Terms

These terms cover the bite app, the browser extension and this website, operated by Philipp Tschauner, Berlin.

What bite does

You save a link. bite fetches what is publicly available at that address and writes a short summary of it. Summaries are produced by language models and can be wrong, incomplete or out of date. Treat a bite as a way to decide whether to read the original, not as a replacement for it.

Your account

You need an account, and you are responsible for what happens under it. One account is for one person. You can delete it at any time in the app, and doing so ends these terms.

bite pro

bite pro is a subscription sold through the App Store, monthly or yearly, at the price shown before you buy. It renews automatically until you cancel, and it is charged to your Apple ID. Cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends, in your Apple account settings — bite cannot cancel it for you, and refunds are Apple's to give.

Pro can start with a seven-day free trial through the App Store, which Apple manages: it needs a payment method, it becomes a paid subscription unless cancelled inside the week, and Apple grants it once per Apple ID. It ends by itself and turns into nothing.

Pro's monthly allowance is a single budget, and an audio podcast draws on it far more heavily than an article, because transcribing an hour costs real money. The current allowance is stated on the purchase screen, and how each source is counted is set out below.

Other people's content

The articles, videos and podcasts bite summarises belong to whoever made them. A summary is bite's own text, and it grants you no rights whatsoever to the source. bite reads only what a normal visitor can reach: it does not break paywalls, and where a page is locked it says so and stops.

Do not use bite to reproduce or redistribute content you have no right to, and do not use it to work around anyone's access controls.

Fair use

One ceiling is a number you will meet: 30 saves per day. It is a browser window emptied in one go, it exists so an unattended script cannot run up a bill, and past it saving is refused with a message saying so. It lifts the next day.

The other is a monthly allowance, and we do not publish a figure for it, because we would rather be able to move it than be held to it. It sits far above ordinary reading. If you reach it, nothing is refused and nothing is deleted: saving keeps working, everything is still captured, and summaries resume on the 1st. In other words — can you then do nothing? No. You can do less.

Producing a bite costs real money, and not every source costs the same. An article is cheap. A long report is a few times that. An hour of audio — a podcast from Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any feed — is far and away the most expensive thing bite does, because it has to be transcribed word for word before anyone can read it. The same show published on YouTube costs a fraction of that, since its captions already exist. So a month spent on podcasts runs down much faster than a month spent on articles, and that is the reason.

We reserve the right to limit an account whose usage goes far beyond normal reading, and to get in touch about it first. We do not sell reading by the unit and have no intention of starting; this exists so that one account cannot carry a cost for everybody else.

Do not resell bite, scrape it, or drive it with scripts.

Availability

bite is offered as it is. It depends on services and websites outside its control, and there is no guarantee that every source can be read or that the service is always reachable. Liability is limited to intent and gross negligence, and to damages typical and foreseeable for a service of this kind; liability for injury to life, body or health and under the Produkthaftungsgesetz is unaffected.

Changes and ending

These terms may change; material changes will be announced in the app before they take effect, and continuing to use bite after that counts as agreement. An account may be closed for a serious breach of these terms.

Law

German law applies. If you are a consumer, this does not remove the protections of your own country's law.