Terms & Privacy

Lore Notes (“Lore”) is a writing-first notes app for Apple devices. Your notes are plain Markdown files stored on your own disk — Lore is the editor and the intelligent layer over them, not the owner of your content.

By installing or using Lore you agree to these terms. They cover how the app handles your writing, what the optional AI features send to third-party services, and the usual legal points every app needs. We’ve kept them as plain as we can.

The Markdown file on disk is always the source of truth. Lore never locks your notes in a proprietary format, and everything it builds on top of them — the search index, embeddings, and caches — is rebuildable from the files alone.

• Writing, navigation, links, backlinks, and keyword search work fully offline and never touch the network.
• Your notes live in a folder you choose (local or iCloud Drive). Lore reads and writes those files; it doesn’t upload them anywhere on its own.
• Ephemeral app data — the search index, caches, and recent history — lives in your Mac’s Application Support folder, never inside your notes.

Lore is a complete writing app with no API keys at all. The AI features — Ask Lore, discovered connections, connection explanations, and trails — are the one exception, and they only run once you add your own API keys in Settings.

Lore uses a bring-your-own-key model: you create accounts with the AI providers below and pay them directly for usage. With no keys set, nothing leaves your machine — the AI surfaces simply stay dark and the rest of the app works exactly the same.

When you’ve enabled the AI features, Lore sends note content to two services to make retrieval and answers genuinely good. This is a deliberate quality-over-local-only trade, and here’s exactly what happens:

• Voyage AI receives note text to build the semantic index that powers search, discovered connections, and trails (embeddings + reranking).
• OpenAI receives the relevant excerpts when you ask a question, so it can write the answer, connection explanations, and trail narratives.

Lore is frugal with what it sends: a note is only re-sent when its content actually changes. Renaming a file, reopening it, or syncing it never re-uploads anything. If a feature needs the cloud it says so, and removing your keys turns all of it back off.

Because you connect directly to these providers with your own keys, your data is governed by their terms and privacy policies as well as ours. We summarize the key points below — they’re accurate as of the effective date, but the providers’ own pages are authoritative, so please review them.

OpenAI (answers & explanations). OpenAI states that data submitted through its API is not used to train its models by default. API inputs and outputs may be retained for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring and then deleted (longer only where legally required). See OpenAI’s API data controls and privacy policy.

Voyage AI (search index & connections). Important:by default Voyage may use the content you submit to train and improve its models — this is opt-out, not opt-in. You retain ownership of your content, and Voyage says it won’t share it with third parties except in aggregate, anonymized form. We recommend opting out of training in your Voyage account (Organization → Terms of Service), which also enables zero-day retention of your data. See Voyage’s terms and privacy policy.

• API keys are stored only in the system Keychain — never in your notes, never in plain files, and never sent anywhere except to the provider they belong to.
• Lore does not run its own servers, accounts, or analytics that collect your notes. There is no Lore cloud between you and the AI providers.
• We never log your note content or your API keys.
• Sending note text to a cloud model is inherent to how good retrieval works. If you’d rather keep everything local, simply don’t add keys — Lore stays a complete offline writing app.

Lore is licensed to you for personal and professional use, not sold. You agree to use it lawfully and not to reverse-engineer, resell, or redistribute the app except as permitted by law.

You are responsible for your own API keys, your usage of the AI providers, and any charges they bill you. Keep your keys secure; anyone with a key can incur charges on your account.

Lore is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. AI-generated answers, connections, and explanations can be incomplete or wrong — treat them as a starting point, not a source of truth, and keep your own backups of your notes.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Lore and its developer are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, or for any loss of data, arising from your use of the app or of the third-party AI services.

Lore is made by an independent developer based in Texas, United States. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and any dispute relating to these terms or to your use of Lore will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Texas.

We may update these terms as Lore evolves. When we make a substantive change we increment the version shown at the top of this document and update the effective date, and Lore marks the terms as updated until you open them again. Continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the revised terms.

Lore is made by an independent developer. Questions about these terms or how Lore handles your data? Open an issue at github.com/braydoncoyer/atlas-releases. Issues there are public — please don’t include anything private.