document or its contents.

04Ink, plans, and packs

Reading a page costs ink. Ink arrives two ways: a plan grants it on a schedule, and packs are bought outright when you need more.

Heirloom starts you with 200 ink, free, once. It behaves like pack ink: it does not expire.

The mechanics below are described here as the app implements them:

• Plan ink expires three months after it is granted.
• Pack ink never expires.
• Plan ink is spent before pack ink, so the ink that can expire is used ahead of the ink that cannot.
• Ink has no cash value, cannot be transferred, and is not refundable in itself.

What ink is, legally: a limited, non-exclusive license to have Heirloom perform reading work for you. Ink is not money, stored value, a deposit, a gift card, or property of any kind. It has no cash value, cannot be transferred, sold, or redeemed for anything but reading, and is not refundable in itself — section 05 covers refunds of the purchases that granted it.

What happens to unspent ink:

• If you cancel a plan or let it lapse, ink already granted stays in your well on its ordinary schedule — plan ink until its own three-month expiry, pack ink indefinitely. Cancelling stops future grants; it does not confiscate past ones, and pack ink does not require an active plan to spend.
• If you delete the app, ink is counted against the install that earned it, so it does not automatically follow you to a new install yet — write to support@heirloom.page and we will restore it. This changes when sign-in ships.
• If we terminate your use for breach under section 07, unspent ink is forfeited.

We may change how much ink a plan grants, what packs contain, what reading costs in ink, and the prices of all of them. A change to plan grants or ink pricing takes effect no earlier than your next billing period, and we will surface it in the app before it applies to you. A change never takes away ink already in your well or shortens an expiry already running.

05Billing, renewal, and refunds

Everything is bought through Apple. Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel, and you cancel in the App Store settings on your iPhone, not in Heirloom. We never see your card. Refunds are handled by Apple, and we cannot issue them ourselves.

The auto-renewal terms, stated plainly: a Heirloom plan renews automatically at the end of each period — monthly for the monthly plan, yearly for the annual — and your Apple Account is charged for the renewal within 24 hours before the current period ends, at the price shown in the App Store when you subscribed or last accepted a price change. It keeps renewing until you cancel. To cancel, open Settings on your iPhone → your name → Subscriptions → Heirloom, at least 24 hours before the period ends; cancelling stops the next charge and your plan runs to the end of the period already paid. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription.

If we raise a plan’s price, Apple notifies you, and where Apple’s rules require your consent the increase does not apply until you give it. Prices in the App Store may include or add tax depending on where you live. Ink packs are one-time charges, billed when you buy them, and nothing about them renews.

06Reading is done by Anthropic

Heirloom does not read handwriting by itself. The pages you scan and the questions you ask the Archivist are sent to Anthropic PBC, which operates the Claude models that read and answer. What is sent, and what happens to it there, is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Because Anthropic does the reading, Anthropic’s Usage Policy applies to what you send through Heirloom, and you agree not to use the app in a way that violates it. If Anthropic suspends or restricts service because of what an account sent, the parts of Heirloom that depend on it stop working for that use.

What the models return is a machine’s reading — section 08 says what that does and does not promise. You are responsible for how you use the output: for checking it against the original before you rely on it, and for what you do with it afterwards.

We may change the companies that process data on our behalf, or add one. The current list is always in the Privacy Policy, and a change to it gets a new effective date there before it applies.

07Acceptable use

Heirloom is for your family’s own documents. It is not for reading other people’s mail, for bulk transcription services, or for anything that would put someone else’s private papers through it without their knowing.

Using Heirloom, you agree not to:

• scan or process documents you have no right to copy, or use the app to invade someone’s privacy or infringe someone’s copyright;
• use Heirloom to run a transcription service for others, or otherwise resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the reading;
• circumvent or try to circumvent the ink meter, device attestation, or any other technical limit, or access our or our providers’ systems other than through the app;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the app, except to the extent a law says this restriction cannot apply;
• drive automated or abusive consumption — scripted scanning, bulk requests, or anything built to exhaust or game the metering; or
• use the app to break the law, or to violate Anthropic’s Usage Policy (section 06).

If you materially breach these terms, we may suspend or terminate your use of the reading service. Where it is practicable we will tell you first and give you a chance to fix it; where the breach is abuse of the metering or of our providers, we may act immediately. Unspent ink is forfeited on a termination for breach. Your archive is never touched either way — it is on your iPhone, and section 10 covers leaving.

08Accuracy and disclaimers

A transcription is a reading, not a certification. Old handwriting is hard, names are misspelled in the originals, and dates are sometimes wrong on the document itself. Heirloom’s readings and the Archivist’s answers are a starting point for research — not a legal, genealogical, or medical record.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HEIRLOOM IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT TRANSCRIPTIONS, DATES, NAMES, OR THE ARCHIVIST’S ANSWERS WILL BE ACCURATE OR COMPLETE.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of the paragraph above may not apply to you. You may have rights that vary from state to state, and nothing in these terms takes away a right the law says cannot be waived. If Heirloom fails to conform to a warranty that does apply, section 01 says what Apple’s part in a refund is.

09Limitation of liability

First, the honest sentence behind the legal ones: Heirloom makes a reading of your papers. It is not a vault, and scanning a document does not put the original, or its only copy, in our keeping. Keep your originals, and keep your iPhone backed up — those two habits, not this app, are what protect an irreplaceable letter. We say this here because losing one is the worst thing that can happen around this app, and no payment we could make would replace it.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (A) NEITHER CUTTING EDGE SERVICES LLC NOR ITS SERVICE PROVIDERS WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF OR DAMAGE TO DOCUMENTS OR ORIGINALS, LOSS OF PROFITS, OR LOSS OF GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO HEIRLOOM, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY; AND (B) OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO HEIRLOOM WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID FOR HEIRLOOM THROUGH THE APP STORE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR FIFTY DOLLARS ($50).

These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, or fraud. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so parts of the paragraph above may not apply to you.

And the other direction: if someone brings a claim against us — or against Apple, who is owed this protection under section 01 — because of a document you had no right to scan, or because of how you used Heirloom in breach of these terms, you agree to indemnify us for the losses and reasonable costs of that claim.

10Ending your use

You can stop at any time: cancel the subscription in the App Store, and delete the app when you are done. Deleting the app deletes the archive stored on that iPhone.

We may end these terms too: for material breach, as section 07 describes, or by discontinuing the service under section 02. When these terms end — whoever ended them — your license to use the app ends, but your archive does not: it is on your iPhone, and the export in Settings still writes it out to files you keep. Ink follows section 04. The usage records in the ink ledger are kept as the Privacy Policy section 05 describes, because they are the accounting for purchases already made.

Sections 03 (your content and our no-recovery position), 08 (disclaimers), 09 (limitation of liability and indemnity), and 12 (governing law), and any other provision that by its nature should survive, survive the end of these terms.

11Changes to these terms

When these terms change, the new version gets a new effective date and the old one stays reachable at its own address, so you can always see the terms you agreed to on the day you bought.

12Governing law and contact

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Louisiana and the United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Before either of us files anything, we ask for a chance to fix it: write to hello@heirloom.page with what went wrong, and give us thirty days. If that fails, any dispute arising out of or relating to these terms or Heirloom will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts sitting in Louisiana, and both of us consent to their jurisdiction — except that either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court where you live, if it qualifies there.

If any provision of these terms is held unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stay in force. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about Heirloom. We may assign this agreement to an affiliate or to a successor of the business; you may not assign it. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

Questions about these terms go to hello@heirloom.page. Cutting Edge Services LLC, Louisiana.