Terms of Use

These Terms of Use govern your access to and use of Cerise Scholar, including the website, signup and login flows, hosted research features, account features, help pages, public beta features, and any local-helper workflows made available through the Cerise Scholar Local Agent.

By creating an account, signing in, clicking to accept these terms, or using Cerise Scholar, you agree to these Terms of Use and to the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use Cerise Scholar.

Cerise Scholar is currently a public beta. Some features may change, be limited, be unavailable on some devices, or require a trusted laptop setup before they work fully.

You should use Cerise Scholar only if you are old enough to form a binding agreement in your location or if a parent, guardian, school, or other authorized organization has permitted your use.

You agree to provide accurate account information and keep it current. You are responsible for the activity that happens through your account, including activity from any device where you stay signed in.

Keep your login method, email account, device password, and trusted laptop secure. If you believe someone has accessed your account or laptop workspace without permission, stop using the affected device for Cerise Scholar and contact support.

Cerise Scholar is designed around a laptop-first research workflow. You may be able to sign in on mobile or another device for lighter account access, reading, review, and support pages, but the full private source-file workflow belongs on the personal or trusted laptop where your files, local workspace, and local AI tools live.

A trusted laptop means a device you own or control, understand, and are allowed to use for private research files. Do not install or run local-agent workflows on shared, public, borrowed, school-lab, cafe, library, or employer-controlled computers unless you have clear permission and understand the privacy risk.

You are responsible for deciding whether a device is appropriate for your research files and for following any school, employer, funder, ethics-board, or data-use rules that apply to your work.

The Cerise Scholar Local Agent is a local helper intended to run on your trusted laptop. It may help create or access a local workspace, check whether local AI tools such as Ollama are available, index or prepare source-file text for approved workflows, run local AI-heavy tasks, and clean generated local data when you choose a cleanup action.

The Local Agent is not a remote administrator for your computer. Cerise Scholar should not ask for broad device control, contacts, camera, microphone, location, or private accounts that are unrelated to the requested research workflow.

Some setup steps, such as installing Ollama or approving a local helper, may require action from you in your operating system. Cerise Scholar may link you to official installers or setup instructions, but you are responsible for reviewing the software you install and approving only actions you trust.

Some Cerise Scholar features use hosted services. For example, Cerise Scholar may use Supabase for authentication, account records, and app data; OpenAlex for scholarly source discovery; and configured AI providers when a hosted or cloud fallback feature is enabled.

Third-party services may have their own terms, policies, availability limits, and security practices. Cerise Scholar is not responsible for third-party services that it does not control, but we try to design the product so hosted processing is clear and limited to what is needed for the feature you choose.

Links to outside websites, documentation, software installers, or academic sources are provided for convenience and research support. You are responsible for deciding whether to rely on any outside resource.