Terms of Use
Last updated 2026-07-14.
1. The service
Berea is a personal Bible-reading and study tool: a reader with highlights and notes, an AI-assisted passage/sermon summarizer, and an activity tracker. You can use most of it without an account (everything stays in your browser's local storage). Creating an account lets your highlights, notes, bigger-note documents, settings, and reading position sync across browsers and devices.
2. Your account
You must provide a valid email address and choose a username; we verify the email address before the account can sign in. You're responsible for keeping your password confidential and for anything that happens under your account. Passwords are salted and hashed — we never store or see your plaintext password. There's currently no self-service account-deletion option; email us (below) if you'd like your account and data removed.
3. Your content
Your highlights, notes, bigger-note documents, study goals, and reading activity belong to you. We store them only to provide the sync feature. If you submit a sermon transcript, YouTube link, or a question to the AI features, that content is sent to our AI provider (see "Third-party services" below) solely to generate a response for you.
4. Third-party services
Parts of the app rely on external services, each of which processes the data described:
- Groq — powers passage summaries, sermon analysis, the verse finder, and audio transcription. Passage text, sermon transcripts, and your questions are sent to Groq to generate a response.
- bible.helloao.org — supplies the scripture text and translation catalog. No account data is sent.
- Google reCAPTCHA — protects the signup form from automated abuse. Google receives the CAPTCHA interaction and, optionally, your IP address.
- Resend — sends the email-verification link on signup. Your email address and username are sent to Resend to deliver that message.
- YouTube (via yt-dlp) — if you paste a YouTube link for sermon transcription, our server downloads the audio from YouTube to transcribe it.
5. Acceptable use
Use the service for personal Bible study. Don't use it to abuse, overload, or attempt to compromise the app or the third-party services above, and don't submit content you don't have the right to share.
6. AI-generated content
Summaries, sermon analyses, and topic/passage suggestions are generated by an AI model and may be incomplete or mistaken. They're a study aid, not a substitute for reading the text yourself or for pastoral or theological guidance.
7. No warranty
This is a personal project provided "as is," without warranty of any kind. Storage is not guaranteed to be durable or backed up — don't rely on it as your only copy of anything important. We aren't liable for any loss arising from your use of the service.
8. Changes
These terms may change as the app changes. Continuing to use the service after an update means you accept the revised terms.
9. Contact
Questions about these terms, or a data-deletion request, can be sent to the site owner.