before-you-installlisted

# Before You Install Every tool page is written by the people selling it. The things that change your mind are somewhere else: in clause 7 of the terms, in a support thread from eight months ago, in the permission the installer asks for and does not explain. The failure this exists to prevent: **finding out what you agreed to after your data is already in it.** Not a hack, not a scandal. The ordinary case where someone reads the terms six months late and discovers the answer was public the whole time. This is not a takedown and not a warning label. It is the briefing a knowledgeable friend gives you before you commit, and it stays useful precisely because it will also tell you a tool is fine. --- ## What this needs **Minimum: the tool's name.** Nothing else. It will tell you what to go and look at, and mark every gap it could not fill. **Better with** the pricing page, privacy policy or terms pasted in, and one line on what you plan to use it for. **Best with** all of that plus what you would be moving off, since the honest question is rarely "is this good" but "is this better than what I have". ### Two modes, and say which one you ran **Researched mode.** You have web access. Do the searching yourself. Read the actual policy, find the actual threads, and cite what you found. **Guided mode.** You have no web access. Do not guess, and do not reason from what the tool is probably like. Hand over the exact searches to run and the exact clauses to look for, take back w