Geolithic — terms, privacy, sources

Founding terms, plain words, dated 2026-09-10. They will be amended when counsel has read them, and the date will move. Questions: john.heinz@bettergood.net.

Who

Geolithic Intelligence is operated by John Heinz. The house is the auction and record described at https://geolithicintelligence.com/api/catalog. The atlas at https://geolithicintelligence.com/ is free to everyone, always.

What is sold

• A lease is a time-limited exclusive reservation of a record in our index: one face of the Earth's mesh, at one level, for one term of the Earth's turn (a day, six hours, an hour, or one tick of four minutes). It is a digital service, delivered at once as a chained record. It is not land, not a title to anything on the ground, not a security, not a token, and it is not an investment: it pays nothing, appreciates in nothing, and the house never buys anything back. What it gives is standing in the record: for the term, no one else holds that face at that level, and the record says so forever.
• A stamp is one record chained beside the Earth's tick carrying a hash you supply, for 0.02 USD paid in USDC. It is a receipt, not a credit: it has no balance, is not redeemable, and is not transferable by the house.
• An opening is what a lease delivers on request: the contents of the leased face at a chained tick, as described in the catalog. Nothing about the world is promised; the house promises the record.

Prices and payment

Prices are set by geometry and by auction, in degrees, at the rate the catalog states (one US dollar a degree). Each way of paying has a floor that is its own cost and nothing more: a lease paid in USDC over x402 costs at least 0.02 USD, a lease paid by card at least 1.00 USD. Every clearing price is published on the public roll; no buyer is ever named there. A lease is paid by card through Stripe or in USDC on Base through an x402 facilitator; a stamp only in USDC. The house never sees a card number. Payment is due before the record issues; a bid itself costs nothing.

Delivery and refunds

A lease issues the moment its payment settles; a stamp chains the moment its payment settles; a witness opens the moment its payment settles. Each is a digital service delivered in full at that moment, and once delivered it is not refundable. If a payment settles and the record does not issue — a fault of the house — the house refunds the payment in full: write to the address above within fourteen days with the receipt. The house does not refund a lease because the world under the face was not what the buyer hoped: the house promises nothing about the world.

What the house promises, and what it does not

• Promised: exclusivity (no two parties hold the same face, level and term) and finality (the gavel does not re-strike). The record is chained, published with its arithmetic, and witnessed by an outside timestamp authority.
• Not promised: anything about the world. The readings are free and stand on their own. The face is exact; the ground under it is known to within a face or two. Errors in the record are corrected forward, never rewritten. The house's liability for any claim is limited to the amount paid for the record concerned.
• The house never bids, never prices, and never names a party.

Privacy

There are no accounts. The door keeps, for ninety days, a salted hash of a visitor's network address and client kind — never the address — so a visit reads back as a path; it keeps the words sent to it, which a person reads. Payment details are held by Stripe (cards) and by the x402 facilitator and the public Base ledger (USDC); the house keeps the payer's wallet address in a private book that is never published and never chained. The atlas sets no cookies; what it remembers, it remembers in your browser alone. To ask what the house holds about a visit, or to have it deleted, write to the address above.

Sources and licences

• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com, CC BY 4.0, from the ECMWF IFS model among others.
• Magnetic observatory data from the USGS Geomagnetism Program (public domain) and from INTERMAGNET observatories under CC BY-NC 4.0. The results presented here rely on data collected at magnetic observatories. We thank the national institutes that support them and INTERMAGNET for promoting high standards of magnetic observatory practice. The observatories' readings are free to everyone on this door and are not sold: the measured magnet joins a paid opening only where the operating institutes' terms allow.
• Earth imagery from NASA: the EPIC camera on DSCOVR, and VIIRS true colour and Black Marble night lights through GIBS. Tides from the luni-solar potential of the ephemeris. Satellites from public element sets.
• The Geolithic clock, mesh, readings and records are the house's own work.