Terms of Service

What we each agree to

You are bringing years of your own writing to someone else's server. That deserves a plain account of what happens to it, and of the few things we ask in return.

IWho you are agreeing with

writing|read is operated by Anphase Ltd, a company registered in New Zealand and based in Auckland. In these terms, "we" and "us" mean Anphase Ltd, and "you" means the person using the service.

These terms apply whenever you use writing|read at writingread.com. If you do not accept them, the honest course is not to use the service, and we would rather you did not than that you agreed to something you had not read.

IIWhat the service is

writing|read is a place to write while you read. You add books, you write notes against them in blocks, and the library arranges what accumulates: it groups notes into books, gathers covers and catalogue details, clusters blocks by meaning, and draws connections between things you wrote years apart.

Some of what you see is yours and some of it is not, and the interface keeps the line visible. Your blocks are your words. Book descriptions, covers, authors and publication years come from public catalogues or are written by a language model. Where a sentence is not yours, the page says so.

IIIWho may use it

You need to be at least 16. That is not a legal minimum in New Zealand so much as an honest one: this is a service built around private personal writing, and we would rather not hold that for children.

One account belongs to one person. Do not share your login. If you think someone else has reached your library, tell us and we will help you close it off.

IVYour notes, and what we may do with them

You keep every right you already had in what you write. Nothing here transfers ownership, and nothing here is a licence to publish your notes, show them to anyone else, sell them, or train a model on them.

What we do take is the narrow permission required to actually run the thing: to store your notes, to copy them between our own systems, to back them up, to index and embed them so the library can cluster and connect them, and to display them back to you. That permission exists for those purposes and ends when you delete the content or the account.

You are responsible for what you put in. By adding it you are telling us you have the right to, which mostly matters for one case: quoting a book is ordinary and fine, and reproducing whole copyrighted works into your library is not.

VWhat we make, and what stays ours

The software, the design, the wordmark and the writing on these pages belong to Anphase Ltd. Using the service does not give you a licence to copy them.

Catalogue data and cover art come from public book catalogues and other third-party sources, and remain subject to whatever terms those sources apply. We keep our own copy of each cover so your browser does not have to ask someone else for a picture of every book you read, which is a privacy decision as much as a performance one.

VIWhat the machine does, and what it is not

Two different kinds of automatic work happen here, and they are worth telling apart.

The clustering, the neighbour links and the shelves are produced by a model that runs on our own machine. Your blocks are turned into numbers locally and compared with each other. That work never leaves our infrastructure and is never sent to an AI provider.

Blurbs are different. Where a public catalogue has nothing to say about a book, we ask a language model to describe the book. It is given the title and the author. It is not given your notes, and this is a deliberate line rather than a current implementation detail: a blurb is supposed to say what a book is, so that your account of it can sit beside it.

Models are wrong sometimes. A blurb may be inaccurate, a shelf may put a book somewhere odd, and two notes may be linked for reasons that mean nothing to you. None of it is advice, and none of it should be relied on as fact about a book.

VIIWhat we ask you not to do

The Acceptable Use Policy sets this out properly and forms part of these terms. In summary: do not break the law with it, do not use it to store material you have no right to, do not attack or overload the service, and do not try to reach anyone else's library.

VIIILeaving, and being asked to leave

You can stop at any time. Export your notes, delete your account, and the library goes with it. What deletion actually means, and how long backups keep a copy, is set out in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or close an account that is being used to break these terms, to break the law, or to damage the service for other people. Except where the law requires immediate action, we will tell you why and give you a chance to get your notes out first. Closing an account for a serious or repeated breach is at our discretion; being unable to export your own writing afterwards is not something we will make you suffer for it.

IXWhat we do not promise

writing|read is provided as it is and as it happens to be available. It is built and run by one person. There is no uptime guarantee, no support commitment, and no promise that any particular feature will keep existing.

Keep your own copy of anything you would be sorry to lose. Export exists for exactly this reason. We take backups and we take care, and neither of those is the same as a guarantee.

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost data or lost profits. Where we are liable, our total liability is limited to the greater of NZ$100 or what you have paid us in the previous twelve months.

XChanges

These terms will change as the service does. For a change that materially affects you, we will give reasonable notice by email or in the app before it takes effect, and the date at the foot of this page always tells you when it was last revised. Continuing to use writing|read after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you would rather not, export and close the account.

XILaw, and disagreements

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand, and the courts of Auckland, New Zealand have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer somewhere else, you may still have the protection of your own country's mandatory laws, and nothing here removes that.

Before anything formal, please write to us. Almost everything is a misunderstanding that one email fixes.

XIIGetting hold of us

Anphase Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand.
General and legal: hello@writingread.com
Privacy: privacy@writingread.com

Last updated 30 August 2026 · Effective 30 August 2026