Legal

The licence Motif ships under, what that means if you use it at work, and what the software does with your data.

Licence

ptype is released under the ptype Personal Use License, version 1.0. Copyright 2026 Rohan Hariharan.

You may use, copy and modify the software for personal, noncommercial purposes. You may share copies, modified or not, as long as this licence and the copyright notice travel with them and no one is charged for them.

You may not:

  • Use the software to make money, or as part of anything that makes money.
  • Sell, rent, lease or sublicense it, or share it in exchange for anything.
  • Relicense it on terms that would allow commercial use.
  • Use the ptype name, logo or branding to endorse anything.

Your rights end automatically if you break these terms. On termination you stop using and stop sharing the software.

Commercial use

Using Motif at work needs a separate licence. There is no checkout for one yet, so commercial licences are issued by hand. Write to us and describe what you want to do with it.

The free download is personal use only. Nothing in the app enforces that today; the licence is the whole of it, and we would rather keep it that way than put a lock in a program that runs on your own machine.

Privacy

Motif runs on your computer. There is no account, no sign in, and no telemetry: the app does not report what you do, what you build or how often you open it.

Four things can leave the machine, and only when you ask for them:

  • Your model provider receives the prompts and context you send it. That is the model you chose, not us.
  • Web search sends the query you typed.
  • Academic search sends its query to OpenAlex or Crossref.
  • A report leaves when you export it to Notion or to a vault on a connected drive.

The engine serves a local API on port 8787 with no authentication, because it is meant to be reachable only from the machine it runs on. Do not forward that port.

This website is static. It sets no cookies for advertising or analytics, and the theme you pick is stored in your own browser.

Warranty

The software is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. The author is not liable for any claim, damage or other liability arising from it or from its use. Keep your own backups. Motif writes real files, so treat a new project as untrusted until you have checked the result.

Contact

Licensing, security reports and anything else legal: hello@ptype.app.