Terms of use

About these terms

These terms apply to this website and to any Asten build that Verne Ltd. (“Verne”), gives you. By using the site or running a build, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the site or the builds.

Two other pages form part of these terms: the acceptable use policy, which says what you may not do on this website and the hosted pre-alpha, and the privacy policy, which explains how personal information is handled. The Asten software itself is released under the MIT License; the license page has its text.

If you use Asten for an organization, you confirm that you are allowed to accept these terms on its behalf.

What Asten is

Asten is a local-first writing environment. The desk stores your project in a SQLite file on your computer, and a rule engine marks contradictions in your story’s canon, such as Mira’s hair turning black after chapter 2 settled it as auburn. Asten does not write prose, and it does not run an AI model.

This website describes Asten. The hosted pre-alpha keeps a sandbox for 24 hours so you can try Asten; it is not an offer to host your work. Describing a planned feature is not a promise to build it. The roadmap says what is planned; only what ships is real.

Pre-alpha

Asten is in early development. Release 0.0.1b is a public pre-alpha: anyone may download the desktop builds or open the hosted copy.

• Builds and the hosted copy are provided as is and as available.
• Features may be added, changed, or removed, and a pre-alpha build may stop working or be withdrawn.
• The hosted copy deletes each sandbox 24 hours after the first visit, keeps no backups, and may be reset or taken offline at any time. Do not keep work there.
• There is no service level, uptime promise, or support commitment.
• Keep your own backups. Asten keeps snapshots and a history, but a copy on another disk is still the best protection a manuscript can have.

Your writing

You own what you write in Asten: manuscripts, notes, facts, comments, and exports. Verne claims no rights in any of it. These terms give Verne no license to your work, and none is needed, because your work never reaches Verne.

Asten never trains any model on your writing, and Verne will never use it to train one. See the AI policy.

You are responsible for having the right to hold and use what you import. Importing a file does not change who owns it.

Diagnostics are notices, not verdicts

A diagnostic, such as a mark that Captain Oren gives an order after his settled death in chapter 9, points at a passage and names the rule and the fact it disagrees with. It is a notice for you to weigh. Asten checks only the facts you have confirmed, so it can miss things, and it can flag things you meant on purpose.

You decide what to change. You can suppress any rule. You remain the author of your work and the person responsible for what you publish.

Acceptable use

Use the site and Asten lawfully and in line with the acceptable use policy. In short: work with texts you have a right to hold, leave other people’s computers alone, and do not attack or overload this website.

Verne’s intellectual property

Verne owns the Asten software, the names “Asten” and “Verne”, the Palette mark, the text of this website, and its original artwork. These terms do not transfer any of that to you.

The Asten software is released under the MIT License. The trademark page explains how you may refer to the names and use the logo. The credits list the third-party fonts and software, which keep their own licenses.

Feedback

If you send Verne ideas, suggestions, or bug reports, Verne may use them to improve Asten without owing you anything, and without any obligation to use them. Please do not send material you need kept confidential as feedback, and please do not send a manuscript.

Third-party services

Some parts of Asten work alongside services Verne does not control: Microsoft Word and Office.js for the Word task pane, Google Docs and Apps Script for the Docs sidebar, any AI provider you connect to the assistant with your own key, and Vercel, which hosts this website. Your use of those services is governed by their own terms and privacy policies, and Verne is not responsible for them.

Disclaimers

To the extent the law allows, this website and Asten are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

In particular, Verne does not promise that Asten will find every contradiction, that every diagnostic is correct, or that a build will never lose data.

Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, Verne is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss arising from your use of this website or Asten, including the loss of a draft that existed only on your computer.

To the extent permitted by law, Verne’s total liability for all claims relating to this website or Asten is limited to USD 100.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law. If you use Asten as a consumer, nothing in these terms affects the protections you have under the consumer laws of the place where you live.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Bangladesh, and the courts of Dhaka have jurisdiction over any dispute about them.

If you are a consumer, the mandatory consumer laws of the country where you live still apply to you, and this choice of law does not take those protections away.

Before anything formal, please write to Verne. Most problems are easier to solve in an email.

Changes to these terms

Verne may update these terms as Asten develops. The “last updated” date on this page shows the current version. Changes apply from that date and do not reach back to earlier use. If you keep using the site or a build after a change, the updated terms apply; if you do not accept them, stop using the site and the builds.

General

If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. If Verne does not enforce a term straight away, it has not given up the right to enforce it later. You may not transfer your rights under these terms to someone else without Verne’s written agreement.

Contact

Questions about these terms: info@vernesystems.com. The legal notice has Verne’s registered address and company details.