Licensing

Ishvana is commercial software. Not a subscription — you buy it once, you own it, it keeps working. Licensing is the mechanism that distinguishes the paid product from trial copies and ensures the per-copy model works the way it’s supposed to. The Licensing tab is where you activate a paid license, see the status of your current license, manage which machines are tied to it, and handle the occasional edge case (switching computers, re-activating after a reset, starting a trial). Most users visit this tab exactly twice in the life of their license — once to activate and once to deactivate if they ever switch machines. Everything else is automated. This page walks through each of those interactions and the edge cases that can come up.

For the technical background on how licensing works — Ed25519 signatures, offline verification, the self-hosted licensing server — see the concept explanation in the Engine section. This page is about what you actually do in the tab, not what happens under the hood.

Current license status

The top of the tab shows your current license state:

• License type. Trial, Personal, or Studio. Trial is the 14-day free trial. Personal is the standard one-seat license. Studio is the multi-seat license for teams.
• Activation status. Activated on this machine, inactive, or expired.
• Expiration date. When the license expires, if applicable. Trials have an explicit expiration 14 days after start. Personal and Studio licenses don’t expire (you bought it once), but the activation files have internal expiration fields that auto-refresh periodically.
• Machines used / Machines limit. How many machines this license is currently active on vs. how many it allows. Personal licenses typically allow 2 machines (your main and a backup/laptop). Studio licenses allow more.
• Last validated. The last time the license was re-validated against the server.
• Machine fingerprint. A truncated version of the machine ID Ishvana uses to identify this machine uniquely. Useful for support cases.

The status display is read-only. It tells you what’s currently true; the buttons below are where you change it.

Activating a license

If you’ve purchased a license, you’ll have received a license key via email — a long string that looks something like ISHV-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX. Paste it into the License Key field and click Activate.

Activation runs in three steps:

1. Validation. The client contacts ishvana.com/api/license/validate with your license key and your machine fingerprint. The server checks the key, confirms it’s valid and not revoked, and confirms you have a machine slot available.
2. Machine activation. If validation succeeds, the server registers this machine as one of the license’s active machines and generates a signed license file containing your license details, your machine fingerprint, and an Ed25519 signature.
3. File delivery. The signed file is sent back to the client, decoded, and stored in data/license/license.lic. From this point on, Ishvana can verify the license offline by checking the signature against the embedded public key — no network connection required.

Activation takes a few seconds. If it succeeds, the status display updates and the tab shows the new license state. If it fails, the error message tells you why:

• “Invalid key.” The license key wasn’t recognized. Double-check the key — a typo in activation is the most common failure mode.
• “Machine limit reached.” You’ve used all your machine slots. Deactivate an existing machine or buy a Studio upgrade.
• “License revoked.” The license has been revoked (chargebacks, refunds, license resale). Contact support.
• “Network error.” The client couldn’t reach the licensing server. Check your internet connection; the activation requires one-time network access even though subsequent verification is offline.

Starting a trial

If you don’t have a license yet and want to try Ishvana before buying, use the Start Trial section instead:

• Email address. Enter an email address. The trial is tied to this email plus your machine fingerprint, so a second machine with the same email can’t start another trial.
• Start Trial button. Sends the request to ishvana.com/api/license/start-trial. The server creates a 14-day trial license tied to your email and machine, returns a signed license file, and Ishvana saves it locally.

Trials have full feature access for 14 days. At the end of the trial, Ishvana stops working until you activate a real license or extend the trial (extensions are case-by-case and handled by support).

One trial per machine, one trial per email

You can only start one trial per machine fingerprint, and only one trial per email address. Combining with a different email on a different machine gives you a fresh trial, but the server notices attempts to start multiple trials from the same origin and refuses them.

The trial limit isn’t a punishment — it’s there so the free trial stays a genuine free trial rather than a way to use Ishvana indefinitely by cycling through email addresses.

Machine management

Below the current license status, a table lists every machine currently active on your license. Each row shows:

• Machine name. Usually the hostname of that machine.
• Activated date. When that machine was first activated.
• Last seen. When the license on that machine was most recently validated.
• This machine indicator. A visual marker showing which row is the current machine you’re sitting at.

You can see which machines are using license slots. If you have a Personal license with 2 machines allowed and both are in use, and you want to activate a third machine, you need to deactivate one first.

Deactivating a machine

To deactivate the current machine, click the Deactivate This Machine button in the Licensing tab. Ishvana will:

1. Contact the licensing server and release the current machine slot.
2. Delete the local data/license/license.lic file.
3. Update the tab’s status to show “inactive.”

The license itself isn’t deleted — it’s still yours, still valid, still purchasable. You’re just removing this machine from its active-machine list, which frees up a slot for another machine.

Deactivating a different machine from this one isn’t supported in the current version. If you need to remove a machine you’re no longer using, you have two options:

1. Go to that machine and deactivate it there. Most users do this when they’re retiring an old computer or wiping it for resale.
2. Contact support to force-deactivate remotely. If the machine is genuinely gone (lost, stolen, broken), support can deactivate a machine slot from the server side. This is a manual process and requires proof of license ownership.

Moving to a new computer

The standard workflow:

1. On the old machine, open Ishvana, go to Settings → Licensing, click Deactivate This Machine. The slot is freed.
2. On the new machine, install Ishvana, open it, go to Settings → Licensing, enter your license key, click Activate. The new machine takes the freed slot.
3. Copy your data directory from the old machine to the new machine if you want to bring your projects with you. Licensing and project data are separate — deactivation doesn’t touch your projects, and moving projects doesn’t require license changes.

If you forget to deactivate the old machine before wiping it, you can contact support to free the slot. Be prepared to prove you own the license.

License file verification

After activation, every time Ishvana launches it runs an offline verification of the license file. The verification:

1. Reads data/license/license.lic.
2. Parses the signed payload — license key, machine fingerprint, expiration, tier.
3. Checks the Ed25519 signature against the embedded public key.
4. Verifies the machine fingerprint matches this machine.
5. Verifies the license hasn’t expired.

If all five checks pass, Ishvana boots normally. If any fail, Ishvana shows the Licensing tab on startup and won’t let you use the app until activation is re-established.

The verification is fully offline after the initial activation. Ishvana doesn’t need to call home. You can use Ishvana on a plane, in a coffee shop with bad wifi, or on a machine that never has network access, and the license keeps working. The only network-required actions are the initial activation and the occasional re-validation (roughly once a month) that refreshes the signed file.

Network failures don’t kill your license

If Ishvana’s scheduled re-validation fails because of a network issue, your license keeps working offline. The file has a grace period built into its signature — even if re-validation hasn’t succeeded in a while, the file stays valid for some months before refusing. This means travel, outages, and temporary network issues don’t lock you out of the app.

Trial-to-paid upgrade

If you’re on a trial and want to convert to a paid license:

1. Purchase a license from ishvana.com.
2. Wait for the license key to arrive via email.
3. Open Settings → Licensing.
4. Paste the key into the License Key field and click Activate.

The activation replaces the trial file with the paid file. Your trial isn’t “used up” if it hadn’t expired — upgrading early is fine and doesn’t lose you anything. Your projects, settings, and all other state are untouched.

What this tab doesn’t do

• It doesn’t handle payment. Payment happens on ishvana.com, outside the app. Once you pay, you get a key via email.
• It doesn’t manage team licenses beyond activation. Studio licenses support multiple users, but per-user administration (adding users, removing users, assigning projects) happens through the ishvana.com account portal, not this tab.
• It doesn’t refund or exchange licenses. For refunds or exchanges, contact support.
• It doesn’t track usage for billing. Ishvana is a one-time purchase. There’s no usage-based billing to track. What you paid is what you paid.

What’s next

Installation How to get Ishvana running in the first place.

First Project What to do after activation.

Settings overview The full settings landscape.