The honest version of the fine print

KWS Labs is run by Ilan Kushnir, an individual maker based in Israel, reachable at [email protected]. "We" and "us" on this page mean that person. "You" means whoever is using this site or holds an account.

Using this site means accepting these terms. If you do not accept them, the honest answer is not to use it.

Build My Homelab is complete. Every stage and lesson of the path is written, and what you buy at launch is the whole of it. What is not open yet is the way in: the portal and checkout are being prepared for the public launch. Nothing is for sale on this site today and no payment details are collected anywhere. Any checkout you see inside the portal while we prepare is a prelaunch preview that charges nothing and records an order a human approves by hand.

Joining the Founding Access list (internally: a purchase-intent record) is not a purchase. It takes no money and no card, and nothing on this site can charge you today. Founding Access is its own list and it is double opt-in: you leave your email, we send you a confirmation link, and nothing at all happens until you click it. General updates is a separate list and is not Founding Access; neither ever enrols you into the other.

What confirming actually does depends on the offer page you used. On the dedicated Founding Access pages, every person who confirms the Founding Access email before checkout opens activates a real reservation of the $49 one-time founding price. The reservation is usable for 48 hours, and that window starts when checkout opens - not when you confirm. If the window closes unused, the reservation is released and the price goes back to whatever is published at that point. An unconfirmed address activates nothing. On the main offer page, the founding price is a limited-time offer and not a reservation: leaving or confirming an email does not hold that price, and what you pay is the price published at the moment you check out.

What a reservation is, and what it binds. It holds a price, not a place, and it is not a payment: it obliges you to nothing, you can drop it at any time with one email or by unsubscribing, and you owe nothing either way. It does bind us. Once a reservation is activated we honour it for its full window at the price it was activated at - we will not withdraw it, re-price it or shorten it. If we ever change the founding offer itself, the change applies only to people who have not yet activated a reservation, and we publish it before checkout opens. Section 5 governs the purchase itself and applies from the moment a real purchase is possible.

Accounts are invite-only. An access code creates one; there is no open sign-up while we prepare for the official opening. You must be 18 or over. An account stores your email, an optional name, a hashed password (never the password itself) and the four build documents the portal synchronizes for you: see the privacy page. One account is for one person: keep your password to yourself, tell us promptly if you think someone else has it, and do not share sign-in details. We may close invite-only accounts if the pilot changes shape, and if you have paid for something at that point, section 5 governs what you get back.

Build My Homelab is digital content and an interactive service: a guided path you work through at your own pace, delivered through your account on this site. It is supplied as access, not as a file you download in one piece. The path is complete at launch, and it keeps being looked after after that: lessons are corrected and improved, and tools that stop being the right recommendation are replaced.

When you buy access, you get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the path and its materials to build and run your own systems, for as long as we run the service. That includes your own household's systems and your own work as an individual.

What the licence does not allow, stated plainly so nobody has to guess:

• Sharing your account, or the materials, with people who did not buy access
• Republishing, reselling, sublicensing or redistributing the path, the prompt cards or the lesson content, in whole or in substantial part, in any medium
• Using the materials to build a competing product, or to train a model on them as a dataset
• Removing attribution, or presenting the materials as your own work
• Automated scraping or bulk downloading of the portal

Quoting a passage with attribution, showing a friend what you are doing, screenshotting your own build, and writing publicly about your experience are all fine and always will be.

Everything you build stays yours. Your server, your configuration, your data, your notes, your Server Passport: yours entirely, and we claim nothing in them. KWS Rack's published files are a separate, free project and stay free. Third-party tools the path recommends (Debian, Docker, Tailscale and friends) carry their own licences and terms, which you accept directly with them.

The path is guidance for building on your own hardware and your own network. It is built to keep beginners safe: verification at every step, no open ports on the core path, a tested backup before anything risky. But the commands run on your machine, executed by you and your AI agent. You are the operator.

So: you are responsible for your hardware, your data and your backups; for keeping what you expose to the internet lawful and safe; and for the licences and costs of any third-party service you choose to run. Nothing here is a warranty that a specific setup will work on your equipment, and nothing here is professional, security, tax or legal advice.

The safety gates exist so that when something does go wrong, it is a restore you have already rehearsed, not a disaster. Follow the gates. Skipping them is your call and your risk.

Third-party apps and the catalog. The app catalog lists software made by other people - mostly open-source projects, each marked with its source model. A listing is our judgement that an app is worth a look for a job, and nothing more: we do not make, maintain, host, support or warrant any of them, we are not affiliated with their authors unless a page says so, and their names and logos belong to their owners. Each app comes with its own licence and, sometimes, its own paid tiers; those are between you and the project.

Before you run one, it is yours to check. You decide whether an app is safe and suitable for your machine, your network and your data: read its documentation and licence, look at how it is maintained, keep it updated, run it behind the path's safety gates, and back up before you depend on it. Our notes and fit verdicts are a starting point written on the review date shown on the catalog; projects change, and a note can go stale before we revisit it. We add, change and remove entries whenever we review, and we may remove one we no longer stand behind.

Icon credits: the app icons in the catalog come from selfh.st/icons, used under CC BY 4.0.

This section takes effect when purchases open. It is published now so that anyone leaving their email for the launch offer can read the deal before there is any pressure to decide.

Price and payment. Prices are shown on the offer page in US dollars and are one-time, not a subscription, unless a page says otherwise in as many words. Any tax that applies is shown before you pay. Payment is handled by a licensed payment provider; we never see your card number. Your purchase is complete when that provider confirms it and we send your confirmation email.

Immediate access, and the cooling-off period. Access opens as soon as the payment clears, because that is what people want. Purchases are made from our payment provider, which acts as the merchant of record: its terms govern the sale itself, including any statutory right of withdrawal that applies to digital content where you live (such as the 14 day right in the EEA and the UK), and you accept those terms on its checkout page. Our own refund promise below is broader than that right, and we honour it whether or not the statutory right applies to you.

Our own refund promise, which is broader. Whether or not the statutory right applies where you live, you can ask for a full refund if both of these are true:

• You ask within 14 days of your purchase, and
• You have not completed more than two stages of the path at the moment you ask

No explanation is required and none will be asked for. Progress is measured by the portal's own record of completed stages, which is the same record you can see yourself on the build board, so neither of us has to take the other's word for it.

Why the progress limit exists. This is digital content: someone who works through the whole path has received the entire thing and can keep every word of it. A refund after that is not a refund, it is a free copy. The two-stage line is drawn early on purpose. It is enough to see the real product, judge the writing, the tone and the depth, and decide it is not for you, and it is nowhere near enough to have taken the substance of it.

What founding buyers get, and what they do not need. Founding buyers back the product before the public launch, so the price they reserved is the price they pay: a reservation activated by a confirmed email is honoured for its full window, and we do not withdraw, re-price or shorten it. They do not need a promise about missing content, because there is none to make - the path is complete and every buyer gets all of it. The refund right above applies to founding buyers on exactly the same terms as to everyone else, and section 6 covers the case where we later have to remove something substantial from what you paid for.

How to ask, and what happens. Write to [email protected] from the address you bought with. We reply to every refund request, and where it qualifies we refund to the original payment method within 14 days of accepting it. A refund ends your licence: access to the path closes, and you agree to delete any materials you saved from it. Your own build, your own server and your own data are untouched and stay yours.

Where a refund is refused. Only in two situations: you have completed more than two stages, or you have broken the licence in section 3, for example by sharing or republishing the materials. In that second case we may also close the account without a refund. If you disagree with a decision, reply and say so before starting a chargeback; a conversation with the person who wrote the software is faster than a bank's dispute process, and we would rather refund you than argue.

None of this reduces any mandatory consumer right you have where you live. Where a local rule gives you more than this section does, the local rule wins.

We aim to keep the service available and will not promise uptime we cannot personally guarantee: this runs on hardware in a home, and maintenance, outages and moves happen. Planned interruptions are announced where we can.

The path is complete, and it is living content: we rewrite lessons that can be clearer, and replace tools that stop being the right recommendation. We will not remove substantial parts of what you paid for; if we ever have to, and it materially reduces what you bought, you can ask for a fair refund and we will treat that request generously.

You can stop using the service and ask us to delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, attacks the service, or is used to harm other people, and we will tell you why. If we close the service entirely, we will give reasonable notice, let you export your build documents, and handle outstanding purchases under section 5.

We provide the path with reasonable skill and care, and we stand behind the quality of what we wrote. Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows, the service is provided as it is: we do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that a given recommendation will suit your particular hardware, network or plans.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for everything connected with this service is limited to the amount you actually paid us in the 12 months before the claim, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost data, lost profit, or damage to hardware you operated yourself. Back up your data: the path teaches you exactly how, and a tested restore is a gate on the path for this reason.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected by anything here.

Changes to these terms. We update them as the product grows up. Material changes are announced by email to account holders and to anyone on a list, before they take effect, and the date at the top always tells you which version you are reading. If you do not accept a change, you may close your account; where the change materially disadvantages a purchase you already made, section 5's refund principles apply.

Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of Israel, and the courts of Tel Aviv-Yafo have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident in the EEA or the UK, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of your own country, and you may also bring proceedings there.

The rest. If a clause here turns out to be unenforceable, the remaining clauses stand. Not enforcing something once does not waive it. You may not transfer your rights under these terms to someone else; we may transfer ours if the project moves to a company, without reducing your rights. These terms, the privacy page and the offer page you bought from are the whole agreement between us.

Anything unclear, or a case these terms do not cover? Write to [email protected]. Complaints reach the same address and the same person, and we answer them properly. These terms are written by the builder rather than copied from a template, and they will keep growing up alongside the product: plainly, and with notice.