Terms of Service

Updated June 30, 2026

Researcher is experimental, beta software, provided "as is" and "as available," with all faults and with no warranties of any kind. Please read these Terms of Service ("Terms") carefully. They are a binding agreement between you and the operator of Researcher (an individual; "Researcher", "we", "us", or "our") and govern your access to and use of the Researcher website, API, MCP endpoint, command-line tools, agent skills and plugins, and all related services (together, the "Service"), including the contents and pages served at researcher.now and at persona.energy (the "personas product," a Researcher project that reverse-proxies and serves the same Researcher pages). For the avoidance of doubt, these Terms apply in full to persona.energy and to anyone who accesses, browses, chats with, or otherwise uses the personas product or any AI "persona," in exactly the same way they apply to researcher.now.

1. Acceptance of these Terms

By accessing or using the Service in any way — through the website, by creating or funding an account, by sending a request to the API or MCP endpoint (including keyless, wallet-funded, or automated requests), or by operating an AI agent, bot, or other software that uses the Service on your behalf — you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" includes that organization. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not access or use the Service.

2. Experimental / beta service; no reliance

The Service — including researcher.now, persona.energy, and the personas product — is experimental and in beta. It is under active development, may be incomplete, unstable, or untested, and is offered for evaluation and informational purposes only. The Service may change, break, malfunction, produce errors or wrong results, become unavailable, lose, corrupt, or delete data, or be suspended or discontinued in whole or in part at any time, with or without notice. We may add, change, suspend, limit, deprecate, or discontinue any part of the Service — including features, endpoints, pricing, personas, topics, stored runs, and data — at any time, with or without notice, and without liability. We make no guarantee of availability, uptime, accuracy, completeness, reliability, data retention, or fitness for any purpose. You should not rely on the Service for any purpose where an error, interruption, inaccuracy, or loss of data could cause harm or loss, and you assume all risk of using it.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction) and legally able to enter into these Terms to use the Service. The Service is not directed to children.

4. Accounts, API keys, and agent / keyless access

You are responsible for all activity under your account, API keys (including any durable rk_ keys minted for you), wallets, payment channels, sessions, and credentials, whether or not authorized by you. Keep your keys and wallet credentials secret; do not share them or embed them where others can extract them. You are responsible for the behavior of any agent, bot, or automated system you point at the Service, and for any spend it incurs. Notify us promptly of any suspected unauthorized use. We are not liable for losses arising from compromised, lost, or misused keys, wallets, or credentials.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to, and not to permit any agent or third party to:

use the Service for any unlawful, infringing, deceptive, harmful, or abusive purpose, or in violation of any applicable law or regulation (including export, sanctions, data-protection, and intellectual-property laws);
submit, request research on, or generate content that infringes or misappropriates the rights of others, violates the terms of service or robots/usage policies of third-party sites or platforms, or that you do not have the right to submit or have processed;
attempt to access accounts, data, or runs that are not yours; probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service; or breach or circumvent any security, authentication, rate-limiting, payment, or usage measure;
use admin tokens, payment bypasses, internal-only routes, or credentials obtained improperly; or attempt to obtain the Service without paying applicable charges;
reverse engineer, decompile, scrape, resell, or build a competing service from the Service except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by law;
overload, disrupt, or impair the Service or its infrastructure, or exceed published or communicated rate or volume limits.

We may refuse, cancel, throttle, suspend, or delete any request, account, run, topic, key, or wallet that, in our sole judgment, creates legal, security, operational, abuse, or cost risk — at any time and without liability.

6. AI-generated content and research output — important disclaimer

The Service uses large language models and automated systems. Outputs — including reports, summaries, transcripts, extracted claims and facts, citations, persona answers, topic briefs, cost estimates, and any other generated material — may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, fabricated ("hallucinated"), biased, offensive, or otherwise unsuitable, and may misattribute or mis-cite sources. Outputs are not professional advice of any kind and must not be relied on as a substitute for independent professional judgment, including legal, financial, investment, tax, medical, or other advice. You are solely responsible for independently verifying any output, checking the underlying sources, and deciding whether and how to use it. Cost estimates are experimental and may change as work proceeds.

7. AI personas — not the real people

The Service, including persona.energy and the personas product, offers AI "personas" that imitate the style, views, or voice of real individuals. A persona is an experimental, AI-generated approximation built automatically from publicly available sources. It is not the real person, is not that person's statement, and does not represent, and is not authorized, endorsed, reviewed, verified, or affiliated with, the individual it is modeled on. Persona outputs are machine-generated guesses that may be inaccurate, fabricated, outdated, biased, offensive, or entirely wrong, and may misstate a person's actual views, facts, or words. Nothing a persona produces should be attributed to the real person or treated as their advice, opinion, endorsement, or factual assertion. Personas are provided for research, illustrative, and informational purposes only. Names, likenesses, and marks of real individuals remain the property of their respective owners and are used only to identify the public figure that a persona attempts to model. If you are a person modeled by a persona and wish to raise a concern, contact us (Section 19).

8. Third-party content and sources

The Service retrieves, transcribes, stores, and processes content from third-party websites, videos, posts, podcasts, feeds, and other sources. We do not own or control that content and make no representations about it. You are responsible for ensuring that your submissions and use of retrieved content comply with applicable law, third-party terms, and the rights of rights-holders. If you believe content made available through the Service infringes your rights, contact us (Section 19) and we will respond as practicable for an experimental service.

9. Payments, billing, and crypto

Paid features may be funded by API-key credit or by stablecoin / machine-payment ("MPP" / HTTP-402) transactions on a blockchain, including keyless, wallet-funded sessions. By paying, you authorize the applicable charge. Keyless and session charges may be fixed-price (the quoted amount, subject to any cap you set) and are generally settled on-chain. Blockchain transactions are typically irreversible; to the maximum extent permitted by law, all charges are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated by us. You are responsible for any taxes, network/gas fees, slippage, and wallet or exchange costs. Prices, estimates, and free allowances are experimental and may change at any time. You are responsible for funding your wallet and for any third-party bridging, swapping, or payment tooling you use.

10. Intellectual property; your content; feedback

As between you and us, we and our licensors own the Service and all related software, designs, and marks. You retain the rights you have in the prompts, URLs, and material you submit ("Your Content"). You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, process, transform, reproduce, display, and transmit Your Content, run outputs, and related metadata and usage data, in order to operate, secure, debug, bill for, improve, evaluate, and develop the Service and to comply with law. You represent that you have the rights necessary to grant this license. If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you.

11. Privacy and public visibility

Our handling of data is described in the Privacy Policy. Note that research runs, shared links, and stored source copies may be accessible to anyone who has the viewer/share link, and that wallet addresses and on-chain payments are public and immutable. Do not submit secrets or material you cannot share with the Service and its providers.

12. Disclaimer of warranties

THE SERVICE, INCLUDING RESEARCHER.NOW, PERSONA.ENERGY, THE PERSONAS PRODUCT, AND ALL OUTPUTS AND PERSONAS, IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and availability, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade. We do not warrant that the Service will be available, uninterrupted, secure, timely, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Service or any outputs or personas will be accurate, complete, current, reliable, or fit for any purpose. You acknowledge that the Service is experimental and in beta and use it entirely at your own risk.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, in no event will we or our owners, operators, contributors, or providers be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, business, or funds (including crypto or wallet losses), arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms, whether based in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability, or otherwise, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amounts you paid us for the Service in the three (3) months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US$100. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you.

14. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless us and our owners, operators, contributors, and providers from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to your use of the Service, Your Content, your agents or automated systems, your violation of these Terms or applicable law, or your infringement of any third-party right.

15. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, or delete accounts, runs, topics, keys, or data, at any time and for any reason, with or without notice, and without liability. You may stop using the Service at any time. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 6–7, 9–14, and 16–19) will survive.

16. Changes to the Service and these Terms

We may modify these Terms at any time by posting the updated version with a new "Updated" date. Changes are effective when posted. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree, stop using the Service.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws applicable where the operator of Researcher resides, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules, and you and we submit to the courts of that place for any dispute. To the extent permitted by law, you and we waive any right to a jury trial and to participate in a class or representative action.

18. General

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service and supersede prior agreements. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them freely. Nothing here creates a partnership, agency, or employment relationship.

19. Contact

Researcher is a personal, experimental project and does not currently offer a dedicated contact channel. We will add contact details here if that changes, and will handle any requests we do receive as practicable.