Terms of use

Friction rates climbing conditions at crags, hour by hour for the coming days, from weather forecasts and each crag’s rock and setting, and says when each day’s best window is. It is free. These terms apply to everyone who uses it: its pages, an account and its Alerts, and the MCP server for agents. If you do not agree with them, do not use Friction.

Who runs Friction, and where to write:

The privacy policy says what Friction keeps about you and why. Questions about these terms go to [email protected].

Weather data by World Weather Online. Ratings are estimates from weather forecasts and can be wrong for a place and time. Don't rely on them alone for safety; check the South African Weather Service.

A forecast is a model’s best guess for an area, not a measurement at your crag. Friction cannot see fresh seepage, greasy holds, wet lichen or your skin. Local knowledge, written by a language model from notes on the area, can lower a rating but never raise it. Some crags carry a line saying their details are still being checked. When a weather fetch fails, a page keeps the last forecast and says how old it is.

Before you go, read the South African Weather Service’s forecasts and warnings at weathersa.co.za, and look at the sky again when you arrive.

Climbing, bouldering, approaches and descents carry a real risk of injury and death. A rating says nothing about whether a route, a hold, an anchor or a path is safe. You decide whether, where and how to climb, and you carry the risk of that decision. Mountain weather changes faster than any forecast.

Friction grants no access to any crag, path or parking. The land you climb on has an owner or a manager with its own rules, permits, gates, fees and closures, and they apply whatever Friction shows. Where an area has a gate, a best window ends when the gate closes, by the hours Friction knows for it: a guide, not a promise that the gate is open.

• Use an email address you can read, and keep one account per person.
• Verify your address when Friction asks. Until you do, whoever proves the address is theirs, with a password reset link or by signing in with Google, takes the account over: the password, passkeys, two-factor sign-in and Google account set up before then stop working.
• Accounts are for people 18 and older.
• Keep your password, passkeys, two-factor codes and access tokens to yourself. You are responsible for what is done with your account; if you think someone else has used it, change your password and revoke your tokens.
• Alerts are a convenience. An Alert can come late, not come at all, or name a window that does not hold. Switch them off whenever you like.
• Delete your account on your account pages whenever you like; an account made with Google creates a password there first. Friction may suspend or delete an account that breaks these terms, and will say why by email where it can.

Friction’s MCP server lets an agent ask what the pages answer; Use Friction from your agent says how to add it. It reads only the published forecasts and changes nothing. Without a token its use is limited per IP address; an access token raises the limit for you and opens nothing else. An account keeps ten tokens at most.

Treat a token like a password: anyone who has it can spend your limit. Revoke it on your account page if it leaks. Friction may revoke a token used to strain the service. The answers carry World Weather Online’s credit and the disclaimer: keep them with anything you pass on. The answers’ shape is versioned, and Friction may change or close the server.

Use Friction as a person or an agent would. Do not:

• copy its pages in bulk or by robot: the MCP server is there for agents;
• get around its rate limits, Turnstile or any other check;
• try to reach accounts, data or parts of the site that are not yours;
• use Friction to break the law, or pass its forecasts off as your own.

Share links, screenshots and what a page says, for your own climbing and your friends’. Keep World Weather Online’s credit and the disclaimer with any forecast you pass on. Republishing Friction’s forecasts in bulk, or using them in a product or a service, needs Friction’s written permission first: the weather data is World Weather Online’s and comes with its own terms.

The name Friction, its logo, its design, its text and its code are Friction’s. The weather data belongs to World Weather Online.

When you send Friction a condition report, a correction or a suggestion, Friction may use it to correct the site and to check and tune its ratings, and may show what you reported about the rock. It never shows your name or your email address with it.

Friction is free and provided as it is. It can be wrong, late or down, and it may change or stop. As far as the law allows, Friction and the people who run it are not liable for any loss, damage, injury or death that comes from using Friction or relying on what it says, an Alert included.

Nothing in these terms takes away a right that South African law, such as the Consumer Protection Act, gives you and does not allow to be taken away.

When these terms change, the date at the top changes with them; when a change matters to account holders, Friction emails them before it takes effect. Using Friction after a change means you accept the new terms. These terms are governed by the law of South Africa.