Last updated 16 August 2026.
Bristlenose is a desktop app that runs on your own Mac. There is no Bristlenose server and no Bristlenose account, so most of what a terms-of-service usually governs — uptime, your stored data, what we may do with it — does not apply here. There is nothing on our side to govern.
Bristlenose is in alpha, in active development by one person. It will have bugs, features will change or be removed, and file formats may change between versions. Keep your original recordings. Do not rely on Bristlenose as the only copy of anything you care about.
Bristlenose is open source under AGPL-3.0, and that licence governs the software itself — including its warranty disclaimer and limitation of liability. In plain terms: the software is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind, and the authors are not liable for any claim or damages arising from its use. You can read every line at github.com/cassiocassio/bristlenose.
Bristlenose connects to services you already have — an AI provider such as Claude, ChatGPT, Azure OpenAI or Gemini, and optionally Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom or Miro. It does so with credentials you supply, under your own account, and only when you ask it to.
Two things follow. Your use of those services is governed by your agreement with them, not by this page. And your own costs, quotas and rate limits are yours — Bristlenose has no billing relationship with any provider on your behalf.
You can withdraw any of these connections at any time, from the provider's own account settings.
Bristlenose is used with recordings of real people. Obtaining participants' consent, handling their data lawfully, and deciding what may be sent to an AI provider are your responsibilities as the researcher, and Bristlenose cannot verify any of them.
The app provides tools to help — PII redaction, an anonymisation boundary, a local-only option — but they are tools, not compliance. What you send, and on what basis, is your call.
We don't run a server, hold accounts, collect analytics, track you, share data, show ads, or bundle third-party SDKs that collect data for us. See Privacy for the detail of what leaves your Mac and when.
Questions: hello@bristlenose.app
— Martin Storey, United Kingdom