PLEASE READ THIS AGREEMENT CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING OR USING SOTTO. BY CLICKING "I AGREE," DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, OR USING THE SOFTWARE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL OR USE SOTTO.
1. Parties and agreement
This End User License Agreement ("Agreement") is a legally binding contract between you ("Researcher" or "you") and KonnectXR, LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company doing business as Kaperi Labs ("KXR," "we," "us"), for use of the Sotto desktop application, on whichever plan you have licensed, and any related documentation (collectively, the "Software"). This Agreement supplements our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy; for the Software, this Agreement controls in the event of a conflict.
2. License grant
Subject to this Agreement, KXR grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the Software for your personal academic research purposes, on up to two (2) copies on up to two (2) computers. This license includes downloading and installing the Software and running its hardware check free of charge, before you activate any license key.
Sotto is offered in four plans. Every plan, including the free Sotto Stacks plan, is licensed under this Agreement and requires a license key issued through Lemon Squeezy. What you may open in the Software depends on the plan your license key carries, and the paid plans require payment of the applicable fees for that plan. Section 3 describes the plans and what happens when a subscription ends. Section 4 describes a further condition that applies to the AI features. KXR may verify your license and your plan, including by periodic online validation, and may suspend or disable a license if applicable fees are not paid or if you use the Software in violation of this Agreement.
This license does not include the right to:
- sublicense, sell, resell, transfer, or otherwise distribute the Software or any portion of it;
- modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, except as permitted by applicable law;
- use the Software for commercial research or consulting without a separate written agreement with KXR;
- remove or alter any proprietary notices or marks; or
- use the Software to develop a competing product or service.
3. Plans, fees, and what happens when a subscription ends
Plans. Sotto is offered in four plans: Sotto Stacks, Sotto Scope, Sotto Sense, and Sotto Solo. Each plan includes everything in the plans below it. What each plan includes is described in the Software and at www.sottolab.com. KXR may add, rename, or withdraw plans, and may move a feature between plans, with reasonable advance notice to current subscribers; a change of that kind does not affect the plan you are licensed for during a paid period you have already paid for.
Sotto Stacks. Sotto Stacks is free. It carries its own license key, issued at no cost, and it does not expire. No payment card is required to obtain or use it.
Paid plans. Sotto Scope, Sotto Sense, and Sotto Solo are offered as subscriptions, managed through Lemon Squeezy (lemonsqueezy.com). Sotto Scope and Sotto Sense are billed monthly. Sotto Solo is billed monthly or annually. The current fee for each plan and billing period is disclosed at checkout and at www.sottolab.com. A subscription auto-renews at the then-current price for your plan and billing period unless you cancel before renewal; you may cancel at any time, effective at the end of the current paid period. Prices are exclusive of applicable taxes, which the commerce provider handles. KXR may change pricing with reasonable advance notice to current subscribers. Except where required by law or stated at purchase, fees already paid are non-refundable.
KXR does not currently offer a time-limited free trial. The free Sotto Stacks plan is how you use Sotto without paying. KXR may offer promotional or introductory pricing from time to time, governed by the terms stated with that offer and by this Agreement.
Changing plans. An upgrade takes effect when the new license key is activated or your license is refreshed. A downgrade takes effect at the end of the current paid period.
When a subscription ends. When a paid subscription ends, whether because you cancelled it, it was not renewed, or a payment failed, your license reverts to the Sotto Stacks plan. Everything you created on the higher plan, including your library, transcripts, codes, memos, field notes, instruments, and analyses, remains on your machine, remains readable in the Software, and remains exportable. KXR does not delete, corrupt, or render inaccessible any data you created, and the end of a subscription does not remove your ability to export it. Cancelling does not delete your license key or your research data, and removing or uninstalling the Software is a separate action you control. Renewing or purchasing a paid plan restores access to that plan's features.
Offline grace. If your device is offline, the Software continues to operate for a 7-day offline grace period, after which it must reconnect to re-validate the license before continued use.
4. AI features and the hardware condition
Some of Sotto's features run an AI language model on your own computer rather than in the cloud. Those features are available in the Sotto Sense and Sotto Solo plans, and only when Sotto's hardware check reports that your computer is able to run a local model. Sotto runs that check during setup, you can run it again at any time from Settings, and the result of that check is what decides whether these features are available to you.
If your computer does not meet the requirement, these AI features are not available to you even on a paid plan. Moving to a higher plan does not change this result. The current hardware requirement is published at www.sottolab.com. Because downloading, installing, and running the hardware check are free and do not require a license key, you can run the check before purchasing anything, and you are responsible for confirming that your computer meets the requirement before purchasing a plan whose AI features you intend to use. If you have purchased Sotto Sense or Sotto Solo and the hardware check reports that your computer cannot run the local AI features, contact support@sottolab.com.
Sotto Stacks and Sotto Scope do not require a local AI language model at all, and no function available in those plans downloads or loads one. In Sotto Sense and Sotto Solo, features that do not run a language model on your computer, including audio transcription, are unaffected by this check.
5. Cloud AI services
5.1 Included cloud services. Certain features send content to Anthropic (Claude) on your behalf, using API credentials maintained by KXR, for methodology and literature searching and for academic writing assistance. Which of these features are available to you depends on your plan. You do not need separate accounts or API keys with Anthropic. These features do not run a model on your computer and are not subject to the hardware condition in Section 4.
5.2 Researcher review gate. Before any data is transmitted to an external API, Sotto displays the exact payload, requires your explicit approval, and logs the approval and transmission to a local audit trail you can export. You are responsible for reviewing payload content before approving transmission.
5.3 Data transmitted. Raw participant data (transcripts, recordings, participant identifiers, and raw qualitative data) is processed locally and is not transmitted to cloud APIs. Approved cloud calls involve researcher-composed queries, research questions, theme summaries, and draft writing content. KXR cannot guarantee that content you include in an approved payload is free of participant information; you are responsible for reviewing payloads before approval.
5.4 Third-party terms. KXR is the contracting party with Anthropic. Anthropic's own privacy policy and terms govern how it processes data received through its API; KXR's privacy commitments do not extend to that provider.
5.5 Usage limits. KXR bears the cost of API calls made through the Software and may implement fair-use limits per license. If implemented, limits will be disclosed in the Software and on the website with reasonable advance notice.
6. Locally run AI models
The AI features described in Section 4 use third-party AI models (for example, Llama, Mistral, or Gemma) that run locally on your device via a model runtime such as Ollama. KXR does not distribute or bundle these model weights with the Software; when you choose to use a model, Sotto's setup downloads it to your device from the model runtime's own library rather than from KXR, and your use of each model is governed by that model's own license and acceptable-use terms (for example, Meta's community license for Llama models, or the license Google publishes for the Gemma model you choose). You are responsible for reviewing and complying with those terms.
Audio transcription uses a separate local speech model rather than a language model, and is not governed by the licenses named above or by the hardware condition in Section 4.
The Software also includes or relies on open-source components provided under their own license terms; a list of those components and their notices is available in the app under Settings, then About, then Legal Notices.
7. Analytics
What KXR collects: feature-usage events, navigation patterns, session counts, an anonymized device identifier (one-way SHA-256 hash of a machine ID), Sotto version, OS, Electron version, the result of the hardware check, and the selected local-model tier, via PostHog.
What KXR never collects: research data (transcripts, participant information, coding results, field notes, or document content), local-model prompts or responses, file/project/folder names, or free-text input of any kind.
Consent. Analytics are enabled by default on every plan, including the free Sotto Stacks plan, and you may turn them off at any time in Settings. No feature of the Software is conditioned on leaving analytics enabled.
Nothing before acceptance. The installer and its hardware check run on your computer and transmit nothing to KXR before you accept this Agreement and the Privacy Policy.
First-launch disclosure. The Software displays a non-dismissable disclosure on first launch (after license activation) explaining these practices and linking to the Privacy Policy; you must acknowledge it to proceed.
8. Researcher data responsibility
8.1 Local data. Your research data is stored on your machine; KXR does not have access to it. You are solely responsible for backing up your data and complying with your institution's data-governance requirements.
8.2 IRB compliance. Sotto is designed with IRB-compliance considerations in mind (local processing, a researcher-controlled transmission gate). However, KXR makes no representation that the Software meets the specific requirements of your institution's IRB protocol. IRB compliance is the researcher's responsibility. Confirm with your IRB office whether your use of Sotto is covered by your approved protocol.
9. Intellectual property
The Software and all intellectual property rights in it are and remain the sole and exclusive property of KonnectXR, LLC. This Agreement transfers no ownership to you. You own the research data and outputs you create using the Software, but not any component of the Software itself. "Sotto" and "Kaperi Labs" are trademarks of KonnectXR, LLC; the plan names identify the plans.
10. Code signing and security warnings
Depending on your operating system and settings, you may receive a security warning when installing Sotto (e.g., Windows SmartScreen or macOS Gatekeeper). KXR is pursuing code-signing certification. If you receive such a warning, verify that you downloaded Sotto from an official source (sottolab.com or the official GitHub Releases page) before proceeding.
11. Automatic updates
The Software checks for updates from GitHub Releases; update checks transmit no user data. By using the Software you consent to automatic update checks; you may also check manually via Settings. KXR may push critical security updates without prior notice.
12. Disclaimer of warranties
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. KXR DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SOFTWARE WILL SATISFY THE REQUIREMENTS OF ANY SPECIFIC INSTITUTIONAL IRB PROTOCOL OR DATA-GOVERNANCE POLICY, OR THAT OUTPUT WILL BE ACCURATE.
13. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, KXR SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THIS AGREEMENT OR YOUR USE OF THE SOFTWARE. KXR'S TOTAL LIABILITY FOR DIRECT DAMAGES SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID FOR THE SOFTWARE IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.
14. Term and termination
KXR may terminate this Agreement immediately if you breach it. Upon termination, your license is revoked and you must cease all use and delete all copies; you may export your research data before doing so. Your research data remains on your machine and is not deleted by KXR. Sections 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, and 16 survive termination.
15. Governing law and dispute resolution
This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. The dispute-resolution provisions in Section 17 of the Terms of Service (informal resolution, binding arbitration, class-action waiver, small-claims and injunctive-relief carve-outs, a 30-day opt-out, and a savings clause) apply to disputes under this Agreement and are incorporated by reference. Venue is Sherburne County, Minnesota.
16. General provisions
Entire agreement: This Agreement, the Terms of Service, and the Privacy Policy at www.sottolab.com constitute the entire agreement regarding the Software. Amendments: KXR may update this Agreement; material changes will be communicated in the application, and continued use after acknowledgment constitutes acceptance. Severability: If any provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. No assignment: You may not assign this Agreement without KXR's written consent.
17. Contact
KonnectXR, LLC, dba Kaperi Labs
support@sottolab.com, www.sottolab.com
See also the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy.