Acceptance of Terms
By downloading, installing, or using CheeseAdvisor (the "app," "we," "us," "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the app.
These Terms govern your use of CheeseAdvisor on iOS, Android, and our website at cheeseadvisor.app. They form a binding agreement between you and Christopher Hilmoe (the app's owner). Please read them carefully.
Description of Service
CheeseAdvisor is a tracker for home cheesemaking. It generates wheel aging schedules (curd checks, turns, minimum-age windows) from its own sourced dosing and timing tables, and — when you choose to sign in — AI-generated mid-aging check reads and finished-wheel diagnoses based on the details and photos you submit.
CheeseAdvisor covers home-batch, pasteurized-milk cheesemaking across eight styles: chèvre, mozzarella, feta, cheddar, gouda, tomme, brie, and taleggio. It does not cover raw-milk cheesemaking, commercial-scale production, or any cheese style outside this list.
The service is provided "as is." See the Food Safety, Generated Advice, and Disclaimers sections below for important limits on what the app's output represents.
Food Safety
Dosing amounts, minimum aging times, and safety gates in CheeseAdvisor come from published home-cheesemaking sources, badged by confidence tier in the app. They are not a substitute for your own judgment.
You acknowledge and agree that:
- Cheesemaking safety depends on you following the process. Using pasteurized milk, clean equipment, correct culture and rennet amounts, and respecting minimum aging times before eating a cheese are your responsibility. The app's guidance is informational, not supervisory.
- Minimum age is a hard floor CheeseAdvisor will not waive. Where the app states a minimum age before a cheese is safe or legal to call finished, it will not report a wheel as "ready" before that time, regardless of how the wheel looks or smells.
- Surface-growth reads are advisory, not a guarantee — and a genuinely harder call than they may seem. Some styles (brie, taleggio) are supposed to grow a visible surface culture; others are not. CheeseAdvisor does not currently have sourced reference data on what a healthy rind should look like, day by day, for the styles where growth is expected — the app discloses this limitation directly in any such read rather than asserting confidence it doesn't have. When in doubt about whether something on a wheel's surface is normal ripening or a problem, the safer choice is always to discard it. CheeseAdvisor's reads are a second opinion, not a substitute for your own senses.
- Timelines are estimates. Aging speed varies with your cave's temperature and humidity, the milk you use, and the culture itself — the app's check-in schedule exists because cheesemaking is variable, not a countdown to a guaranteed result.
Accounts
Creating an account
CheeseAdvisor works fully without an account — planning, tracking, checking on, and finishing a wheel are all local-only features that need no sign-in. Creating an account is optional and unlocks AI-generated check and finish diagnoses. Sign-in uses a passwordless email code: you enter your email address, we send an 8-character code valid for 15 minutes, and entering it signs you in (creating your account automatically if you're new).
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By creating an account, you confirm you meet this age requirement.
Account security
You're responsible for keeping access to your sign-in email account secure. Anyone with access to your email inbox can sign in to your CheeseAdvisor account by requesting a sign-in code.
If your email is compromised, secure your email account first, then contact us at privacy@cheeseadvisor.app to secure or delete your CheeseAdvisor account.
Payment and Subscriptions
CheeseAdvisor does not currently charge for any feature. If we introduce a paid subscription in the future, these Terms will be updated in advance with full billing, cancellation, and refund details, and you will be notified before any change affecting your use of the app takes effect.
Acceptable Use
You agree to use CheeseAdvisor only for its intended purpose: planning, checking on, and logging your own cheesemaking. Specifically, you agree NOT to:
- Submit photos containing nudity, violence, or other inappropriate content (these will be rejected by the processing layer and may result in account suspension)
- Submit photos or content belonging to others without permission
- Reverse engineer, scrape, automate, or attempt to extract bulk data from the app or website
- Use the app to harass, abuse, or harm any person
- Attempt to bypass usage limits or otherwise interfere with the app's normal operation
- Use the app for any purpose that violates applicable laws
We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules.
Your Content
Ownership
You retain ownership of the photos you capture, the notes you write, and the wheels you save. Your content is yours.
License to us
To provide diagnosed checks and finishes, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to transmit and process the description (and photo, if any) you submit for that one request, and to store the resulting text history in your account, solely for the purpose of operating the CheeseAdvisor service for you.
This license covers sending a submitted photo to our processing partner (Anthropic) for that single diagnosis request — the photo itself is not retained by us afterward, see our Privacy Policy — and storing your diagnosed check-in and finish text in our backend infrastructure (Cloudflare).
This license does NOT cover: using your content for AI model training, selling your content to third parties, or displaying your content publicly without your explicit permission. If you delete specific content or your account, this license terminates with respect to that content.
Generated Advice
CheeseAdvisor's wheel schedules — dose specs, expected timelines, minimum-age gates — are computed from a curated, sourced reference dataset, confidence-badged in the app, and are never generated by AI. Check and finish diagnoses (available when signed in) use artificial intelligence (Anthropic's Claude API) to read your description and any photo and generate a response, with the deterministic safety data stamped onto it afterward so it always matches the sourced tables regardless of what the model said.
You acknowledge that:
- Generated output is advice, not authority. The analysis can still be incorrect, incomplete, or surprising, even with the deterministic safety stamp in place.
- CheeseAdvisor is not a substitute for your own judgment — especially on food safety. When a photo-based read and your own senses disagree, or you're simply unsure, discard the batch.
- Following CheeseAdvisor's advice is your choice. Outcomes — a failed wheel, a spoiled batch, an off flavor — are not warranted by us.
- Diagnosed reads require sending your description, and any photo, to Anthropic's servers for that one request. See our Privacy Policy for what data is shared, how it's protected, and your rights to access or delete it.
Intellectual Property
CheeseAdvisor (the app, the website, the wheel logo, the Plan / Check / Finish mode names, and all original UI/UX) is the intellectual property of Christopher Hilmoe. You may not copy, modify, distribute, or create derivative works of these elements without written permission.
Third-party trademarks (Apple, Google, Anthropic, Cloudflare, and others) belong to their respective owners and are used here under standard nominative-use principles.
Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability
Warranty disclaimer
CHEESEADVISOR IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE APP WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT GENERATED ADVICE IS ACCURATE, RELIABLE, OR SUITABLE FOR YOUR SPECIFIC CHEESEMAKING NEEDS.
Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL CHEESEADVISOR OR ITS OWNER BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, USE, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, RESULTING FROM (A) YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE APP; (B) GENERATED ADVICE, SCHEDULES, OR READS; (C) FAILED OR SPOILED WHEELS, INGREDIENT WASTE, OR FOODBORNE ILLNESS ARISING FROM YOUR OWN FOOD HANDLING; OR (D) ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO THE APP.
OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF CHEESEADVISOR SHALL NOT EXCEED $100 USD.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or limitations of liability; in those jurisdictions, the above limitations apply to the extent permitted by law.
Termination
You can terminate your relationship with CheeseAdvisor at any time by deleting the app from your device and, if you created an account, requesting account deletion per the Account Deletion section of our Privacy Policy.
We may suspend or terminate your access to CheeseAdvisor at any time if you violate these Terms, if your account is used for fraud or abuse, or if continued operation poses risk to other users or our infrastructure. We will notify you of termination via your account email when reasonably possible, but reserve the right to terminate immediately in cases of serious violation.
Governing Law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of CheeseAdvisor shall be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.
If you reside in a jurisdiction whose mandatory consumer protection laws provide rights that override this choice (for example, certain EU consumer-law provisions), those rights apply notwithstanding this section.
Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms as the app evolves. When we make material changes, we will update the effective date at the top of this page and notify active account holders by email (using the address associated with the account). Continued use of CheeseAdvisor after an update means you accept the revised Terms.
If you do not agree with the revised Terms, your remedy is to stop using the app and (optionally) request account deletion.
Contact
Questions about these Terms? Get in touch:
Email: privacy@cheeseadvisor.app