The deal, in plain words.

Tarn watches Recreation.gov for permits and campgrounds you choose and sends you an alert when a spot opens. You book it yourself, in your own Recreation.gov account. It is run by one person — Nick — and using the site means you accept these terms.

Tarn is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Recreation.gov, Booz Allen Hamilton, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service or any other agency. It reads their public data; it does not speak for them, and it cannot fix a problem with your reservation.

This is the important one. Tarn tells you when a spot appears — it cannot hold it, and it cannot guarantee you will get it. Cancellations for popular permits are gone in minutes and other people are watching too.

Alerts can also be late, wrong or missing. Recreation.gov changes its data without notice, rate-limits requests, and occasionally reports availability that isn’t real; servers and phone networks fail. Plan your trip on what Recreation.gov shows you, not on what Tarn told you.

• ·Registration is invite-only, and an invite issued to a specific email address works only for that address.
• ·One person per account. Keep your password to yourself; you are responsible for what happens under your account.
• ·Give a real email address you can receive mail at — it is how alerts and account notices reach you.
• ·Accounts aren’t for children under 13 (see Privacy).

Don’t script or scrape Tarn, don’t resell or rebroadcast its alerts, don’t try to break into it or degrade it for other people, and don’t use it to break Recreation.gov’s own rules. Tarn is deliberately built to watch, never to book: any attempt to turn it into an automated booking bot is outside these terms.

Tarn is in closed beta. Features can change or disappear, and there will be rough edges. It costs nothing today; if paid features are introduced later, you will be told before anything applies to you, and nothing will be charged without you actively agreeing to it.

Tarn is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose and uninterrupted or error-free operation. To the extent the law allows, liability for anything arising out of using Tarn — a missed alert, a lost permit, a trip that didn’t happen — is limited to what you have paid for the service, which is currently nothing. Some places don’t allow those limits; where that is so, they apply only as far as permitted.

You can stop whenever you like — pause a tracker, or ask for the account to be deleted (see Privacy). Access here may be suspended if an account is abusing the service or putting it at risk, and the beta itself may end.

The Tarn name, the site and its code are mine. Tarn claims no ownership of the permit and campground information it reads — it reports what is already public and links you back to Recreation.gov. The trackers you create are yours to edit or delete at any time, and they go when your account does.

If these terms change materially, the date at the top changes and account holders are emailed. Reach me through the Feedback button in the app or the note on an invite request.

Written by the person who runs the service, in plain language rather than by a law firm. It says what is actually true about how Tarn works — which is the part that matters to you.