Open source
The engine is a contract meant to spread. The host is a product meant to be operated. The license map follows that line exactly, and a dependency direction is what makes it enforceable instead of merely tidy.
The map
| Path | License | Why |
|---|---|---|
| src/monkeyllm/: the engine, the ten primitives, harvest | Apache-2.0 | The MCP contract is the asset. Embed it, ship it, build on it; the explicit patent grant is what lets a company do that without a legal review. |
| docs/ · tests/ · bench/ · scripts/ · examples/ · paper/ · deploy/ | Apache-2.0 | The spec, the benchmark and the deployment glue are only useful if everyone can copy them. |
| apps/station/: REST, MCP surface, governance | AGPL-3.0-only | Self-hosting stays completely free. Offering it as a managed service means opening your service stack. |
| apps/studio/: the web console | AGPL-3.0-only | Same reason: it is the operated product, not the contract. |
| apps/clipper/: the browser extension | AGPL-3.0-only | A client of the Station, distributed by it, the same product, on the other side of the wire. |
The root LICENSE is Apache-2.0 and covers everything except `apps/`; each package under `apps/` carries its own. Every source file states its license in an SPDX header, so a file that travels away from the repository keeps its terms.
Apache-2.0 is one-way compatible with AGPL-3.0: an AGPL work may include Apache-2.0 code, never the reverse. So the host may depend on the engine, and the engine must never import from `apps/`. That was already true architecturally, because the Station is specified as a privileged client of the engine rather than an extension. The license split makes the same boundary a legal one, which means a violation is no longer only a design smell.
AGPL-3.0 section 13 applies to network use: if you modify the Station or the Studio and let other people interact with it over a network, you must offer those users the corresponding source of your modified version. Running an unmodified copy for yourself or your organisation triggers nothing.
The copyright is held by a single author, so the AGPL is not the only way to get this software. If AGPL-3.0 does not fit (you want to embed the Station in a closed product, or offer it as a managed service without opening your stack), a commercial license is available.
Talk about licensingContributions come in under Apache-2.0 on every path, including `apps/`, which the project distributes under AGPL-3.0-only. That inbound licence is what keeps the dual licensing possible: Apache-2.0 travels one way into an AGPL tree, so a permissively licensed contribution can be distributed under the AGPL and under commercial terms.
Read CONTRIBUTING.mdEvery figure comes from committed scripts in the repository, and the paper describing them is a preprint, written, with the DOI deposit still pending. Two of its headline findings are failures against their original criteria, and they are written down rather than dropped: the troop buys accuracy rather than speed, and trail learning found no 25% to reclaim near the one-hop floor. The honest way to evaluate this project is to reproduce the 0/11 first; it takes one command, and it is the whole argument.
And if the license is the only thing standing between you and shipping, that is a conversation, not a wall.