Running a node.
Applies to hosts who install the Acorn daemon and contribute compute capacity from their own Apple Silicon Macs. Beta draft, pending counsel review.
1. Relationship
You participate as an independent contractor — not an employee, agent, joint venturer, or representative of Acorn. You control your hardware, schedule, and operating environment.
2. Worker obligations
Run the worker only on hardware you control, keep your OS reasonably current, protect local credentials, and avoid tampering with jobs, transcripts, or validation checks.
3. Quality and abuse controls
Acorn validates output with canaries, duplicate reviews, and reputation scoring. Workers that submit low-quality, manipulated, or abusive results may face more validation, payout holds, payout reversals, or removal.
4. Payouts
Payout terms, holdback windows, and release timing may change during beta. Payout rows are created after work completes and merges. Acorn may withhold or reverse payouts tied to fraud, policy violations, or incorrect accounting.
5. Data on your Mac
During an active claim, the Mac app downloads a small audio clip to NSTemporaryDirectory(). The CLI worker stages audio in ~/.acorn/audio-cache unless configured otherwise. Time Machine, Spotlight, and iCloud Desktop & Documents do not cover the Mac app temp path by default.
6. Privacy and security
Workers receive shard-scoped job data and should process it only through the Acorn software. You may not store, reuse, disclose, or attempt to reconstruct source recordings outside the service flow. This is an agreement obligation, not a cryptographic guarantee once a worker has fetched a clip.
7. No guarantees
Acorn does not guarantee a minimum amount of work, any specific payout level, or that the beta will continue uninterrupted.
8. Ending participation
Uninstalling or signing out stops future participation on that Mac. Eligible earned amounts remain payable on the normal schedule, and held amounts continue through their existing release windows unless they are reversed for fraud, policy violations, or accounting errors. Coordinator-side payout, reputation, and accounting records are retained separately from local uninstall.
9. Taxes
You are responsible for your own taxes and any local laws that apply to the income you earn.