Terms of use
These terms are short on purpose. By creating an account or running the Fernel command-line tool, you agree to them. If something here is unclear, email us and we'll explain or fix it.
What Fernel is
Fernel is a non-profit project that estimates the energy use and emissions of your AI coding agents, and lets you fund carbon removal to match. Measuring is free. Fernel is currently in beta: features may change, and things may break.
Your account
- You sign in with GitHub or an email link. Keep access to that account secure.
- You may link only machines you're allowed to run software on, and only upload usage that is yours.
- Don't try to break, overload or reverse-engineer the service, or upload data that isn't real usage.
- You can delete your account at any time in Settings. That deletes your data straight away.
Estimates, not measurements
AI providers don't publish per-token energy figures, so every number in Fernel is a modelled estimate with a range. They're useful for understanding and reducing your footprint, but not for regulatory reporting or legal claims. Our methodology is public and may change; when it does, your history is recalculated.
Contributions
- Contributions are monthly, in euros, and you can cancel any time. Cancelling stops future payments.
- Until the Fernel foundation is registered, contributions are collected by Brainpower on Fernel's behalf and kept apart for carbon removal. The foundation takes over once it exists.
- Fernel uses contributions, after payment fees and running costs, to buy durable carbon removal from verified suppliers and records purchases on a public ledger.
- Kilogram figures are estimates based on a published average price per tonne at the time of each payment. The actual tonnes delivered depend on supplier prices and delivery schedules.
- Contributions are not an investment, carry no financial return, and are not refundable once used to buy removal, except where the law requires it.
Privacy
The command-line tool uploads only daily token totals per project folder name and model. Never prompts, code or file paths. See the privacy page for details.
Liability
Fernel is provided as is, without warranties. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for indirect losses or for decisions you make based on the estimates. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer law.
Changes
We may update these terms. If a change matters, we'll tell you in the dashboard or by email before it applies.