Work with documents you may lawfully use
Slab is a tool, not a grant of rights over the PDFs you open. Use documents you own, have permission to process, or may use under an applicable legal exception. Slab is free and open source under the GPL; this page does not impose a new software license, payment requirement, or usage quota.
Copyright fair use depends on context
In the United States, fair use is assessed case by case. The four factors consider the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount and significance used, and the effect on the work’s market. There is no universal safe page count or percentage. Educational use, attribution, or keeping a file locally does not automatically establish fair use. See the U.S. Copyright Office’s guidance.
Other countries have different copyright exceptions and fair-dealing rules. For a specific legal decision, seek advice appropriate to your situation and jurisdiction.
Protect privacy and document integrity
- Obtain appropriate permission before processing or sharing personal, confidential, or regulated information.
- Do not use document tools to forge signatures, impersonate others, or create deceptive records.
- Check redacted output before sharing. Covering visible text is not always the same as removing underlying content or metadata.
- Keep an original copy and verify OCR, conversion, and AI-generated output.
- Use encryption and access controls according to the document owner’s permissions and applicable law.
Use optional AI and shared services thoughtfully
Review the data practices of any cloud AI provider or plugin you enable. Do not send confidential documents to a service without authorization. On shared or self-hosted deployments, respect the operator’s capacity limits and access rules; do not overload, probe, or access systems without permission.
Questions or concerns
Contact the project on GitHub for product concerns. Share a minimal, non-sensitive example rather than a private document. This page is general information and does not determine whether a particular use is lawful.