Terms of service

1. What Heirsake is

Heirsake helps a storyteller answer warm interview questions by voice or text. We transcribe the answers, help write them into prose in the storyteller’s own voice, place photos, and grow a keepsake book your family can read, share, and one day print. You review and approve everything; nothing is published to your book without a person in your family saying yes.

2. Your family owns its content

Every recording, transcript, photo, chapter, and caption in your archive belongs to your family. We claim no ownership of it, ever. You grant us only the narrow permission we need to operate the service: storing your content, transcribing it, helping write and lay out your book, and showing it to the people you choose. That permission ends when the content leaves the service.

We do not sell your content. We do not let third parties train AI models on it. We do not use it to build models of our own. Our content ownership statement spells this out in full.

The account owner holds the archive on behalf of the family, manages who can read and contribute, and decides what gets published. You can export everything your family has made at any time.

3. People in your stories

A memoir is full of real people, and not all of them wrote it. If you are named or depicted in a Heirsake book and want something removed or corrected, you have a path that does not require an account: request a removal or correction. We record every request, bring it to the book’s owner, and while a request about you is unresolved we will not let the disputed content move to a wider audience. If the owner and the requester cannot agree, we may limit the disputed content’s visibility to the family while it stays unresolved.

4. Consent

When we call a storyteller to record, the call announces that it is being recorded, and we only place calls to numbers your family provides. Choices about who can read a book, whether AI assists with it, and how a loved one’s voice may be used after they are gone all belong to your family and live in your book’s settings. Posthumous use of a storyteller’s voice always requires consent given in advance by the storyteller and confirmed by the family.

5. Succession: the archive outlives the account

A keepsake should not be lost to a lapsed card or an unthinkable phone call. The account owner can name a successor in account settings. If the owner dies or the account lapses, the books stay readable for the family, and the successor can take over billing and control of the archive. We will reach out to the named successor before anything is removed. We do not delete a family’s archive for non-payment without notice and a chance for the successor or the family to claim it.

6. Your subscription

Heirsake is a subscription, billed through Stripe. You can cancel any time; your family keeps access through the period you paid for, and your archive remains exportable afterward. Printed books, when offered, are purchased separately.

7. Taking care of the service

You agree to use Heirsake for what it is: a home for your family’s true stories. Do not upload content you have no right to share, use the service to harass or impersonate anyone, or attempt to access another family’s archive. We may suspend accounts that do, after letting the owner know why.

8. Changes and contact

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will tell the account owner by email before the change takes effect. Questions belong with a real person: hello@heirsake.com.