How Muster works

Platforms & requirements

Muster ships as a native binary — no Electron, no bundled browser — for exactly three targets:

There is no Intel Mac build, and no ARM build for Linux or Windows. Check your machine before buying — a license activates one device and cannot be moved.

Git is required for worktrees. Each agent CLI you want to drive must be installed and on your PATH; the app probes for them and shows which are missing. The muster CLI ships inside the artifact on all three platforms; put it on your PATH with Settings → General → Install muster CLI. On macOS that symlinks it into ~/.local/bin. On Linux it copies it into ~/.local/bin instead, because the AppImage's mount point is unmounted when Muster quits and gets a new random path on the next launch — so a symlink would be dead; the copy is a snapshot, and you re-run the install after every Muster update to refresh it. On Windows it adds the artifact's folder to your user Path.

Everything behaves identically on all three platforms except where a page says otherwise.

Licensing & activation

A license is one-time and per device. No subscription, no seat renewal, and no tier above it — buying unlocks the whole app permanently on one machine.

There are two ways to get one: buy it outright, or start the 7-day trial, which becomes exactly the same license on day 7. The trial is not a free one — it takes a card up front. See The 7-day trial below for the dates, the charge and how to cancel.

Activating

1. Get a key — by buying, or by starting a trial — shaped MUSTER-<payload>.<signature>.
2. Paste it into the app — the license prompt appears on its own on first launch (the wizard's License step) and whenever the app isn't licensed.
3. The app contacts the license service once to bind the key to this device, and stores the device-bound token it gets back.

What happens afterwards

• Verification is offline. The stored token is an Ed25519-signed document checked against a public key compiled into the app. Normal use needs no network.
• The binding is inside the signature. A token minted for one machine will not verify on another, so copying the file — or the whole application directory — achieves nothing.
• The key you paste is not the key you keep. Activation makes the service mint a new token carrying your device id, and the app replaces the stored value with it. Settings shows that bound token afterwards, not what you typed — so it will not match the key you were sent. Your current keys are always on your dashboard, which is what support works from.
• A daily validity check. While the app is open it asks about once a day whether the license is still good. A failed call — offline, service down, a 5xx — changes nothing; it only shortens the retry interval, which lengthens again as failures repeat. Nothing counts down and nothing locks: an unreachable service is not a license problem. A license is cleared only by an explicit revocation — a refund or chargeback, or a trial you cancelled once its last day passes.
• Tampering is rejected. An edited payload fails the signature; a re-ordered payload fails a canonical-form check.
• Expiry. A bought license has no expiry date at all. A trial token does, and it is the ordinary case rather than an error: on day 7 it is replaced by the perpetual key the charge bought (see The 7-day trial).

The 7-day trial

The trial gives you every feature on one machine for 7 days, and $0 is charged the day you start it. It is not a free trial: it takes a card up front and turns into a paid license on its own.

Starting it

1. Start it on this site: open the trial page and sign in, or create an account — the trial is anchored to that verified address.
2. Save a card through Stripe. Card details go to Stripe, never to us; we keep only Stripe's customer and payment-method identifiers.
3. The trial key appears on screen. Paste it into the license prompt — it appears on its own whenever Muster isn't licensed — exactly like a bought one: that binds it to the machine you paste it into.

What happens on day 7

• The card on file is charged $39 once and the trial becomes your perpetual license for that device — the same license: same id, same machine, no expiry, no subscription, nothing that renews.
• The signed key changes, because the expiry date lives inside the signature. We email the new key when the charge succeeds and it appears on your dashboard. Paste it once and you are done.
• There is no reminder email before the charge. The date is shown when you save the card, on your dashboard for the whole 7 days, and on the trial page.
• Your trial key keeps working for a few days past the charge, so applying the new one is never urgent.

Cancelling, and declines

• Cancel any time before day 7 from your dashboard: one click, nothing is charged, and you keep every feature until the last day of the trial. After that the license is revoked and the app locks — nothing you made is touched.
• Once the charge has gone through there is nothing to cancel: it is a one-time purchase, and all sales are final.
• If the card is declined, we retry once, two days later. If that also fails the trial key stops working and no license is issued. Your dashboard names the failed attempt and the next one.
• Buying outright during a trial is fine — the day-7 charge is skipped, and you are never charged twice.

First-run setup

The wizard has five steps, and every choice is changeable later in Settings:

1. Appearance — theme and accent.
2. Terminal — font, size, scrollback retention.
3. Secrets — where credentials live. See secret backends.
4. Daemon — whether terminals keep running with the window closed.
5. License — paste your key. No key yet? Start the 7-day trial on this site: it takes a card and shows you a key to paste back here.

You can skip the wizard entirely and take the defaults.

Where to go next