Terms & Conditions

These terms cover the hosted ForkLeaf service. By using it you agree to them. If you do not, please do not use the service — the source is open, and you are free to run your own copy instead.

1. What ForkLeaf is

ForkLeaf is a Markdown editor that reads and writes files in a GitHub repository you control. It stores a working copy in your browser and commits changes to that repository on your behalf. It is not a storage provider, and it is not a backup service — GitHub holds your files, under GitHub’s own terms.

2. Who may use it

You must be at least 13 years old and able to form a binding contract. Connecting a GitHub account requires a GitHub account in good standing; you must comply with GitHub’s Terms of Service as well as these.

3. Your account and access

• You are responsible for everything done through your account, and for keeping access to your GitHub account secure.
• Authorising ForkLeaf grants it permission to read and write repositories in your account. You can revoke that at any time at GitHub → Settings → Applications → Authorized OAuth Apps. Revoking immediately stops all access.
• You may use ForkLeaf without an account at all. Notes written that way are stored only in your browser and are not backed up by anyone.

4. Your content

You own everything you write. We claim no licence over your notes, no right to display them, and no right to use them to train anything. We could not do so if we wanted to — we do not store them.

You are responsible for the legality of what you write and for having the rights to it. You are also responsible for your repository’s visibility settings: if you make a notes repository public, or connect a public one, your notes are public and ForkLeaf cannot prevent that.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the service to store or distribute unlawful material.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to the service, other users’ data, or the underlying infrastructure.
• Interfere with the service — denial-of-service attempts, deliberate abuse of the GitHub API through it, or automated traffic that degrades it for others.
• Use it to infringe anyone’s intellectual property or privacy.
• Remove or obscure attribution or licence notices in the software.

Security research is welcome. Please follow the disclosure process in SECURITY.md rather than testing destructively against the hosted service.

6. The software licence

ForkLeaf’s source is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. That licence governs your rights to the code — to use, modify, distribute and self-host it. These terms govern the hosted service only, and nothing here restricts the rights the Apache licence grants you.

7. What it costs

Nothing, and there are no tiers. There is no checkout, no card on file and no plan attached to your account — the codebase contains no billing collection and no payment integration. Funding comes from optional sponsorship, which unlocks nothing.

Should that ever change, prices and billing terms would be published before any charge was made and these terms updated to cover them. The commitments about what stays free are set out in the documentation.

8. Availability and changes

The hosted service is provided on a best-efforts basis with no uptime guarantee. We may change, suspend or discontinue it, in whole or in part, at any time.

9. Third-party services

ForkLeaf depends on GitHub for storage and authentication, and on Google Firebase for analytics and account records. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies, and we are not responsible for their acts, omissions or availability.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

The service and the software are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that data will never be lost.

Keep your own backups. A git repository you can clone is a good one, and you already have it.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, nor for any loss of data, profits, revenue or goodwill, arising out of your use of the service.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the preceding twelve months — currently zero — or USD 50.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims arising from your use of the service in breach of these terms or in violation of any law or third-party right.

13. Termination

You may stop using ForkLeaf at any time by revoking its GitHub access. We may suspend or terminate access if you materially breach these terms, particularly section 5.

Termination does not touch your repository. Your notes remain in your GitHub account, unaffected.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts of India have exclusive jurisdiction — save that if you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections of your local law.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top changes, and material changes are announced in the app. Every revision is public in the git repository, so you can diff them. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept it.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms: praneeth2006.dev@gmail.com. See also the Privacy Policy.

17. A note on these terms

ForkLeaf is an open-source project, not a law firm. These terms are written to be honest and readable rather than exhaustive, and they are not legal advice. If you need certainty for a commercial deployment, run your own instance under the Apache licence, where you set the terms.