Terms. Plain language.

1. The two paths

	Self-host	Managed license (Pro / Enterprise)
Engine runs	On your hardware	On your hardware
Your data lives	On your disk	On your disk
Backend touches	Nothing	License check & quota counter only
License	AGPLv3 + PolyForm-NC dual	Commercial subscription
Cost	$0 — community-supported	$ per month
SLA	None	Per the tier you subscribed to
Support	GitHub issues — best-effort	Email — operator-direct

2. Self-hosted engine — license

The engine source code is published under a dual license:

• AGPLv3 — for any use that complies with AGPL's strong-copyleft network-clause obligations.
• PolyForm-NC 1.0.0 — for non-commercial use without AGPL obligations.

You may pick whichever fits your situation:

• Personal / research / educational use: PolyForm-NC is the simplest path. Run it, modify it, share it with your friends. No copyleft obligation.
• Commercial use, willing to comply with AGPL: AGPLv3 applies. If you offer mazemaker — modified or unmodified — as a network service, you must publish your full corresponding source under AGPL.
• Commercial use, unwilling to comply with AGPL: contact info@mazemaker.dev for a commercial license. The Pro / Enterprise managed license includes one.

You may not relicense, sublicense, or remove these license terms. The license texts in the source repository are authoritative.

3. Managed license — service terms

Subscribing to a managed-license tier (Pro, Enterprise) creates a service contract between you ("you", "the customer") and the operator (the individual identified at section 9 below; legal identity disclosed at billing) governed by these terms.

3.1 What you get

• An API key for api.mazemaker.dev — consumed by the engine running on your machine
• A commercial license that lifts AGPL's network-service obligations
• The quota stated on the pricing card you subscribed to (number of tool calls per day, total memories, etc.)
• Operator-direct email support

The backend does not host your engine. It does not store your memories. It validates your license and counts your tool calls. Everything substantive runs on your hardware.

3.2 What you commit to

• Pay the subscription fee monthly via Stripe
• Keep your API key secret — treat it like a credential
• Stay within your tier's quota; sustained over-use is grounds for tier upgrade or termination
• Comply with the acceptable-use policy below

3.3 Acceptable use

You may not use a managed license to:

• Conduct denial-of-service attacks against the license-validation backend or against any third party using mazemaker tooling
• Reverse-engineer the rate-limiter, the quota system, or the license-validation handshake
• Resell raw API access to third parties without an Enterprise reseller agreement
• Share, sublicense, or pool your API key across users not covered by your subscription
• Use the engine to store or process material that infringes third-party rights, contains CSAM, or is otherwise unlawful where you operate

Violating these is grounds for immediate suspension and termination without refund.

3.4 Cancellation and refunds

• You may cancel any time via the dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle.
• Pro-rated refunds are not offered for partial-month cancellations.
• If the license-validation backend is materially broken for > 4 hours in a calendar day, you may request a 1-day pro-rated credit by emailing info@mazemaker.dev.

3.5 Operator's right to terminate

We may terminate or suspend a managed license for non-payment, acceptable-use violations, fraudulent payment, or court order. We will email the account-holder before termination unless an immediate suspension is necessary to protect the service. Termination of the license does not delete your local installation — it just stops working as a Pro / Enterprise instance.

4. No warranty

The self-hosted engine is published as-is, with no warranty of any kind, express or implied. The managed license is offered on a best-effort basis at the SLA stated on the pricing card; outside that explicit SLA, no warranty applies.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, mazemaker is not liable for indirect, consequential, or punitive damages, lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption arising from the use of the engine or the license-validation backend. Aggregate liability for any direct damage is capped at the fees you paid in the 12 months preceding the claim.

5. Data ownership

You own your memories. They live on your disk. We never have them.

The architecture is local-first by construction: the engine runs on your hardware, the embeddings are computed locally, the graph and dream output are stored locally, and only an opaque API-key fingerprint plus a counter increment ever crosses the wire to the license-validation backend. We have no read path to your memory store. We do not train models on your data because we have no copy of it. We share nothing with any third party because there is nothing to share. See the privacy policy for the full data-flow disclosure.

6. Trademarks

"Mazemaker", the diamond logo, "the labyrinth, not the cloud", and "Inceptions, as a service" are trademarks of the operator. The AGPLv3 + PolyForm-NC dual license grants you rights to the source code; it does not grant rights to the trademarks. You may use the name "mazemaker" descriptively (e.g., "compatible with mazemaker", "fork of mazemaker") but not as the brand of a derived service.

7. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. Disputes shall be resolved in the courts competent for the operator's place of residence, except where mandatory consumer-protection law in your jurisdiction requires otherwise.

8. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes — anything that increases your obligations, restricts your rights, or changes the licensing model — will be emailed to active account-holders 30 days before they take effect, and the "last revised" date will be updated at the top of this page. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

9. Operator

This service and the engine repository are operated by an individual sole operator under the handle aLca, based in the European Union. There is no corporate entity standing behind the service; it is offered on a personal-operator basis.

operator handle:  aLca
jurisdiction:     EU
contact:          info@mazemaker.dev
privacy:          info@mazemaker.dev

For statutory disclosures required for billing or contract execution (e.g. invoices, GDPR data-controller identity verification), the operator's full legal identity is provided directly to the requesting party on confirmed request — not published on this page. Self-hosters retain all the rights AGPLv3 + PolyForm-NC grant them and never need to know the operator's identity to use the engine. Managed-license subscribers contract directly with the operator on the terms above; the legal-identity disclosure occurs as part of the Stripe billing flow.

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By installing the engine you accept the AGPLv3 + PolyForm-NC license terms. By subscribing to a managed-license tier you accept these terms in full. By using the marketing site you accept the privacy policy.