Terms
Effective date: August 2, 2026
The short version. Chickadee is free software under
AGPL-3.0. There is no service, no account, and nothing to buy, so there is
very little for terms to govern. Your licence is the
LICENSE file; this page covers the rest.
The licence governs
Chickadee is licensed under AGPL-3.0, including the
network-use clause. The LICENSE file in the
repository is authoritative, and nothing on this page adds to it, narrows it, or grants
you anything beyond it. Where this page and the licence disagree, the
licence wins.
There is no service
Chickadee runs entirely on hardware you control. It has no accounts, no
subscriptions, no credits, and no hosted component operated by us — so
there is no uptime to promise, no billing relationship, and no terms of
service in the usual sense. Every capability works with your own engines
and your own keys, and nothing is feature-gated on paying, because there
is nothing to pay for.
Your responsibilities
- You are responsible for your Home Assistant instance, the devices you
connect to Chickadee, and how you configure them.
- When you configure a third-party provider, you are responsible for
your own account with them, your API keys, any charges they bill you,
and complying with their acceptable-use terms. That relationship is
between you and them.
- You are responsible for using the software lawfully — including any
laws where you live about recording audio in your home.
No warranty, and the limits of liability
- The software is provided "as is," without warranties of any
kind, express or implied, as set out in the licence. It may
have defects, and it may stop working.
- AI-generated responses can be wrong. This matters more
than usual here, because the assistant can operate physical devices in
your home — locks, heating, appliances. You are responsible for what you
let it control and for actions taken on its output. Do not give it
authority over anything where a wrong answer is dangerous.
- To the maximum extent permitted by law, Dashie LLC is not liable for
any damages arising from your use of the software, including indirect,
incidental, or consequential damages. Some jurisdictions do not allow
these exclusions, in which case they apply only as far as the law
allows.
Bug reports, and why there are no pull requests
Bug reports and feature requests are genuinely wanted; real-world Home
Assistant setups are the thing one maintainer cannot manufacture. Pull
requests are not accepted — this is a read-and-fork
project, not a collaborative one, and saying so is more honest than
leaving open a contribution path that dead-ends. Fork it, run it, change
it for yourself; that is what the licence is for.
Changes to these terms
If these change, the effective date above changes with them. The licence
that already applies to a version you have is not affected by anything
posted here later.
Contact
Questions about these terms? Open an issue on the
Chickadee repository,
or email hello@getchickadee.org.