Pilot Program Terms

These terms cover participation in the Anchor pilot program. They sit on top of the Terms of Service, which govern the software itself, and the Privacy Policy, which sets out what is stored and where. Where this document and the Terms of Service disagree about the pilot specifically, this document wins.

The agreement is between you and Rishab Reddy Paili, an individual developer operating Anchor ("Anchor", "we", "us"). There is no company behind it, and it is worth knowing that before you rely on it in a classroom.

You accept these terms by submitting a pilot application or by using Anchor as a pilot teacher.

The full terms are below; this is the summary shown on the site.

• How long: 6 weeks
• Spots: 10 teachers in the first group
• What you do: Teach two live classes a week, then one 30-minute call at the end
• When it starts: A new group starts as soon as the last one fills up
• What it costs: Nothing. You're never charged automatically, or without being asked first

The pilot is free. There is no fee, no card, no trial that converts into a subscription, and no payment obligation of any kind during the program.

You can take part if all of the following are true:

• You are at least 18 and are the teacher responsible for the class involved.
• You teach live classes on Zoom and are authorised to connect that Zoom account.
• You have a Mac running macOS 14 or later. This is a hard requirement — Anchor runs on your machine, and there is no Windows, iPad or web version.
• Your school or institution permits it, and you have whatever notice or consent its policy and your state's law require.

That last point is yours to satisfy, not ours. We cannot assess your district's policy for you, and we do not treat an application as evidence that you have cleared it.

Places are limited and applications are read individually. Applying does not guarantee a place, and we may decline an application without giving a reason.

• The complete application, with no features held back or locked behind a paid tier.
• Direct support from the person who wrote the software, by email, for the duration of your cohort.
• A genuine say in the product. Pilot feedback decides what gets built next, and you will be told when something you asked for ships.
• No charge, at any point during the program.

A pilot only produces something worth having if it is actually used. In return for the above, you are asked to:

• Run Anchor in roughly two live classes a week across the cohort. Weeks off happen — holidays, illness, a week that gets away from you — and nobody is being audited.
• Tell your class that Anchor is there and what it does. It appears in the participant list as "Anchor (engagement assistant)", but being visible is not the same as being explained.
• Report problems when they happen, rather than working around them quietly. A bug you tolerate is a bug that ships to the next teacher.
• Take one 30-minute call at the end of the cohort, to talk through what worked and what did not.

None of this is enforceable and none of it is billed. If it stops being worth your time, say so and stop — see Leaving.

• You will be answered. Support email gets a reply within two working days during your cohort. If that slips, it slips honestly and you will be told why.
• No surprise charges, ever. You will not be charged during the pilot, and you will not be moved onto a paid plan without being asked first and agreeing.
• Nothing about your students reaches us. Not names, not grades, not speech, not scores. Your Anchor account holds your name and email address, and nothing about a class is ever sent.
• Notice before the program ends. If the pilot is wound up early you get at least 14 days' notice, so a cohort does not vanish mid-term.
• Your feedback is not repackaged as a claim. Nothing you say becomes a marketing quote or a statistic without your written agreement — see Naming you.

Students are not participants in this agreement. They install nothing, sign up for nothing, and are not asked to agree to anything. The relationship is between you and us.

The pilot changes nothing about how student data is handled. It stays on your Mac. The limits in the Terms of Service on what Anchor's output may be used for — never as the sole or primary basis for discipline, grading, referral, diagnosis, placement or any decision that materially affects a student — apply in full during the pilot, and matter more here than anywhere, because the model has not yet been measured against a held-out test set.

If a student or a parent objects to Anchor being in the room, the answer is to stop using it for that class. Tell us and it will not count against your participation.

Feedback you give about the product — bug reports, opinions, feature requests, what you said on the closing call — may be used to improve Anchor and to decide what to build, with no obligation or payment to you. That is the trade the pilot is built on.

This covers your views about the software. It does not cover your classroom data, which we never receive and cannot use. If you want to send a screenshot or an export to illustrate a problem, remove student names first, and do not send anything your school's policy does not permit you to send.

Aggregate findings from the pilot may be published — how far ahead of a falling grade a flag arrived, how often a flag was worth acting on, how many teachers kept using it. These will never identify you, your school or a student without your written permission.

Anchor is pre-release. It will have defects, features will change or disappear, and an update may break something that worked last week. There is no uptime commitment and no service level.

Do not make Anchor the only thing standing between a struggling student and someone noticing. It is an extra pair of eyes on a class you are already teaching, and during a pilot it is an unproven one.

The "as is" warranty disclaimer and the limitation of liability in the Terms of Service apply to the pilot in full.

We will not name you, quote you, use your school's name or logo, or describe your classroom in any public material without your written permission, given for that specific use. Taking part in the pilot is not that permission.

Permission can be withdrawn at any time. Ask, and the material comes down at the next reasonable opportunity.

You are free to talk publicly about your experience of Anchor, good or bad. There is no confidentiality obligation on you and no non-disparagement clause. If it was poor, say it was poor.

You can leave the pilot at any time, for any reason or none, by emailing us and deleting the app. Nothing is owed, no exit interview is required, and you will not be chased.

We may end your participation if you breach these terms or the Terms of Service — in particular the limits on what Anchor's output may be used for — or if we end the program altogether.

Either way, everything on your Mac stays on your Mac. Deleting the app removes it, and no classroom data was ever on our side to delete. The one thing that is ours to delete is your Anchor account, which holds your email address and name and nothing about a class: email rishabreddy0809@gmail.com and we will remove it. Revoking Anchor's access to your Zoom and Google accounts is done in those accounts, not here.

When your cohort finishes, Anchor keeps working on your machine until an update or a change to Zoom's or Google's interfaces stops it. Nothing is switched off remotely at the end of a cohort.

If Anchor later becomes a paid product, taking part in the pilot does not entitle you to free use forever — but you will not be charged without being told in advance and agreeing. No card is held, so nothing can be charged silently.

Sections 7, 8, 9 and 10 continue to apply after the pilot ends. So do the corresponding sections of the Terms of Service.

These terms may be updated. The date at the top of this page changes when they are, and pilot teachers are emailed before any material change takes effect. If a change does not suit you, leaving the pilot is always available and costs nothing.

This document describes how the program is intended to run. It is not legal advice and has not been reviewed by an attorney. Have counsel review it before running a pilot with a school.

Questions about the pilot, or about these terms, go to rishabreddy0809@gmail.com. They are read by the person who wrote both the software and this page.