Terms & Conditions

These terms govern your use of Locus, the native macOS workspace for building with local and hosted AI models, provided by SparkTales Inc. By downloading, installing, or using Locus you accept these terms. Locus is free of charge; there is no account to create and nothing to subscribe to with SparkTales.

Locus is a desktop application that runs an AI agent on your own Mac. By default it works with models you run locally through Ollama; it can also use hosted model providers — Claude, Codex, Kimi, Kimi Code, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — but only after you add an account yourself. The agent can read and edit files and run commands in the workspaces you open, under a permission system you control.

Locus is open source under the Apache License 2.0, © 2026 SparkTales Inc. That license covers the code. It does not grant any right to the Locus name or the SparkTales identity, which remain trademarks of SparkTales Inc. The app bundles third-party components — a standalone CPython runtime and a pinned set of Python packages — which remain under their own licenses, listed on the Open-Source Licenses page and inside the application bundle.

Hosted models are authenticated with API keys you supply. Your use of any provider is a relationship between you and that provider, governed by their terms and billed by them — per token, or against a membership in the case of Kimi Code. SparkTales is not a party to it and does not resell model access.

Some provider rules shape how Locus behaves, and you agree to respect them:

• Anthropic requires a console API key and does not permit third-party apps to use Claude.ai subscription credentials; Claude accounts in Locus therefore need a console key.
• Kimi Code keys bill against a Kimi membership, and Moonshot’s terms require third-party tools to identify themselves — Locus sends a fixed Locus/<version> identifier on every outbound request, including pages a model browses.
• Authenticated non-loopback endpoints must use HTTPS, and Locus refuses provider redirects so your credentials cannot follow a response to a different URL.

The Locus agent runs with your privileges, by design. Its permission modes (Ask every time, Accept file edits, Bypass all) and its deny list of destructive commands are guard rails against obvious accidents — they are not a sandbox. You are responsible for:

• reviewing diffs, commands, and fetches before approving them;
• the workspaces you open and the instructions (including AGENTS.md) you give the agent;
• plugins, skills, and MCP servers you install or connect, and the access you grant them;
• using computer-control features only on machines, accounts, and applications you are authorized to operate, and complying with applicable law when you do.

Locus is distributed two ways, and they differ deliberately:

• Direct download — signed with the SparkTales Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and stapled. It is not sandboxed, so the agent can reach the workspaces you choose. Computer control and stdio MCP servers are available in this build.
• Mac App Store — the sandboxed build (bundle id io.sparktales.locus). It keeps agent data in its app container, persists workspace access with security-scoped bookmarks, connects to remote MCP servers only, and does not offer computer control.

Locus is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement — consistent with the Apache License 2.0 under which it is distributed. To the maximum extent permitted by law, SparkTales Inc. is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost profits, or the actions an AI model takes or suggests, arising from your use of Locus.

If these terms change, the revised version is posted on this page with a new date. Continuing to use Locus after a change means you accept the revised terms.

Questions about these terms can be raised on the Locus repository. For security issues, do not open a public issue — email contact@locushost.co with enough detail to reproduce the problem.