What you're buying.

The deal in plain terms — what the license covers, what it doesn't, and what we commit to. Written to be read, not to be survived. If anything here is unclear, ask us before you buy and we'll answer plainly.

The license

Buying Atelier gives you a perpetual, non-exclusive license to use the Atelier desktop app for macOS. It does not expire, it does not renew, and there is nothing to cancel. You own the right to keep using what you paid for, for as long as you like.

Your license covers Atelier 1 — that means every release from today through the entire 1.x series, including every bug fix, every improvement, and every new feature we ship in that series. There is no separate “maintenance” fee and no window that closes.

What a major version means

If we ever ship an Atelier 2 — a genuinely new generation of the app, years out — that would be a new purchase, at a discount for people who already own a license. Your Atelier 1 license keeps working regardless; nothing is taken away and nothing stops on the day a 2 exists.

We'll say the uncomfortable part out loud, because it's the part that gets abused elsewhere: a major version means a new generation of the product, not a renamed update. We will not relabel ordinary work as “2.0” to charge you for it again. If you ever think we have, tell us — that criticism is fair game and we'd rather hear it than lose you.

The mobile companion and the relay

The desktop app runs entirely on your Mac. The mobile companion doesn't: seeing your agents from your phone means messages travel through a relay we operate, and push notifications go through Apple's and Google's services. That is a service with a running cost, not software you hold a copy of, so it is governed differently from the license above — honestly, rather than folded into “forever” where it doesn't belong.

• It's included with your license, under fair use. Normal use by one person is what the price covers, and we are not going to nickel-and-dime you over it.
• It's a service, so it depends on us keeping it running. We may change it, set fair-use limits, or introduce a paid tier for unusually heavy use in the future. If we ever do, ordinary use stays included — a paid tier would be for consumption far beyond it, never a toll on what you already had.
• You can route around us. Atelier works fully on your local network with no relay at all, and self-hosting the relay is on the roadmap so your data need never touch our infrastructure.
• None of this touches the desktop app. If the relay went away tomorrow, the app on your Mac would keep working exactly as it does today.

Your Macs

One license activates on up to 2 Macs — a laptop and a desktop is the case we priced for. You can move a license at any time: deactivate on one Mac and the slot frees up immediately for another. Reinstalling, upgrading macOS, or restoring from a backup on the same Mac doesn't consume a slot.

Being straight about how this is enforced: the device limit is checked on our server, not inside the app, which means we can change it without shipping a new version. We use that to be more generous, never less — we will not reduce the limit below the 2 Macs advertised at the time you bought. If you're stuck with a dead Mac you can't deactivate, email us and we'll free the slot.

Activation, and using Atelier offline

Your license key is a cryptographically signed file, and Atelier verifies that signature on your Mac, offline. Once a Mac is activated it never needs to check in again — no outage, no expired card, and no decision of ours can lock you out of software you already activated.

The one exception, stated plainly because it's the thing people are right to ask about: activating a Mac requires an internet connection, once. That call is how the device limit is counted, and it is deliberately strict — if it can't reach us, activation fails and tells you so, rather than quietly succeeding. So you need to be online for about a second, once per Mac, and never again.

The free trial

Atelier runs for 14 days as a full, unrestricted trial — every feature, mobile included. No card, no account, nothing to cancel, and no charge when it ends.

When the trial ends the app locks to a screen where you can buy or enter a key. Nothing is deleted. Your workspaces, layouts, panels and history stay exactly where they are, on your disk, and come back the moment you activate.

Refunds

14 days, no questions asked. If Atelier isn't for you, email hello@myatelier.dev within 14 days of buying and we'll refund you in full. You don't need a reason, and we won't ask for one. The license is revoked when the refund goes through.

This sits on top of your statutory rights, which we don't reduce. If you're a consumer in the EU or UK you have a 14-day right of withdrawal for digital purchases — the free trial exists precisely so you can decide before paying, and our own policy above is at least as generous either way.

When a license stops working

A license can be deactivated remotely. Because that is a serious power, here is the complete list of when we use it — there is no catch-all clause below it:

• You were refunded, or the purchase was reversed by a chargeback.
• The purchase was fraudulent — a stolen card, a disputed payment.
• The key was shared or resold publicly — posted to be used by people who didn't buy it.

That's the list. We will not revoke a license because you criticised us, because you asked for support too often, because you use the app in a way we didn't anticipate, or because the business needs money. If we ever revoke yours, you'll get an email saying which of the three reasons applied.

Who you're buying from

Atelier is made by Juanma Hidalgo, a sole trader registered in Spain. Payments are handled by Polar Software, Inc., who act as the merchant of record — they are the seller in the transaction, they handle VAT and sales tax for your country, and they issue your invoice.

Two practical consequences worth knowing before you check out: your card statement will say Polar, not Atelier, which surprises people who forget; and your invoice comes from Polar, so it's the one to give your accountant. Support, the license itself, and everything about the product are ours — write to us, not to them.

If Atelier ever stops

A one-person product should say what happens if the person stops. We can't promise to develop Atelier forever — nobody honestly can — so instead we've built it so that our disappearing doesn't take your app with it:

• Already-activated Macs keep working, permanently. Verification is offline and there is no kill switch, no expiry, and no server the app phones home to in order to keep running.
• If we shut down, we will ship a final build that doesn't require activation before the license server goes away, so you can still install on a new Mac.
• We'll give notice — by email to everyone who bought — rather than letting things quietly rot.

What we don't promise

Atelier is a tool for running other people's software — Claude Code, Codex, your shell, your repos. It orchestrates agents; it doesn't supervise their judgement. You are responsible for what the agents you run do to your code and your machine, the same as if you ran them in a terminal yourself. Use version control, review the diffs, and don't give an agent permissions you wouldn't give a stranger.

We also can't promise that Atelier will always work with every agent CLI. Those tools change their interfaces without warning and sometimes ship features that overlap ours; we keep up as fast as we can, and that work is what your license pays for, but a given third-party tool changing under us isn't something we can guarantee against.

Beyond the commitments on this page, the software is provided as is, without warranties, to the extent the law where you live allows. Nothing here limits liability for anything that can't legally be limited — and nothing here is meant to talk you out of asking us to fix something. Email first; we'd rather solve it than cite a clause.

Changes to these terms

We may update this page — for a new product, a clearer sentence, a fixed mistake. Changes never apply backwards to a license you already bought. The deal you agreed to is the version of this page that was live on the day of your purchase, and if we ever change something that materially affects existing license holders, we'll email them rather than quietly editing the page.

Last updated 29 July 2026. Questions about any of this? Email us before you buy — we'll answer plainly, and we'd much rather you ask than assume. See also our privacy statement, which covers what Atelier does and doesn't do with your data.