End-User License Agreement

Effective 2026-07-25.

This End-User License Agreement ("Agreement") governs your use of the Heartwood desktop application ("Software"), made available by Twigly Labs ("we", "us"). By downloading, installing, or using the Software, you agree to this Agreement. If you do not agree, do not install or use the Software.

1. License grant

Twigly Labs grants you a free, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the Software, in binary form, on machines you own or control, for your own genealogical research. No fee is charged for this license.

2. Your data is yours

The Software is local-first. Everything you create with it — your family files, records, images, citations, notes and research history — is stored on your own machine and belongs to you. We claim no ownership of it and no license to it. Under the Software's current architecture, we do not receive it, host it, or have access to it, and we do not use it to train models; the Privacy Policy is the authoritative, itemized account of exactly what does and doesn't leave your machine, and it is updated before anything about that changes, not after. You may export, copy, move, or delete it at any time without our involvement or permission.

Because your data never reaches us, we cannot recover it for you. Keeping backups is your responsibility.

What the Software does transmit, and when, is described in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of this Agreement.

3. Acceptable use

You agree to use the Software only for lawful purposes and in accordance with this Agreement. You are solely responsible for your compliance with any third-party platform's terms of service (for example, a genealogy record provider) when you choose to bring records into the Software; the Software does not automatically fetch or retrieve records from any such platform on your behalf.

You are likewise responsible for how you handle information about living people, which genealogical research routinely involves and which may be regulated where you live.

4. Restrictions

You may not sell, rent, sublicense or redistribute the Software; remove or alter any proprietary notices in it; or reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble it, or otherwise attempt to derive its source code — in each case except to the extent such a restriction is prohibited by applicable law.

5. Updates

The Software checks for and can install updates, as described in the Privacy Policy. Updates are provided under this Agreement unless they come with different terms. We may change, suspend, or discontinue the Software, or any part of it, at any time.

6. Third-party components

The Software includes open-source components licensed by their respective authors under permissive licenses such as MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD, ISC and MPL 2.0. Those components remain governed by their own license terms, which prevail over this Agreement to the extent they conflict, and their notices are distributed with the Software. The bundled Source Serif 4 typeface, for example, ships alongside its SIL Open Font License.

7. Disclaimer of warranty

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. Twigly Labs does not warrant that the Software will be error-free or uninterrupted, or that it will preserve, import, or export any particular data without loss. The Software assists genealogical research; it does not guarantee the accuracy of any conclusion, record, or citation.

8. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL TWIGLY LABS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF DATA, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. SUBJECT TO THE PARAGRAPH ON EXCLUDED LIABILITIES BELOW, THE TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF TWIGLY LABS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THIS AGREEMENT OR THE SOFTWARE SHALL NOT EXCEED ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS (US$100).

That figure is deliberate. The Software is free, so the customary cap — "the amount you paid us" — would be nothing at all, and a limit set at nothing invites the argument that it is no limit at all. A modest fixed sum is the more durable choice, because a limitation that holds is worth more than one struck down.

Excluded liabilities. Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. That includes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and for gross negligence or willful misconduct. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations of liability, so parts of this section may not apply to you; where that is so, the remainder continues to apply and our liability is limited to the greatest extent the law allows. If you are a consumer, you may have rights under the law of your own country that this Agreement cannot take away.

Because the Software is local-first and Twigly Labs never receives, hosts, or has access to your data, we cannot lose it for you — and for exactly the same reason we cannot recover it for you either. Keeping backups is your responsibility.

9. Termination

This license terminates automatically if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. You may terminate it at any time by ceasing to use the Software. On termination you must stop using the Software and delete all copies of it. Your own data is unaffected: it stays on your machine and stays yours. Sections 2, 7, 8 and 10 survive termination.

10. Governing law

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. You and Twigly Labs agree that the state and federal courts located in Arizona have exclusive jurisdiction and venue over any dispute arising out of or relating to this Agreement or the Software.

If you are a consumer resident somewhere whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings in your own local courts, or entitles you to the protection of mandatory provisions of your own local law, this section does not take those rights away from you.

11. Entire agreement and changes

This Agreement, together with the Privacy Policy, is the entire agreement between you and Twigly Labs regarding the Software. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. We may update this Agreement for future versions of the Software; the version you accepted continues to govern the copy you installed until you install a version that comes with updated terms.

12. Contact

Questions about this Agreement: email Twigly Labs at brad@twiglylabs.com.