Terms & Conditions

1. Acceptance & Incorporation of the Privacy Policy

These Terms & Conditions (the "Terms," "Agreement," or "EULA") constitute a legally binding agreement between you ("you," "your," or "User") and The App Foundry ("The App Foundry," "we," "us," "our," or the "Developer"), governing your access to and use of the Catalyst macOS application and all related software, services, content, documentation, and updates (collectively, the "App").

Your acceptance of these Terms also constitutes your acceptance of the Privacy Policy. The Privacy Policy is expressly incorporated into these Terms by reference. By agreeing to these Terms — whether by clicking an acceptance control in the App, by acknowledging an updated version when prompted, or by continuing to use the App — you simultaneously (a) accept and agree to be bound by the Privacy Policy, and (b) confirm that you have had the opportunity to read, and have read and understood, both documents in full. The two documents are intended to be read together as a single, unified agreement.

Clickwrap acceptance and versioning. The App records your acceptance of these Terms locally, including the accepted version number, and stores nothing about that acceptance anywhere else. From time to time the Developer may issue an updated version of these Terms and/or the Privacy Policy. When an updated version is published, the App will require you to review and affirmatively accept it before continuing. Each acceptance is a fresh, standalone agreement to the then-current versions of both documents.

Continued use as acceptance. Where affirmative re-acceptance is not separately required, your continued access to or use of the App after the Terms or the Privacy Policy have been updated constitutes your acceptance of, and agreement to be bound by, the updated documents. If you do not agree, your sole and exclusive remedy is to stop using and uninstall the App.

2. Definitions

"App" means the Catalyst macOS application and all associated software, services, content, documentation, and updates. "Content" means all text, metadata, documentation, and materials made available by the Developer. "GPL" means the GNU General Public License under which the App's source code is released. "Snapshot" means a portable file produced by the App that captures elements of your development environment for restoration on another Mac. "Third-Party Services" means external software (for example, macOS, Homebrew, Python, pip, Git) or infrastructure (for example, GitHub, Vercel, PyPI, Sparkle) that the App relies on or interoperates with. "Privacy Policy" means the Catalyst Privacy Policy, as updated from time to time, incorporated herein by reference.

3. Eligibility & Age

You must be at least the age of majority in your jurisdiction, and in any case at least 13 years old (or the higher minimum age required in your country), to use the App and to enter into this Agreement. If you are under the age of majority, you may use the App only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to be bound by these Terms on your behalf. The App is a professional developer tool that grants system-administration privileges and is not designed or intended for minors. By using the App, you represent and warrant that you meet these requirements.

4. License Grant — Free and Open-Source Software

Catalyst is free and open-source software, licensed under the GNU General Public License ("GPL"). The full licence text is distributed with the source code at github.com/theappfoundryco/Catalyst and governs your rights in the software itself. There is no purchase, no licence key, and no paid tier: the App is provided at no cost.

The GPL controls. Your rights to run, study, copy, modify and redistribute Catalyst — including modified versions — are granted by the GPL, and by the GPL alone. To the extent any provision of these Terms conflicts with, restricts, or purports to add conditions to the rights the GPL grants you in the software, the GPL prevails and the conflicting provision does not apply to your exercise of those rights. Nothing in these Terms is intended to, or shall be read to, impose further restrictions on GPL-granted freedoms.

What these Terms actually cover. These Terms govern matters the GPL does not address: your use of the Developer's hosted services and websites, the Developer's trade marks and branding, the operational behaviour and safety model of the official binary the Developer distributes, and the allocation of risk between you and the Developer for that official distribution. They are a supplement to — never a replacement for — the GPL.

Source availability and your rights. The complete corresponding source code for every released version is published in the public repository above. You may fork it, patch it, build it yourself, and distribute your own builds, provided you comply with the GPL — most importantly, by conveying the same freedoms and the same licence to everyone who receives your version, and by making the corresponding source available to them.

Trade marks are not licensed by the GPL. The names "Catalyst" and "The App Foundry", the associated logos and app icons, and the visual identity of this website are the Developer's marks and are not licensed under the GPL. If you distribute a modified build, you must not present it as the official Catalyst, use the Developer's marks in a way likely to cause confusion about origin or endorsement, or imply that the Developer supports, endorses or is responsible for your version. Nominative reference — stating truthfully that your work is derived from Catalyst — is permitted and encouraged.

No warranty on any build, and none at all on yours. Consistent with the GPL's own warranty disclaimer, the App is provided "as is". The Developer's disclaimers and liability limits in Sections 15 through 18 apply to the official build the Developer distributes. The Developer has no responsibility whatsoever for modified, forked, repackaged, or third-party builds, or for any damage arising from them, and provides no support for them.

Contributions. Unless a contribution is explicitly submitted under different written terms, any code, patch or documentation you contribute to the public repository is offered under the same GPL terms as the project, and you confirm you have the right to license it that way.

5. Restrictions

The freedoms granted by the GPL in Section 4 are broad and are not narrowed here. The restrictions in this Section apply only to conduct that falls outside the scope of the GPL's grant — namely, your use of the Developer's marks, hosted services and websites, and conduct directed at other users or at the integrity of the project.

Accordingly, you agree that you will not: (a) use the Developer's names, logos or branding in a way that misrepresents the origin, authorship or endorsement of any build, as set out in Section 4; (b) represent a modified or third-party build as the official Catalyst, or direct its users to the Developer for support; (c) remove, obscure or falsify copyright, licence or attribution notices, which the GPL itself also prohibits; (d) use the App, or any build of it, to gain unauthorised access to any system, network, account or data you are not entitled to access, or to violate any applicable law; (e) attempt to disrupt, overload, probe or circumvent access controls on the Developer's websites, update feeds, or any hosted service the App relies on; or (f) distribute builds bundled with malware, spyware, cryptominers, telemetry the user has not consented to, or any other code that would compromise a user's system or privacy.

Responsibility for privileged operations. Catalyst performs system-administration tasks on your own machine at your direction, including operations that require elevated privileges. You are solely responsible for the actions you instruct the App to take, for confirming that you understand each consented operation before approving it, and for maintaining your own backups. You must not use the App to perform destructive or privileged operations on any machine you do not own or are not authorised to administer.

6. The App & Its Features

Catalyst provides a native graphical and automation layer over macOS developer environments. It interacts with your local filesystem, package managers (such as Homebrew and pip), Python virtual environments, Git repositories, shell configuration files (such as ~/.zshrc), SSH keys, startup items, disk and battery health data, and related system state, and it can capture and restore your environment via portable Snapshot files.

Some features depend on Third-Party Services, on a working macOS installation, and/or on an active internet connection; the App is designed to degrade to local-only operation rather than fail when offline. The Developer does not guarantee the continuous availability of any feature, and may at any time and without liability add, modify, suspend, limit, or discontinue any feature, in whole or in part. Health scores, diagnostics, and recommendations produced by the App are informational heuristics, not guarantees about the state of your machine.

7. Execution, Sudo & System Modification

7.1 Destructive actions. The App executes shell commands on your behalf. Certain features — such as the Cruft Sweeper (which removes directories like node_modules, .venv, and build artifacts), package installations and uninstallations, system-wide installs using --break-system-packages, PATH and alias edits, startup-item changes, or modifications to ~/.zshrc — are capable of altering or removing data and system state. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT INITIATING THESE ACTIONS CAN RESULT IN DATA LOSS, CONFIGURATION LOSS, OR OPERATING-SYSTEM INSTABILITY, AND THAT YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

7.2 Privilege escalation (sudo). When a command requires elevated privileges, the App prompts for your macOS password via a native dialog and uses it to authorise that command. As the dialog states and the Privacy Policy describes in detail, the password is then held in the macOS Keychain with a device-only access class so that you are not asked again — it never syncs to another device, is never written to a log or plain file, and is never transmitted over the network. You may clear it at any time from within the App or via Keychain Access. You are entirely responsible for the consequences of executing any command with elevated (sudo) privileges.

7.3 Consent, reversibility, and your backups. The App is designed to be safe by default: it favors reversible operations (for example, moving deletions to the Trash rather than permanent removal), gates destructive and system-altering actions behind explicit, informed consent, and backs up your shell profile before writing to it. These safeguards reduce but do not eliminate risk. You remain solely responsible for maintaining your own backups of your device, data, and configuration, and for reviewing each action before you confirm it. The Developer does not maintain a copy of your local environment and cannot recover, restore, or reset data that is lost, deleted, or corrupted for any reason.

7.4 Snapshots. A Snapshot is written to a location you choose on your own disk and is never uploaded to the Developer. The App attempts to redact obvious secrets from captured shell configuration, and can encrypt values you choose to include using a passphrase you supply. Automated redaction is best-effort and is not a guarantee, the Developer never holds your passphrase, and values encrypted under a lost passphrase are unrecoverable. You are solely responsible for reviewing a Snapshot before sharing it and for handling it as the sensitive file it may be.

8. No Account, No Charge

The App has no account system. There is no sign-up, no sign-in, no email address, no password, no device binding, no licence key, and no server-side record of you. Nothing in the App is sold, billed, subscribed to, or time-limited: there is no trial, no paid tier, no in-app purchase, and consequently no payment, refund, or cancellation terms — the App is provided at no cost under the GPL, as set out in Section 4.

Earlier versions of the App and of these Terms described passwordless email authentication, device binding, entitlements, subscriptions, and student pricing. All of that has been removed, and any provision of a prior version relating to accounts, billing, trials, seats, or student grants is of no further effect. Because the App can no longer identify you, the Developer cannot suspend or terminate an individual user's access to the software itself; Section 20 is limited accordingly.

9. No Analytics or Telemetry

The App contains no analytics SDK, no crash reporter, and no telemetry. It does not measure or transmit which features you use, what you install, how long you use it, or what fails. Google Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics, which earlier versions used, were removed at version 1.0 and were not replaced; any provision of a prior version of these Terms by which you consented to that processing is of no further effect.

The App does make a small number of outbound requests for static files — package catalogs, the update feed, a package-version check, and the published version numbers of these legal documents — each of which is enumerated in the Privacy Policy. None carries an identifier or anything derived from your machine. If telemetry is ever introduced, it will be disclosed in the Privacy Policy and in the project's public README in the same change that introduces it, and will require your renewed acceptance under Section 21 before the App continues.

10. Third-Party Services & Dependencies

The App relies on and interoperates with Third-Party Services, including macOS, Homebrew, Python, pip, Git, GitHub (Pages and Releases), Vercel, PyPI, and Sparkle. These services are provided by third parties under their own terms and privacy policies, over which the Developer has no control. The Developer does not endorse and is not responsible for any Third-Party Service, including its accuracy, availability, security, legality, downtime, API changes, or any act or omission of the third party. Your use of any feature that depends on a Third-Party Service is at your own risk and subject to that third party's terms. Packages you install through the App are the work of their own authors and are governed by their own licences; the Developer neither vets nor warrants them.

11. Intellectual Property

The App's source code is licensed to you under the GPL, as described in Section 4, and nothing in this Section limits the rights that licence grants you. The Developer's names and branding — "Catalyst" and "The App Foundry", the associated logos and app icons, and the design and content of this website — are not covered by that grant, are owned by the Developer or its licensors, and are protected by trademark, copyright, and other laws. You must not use them without prior written permission except as Section 4 permits. Feedback you provide may be used by the Developer as described in Section 13.

12. Acceptable Use

You agree to use the App only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You must not use the App to violate any law or regulation; to infringe any third party's rights; to attempt to gain unauthorized access to any system, account, or data; to interfere with the integrity, security, or performance of the App, its update feed, or the static hosts it reads from; to burden, overload, or abuse any endpoint; to distribute malware; or to engage in any conduct that the Developer reasonably considers harmful, fraudulent, or abusive. The Developer may investigate and take appropriate action, including restricting access to its hosted services, for any actual or suspected violation.

13. User Content & Feedback

You retain ownership of the data and configuration you use with the App. If you submit feedback, suggestions, bug reports, or feature ideas to the Developer, you grant the Developer a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, and exploit that feedback for any purpose, without any obligation, attribution, or compensation to you. The Developer is under no obligation to use, maintain, or keep confidential any feedback you provide. Code contributions to the public repository are governed by Section 4 rather than this Section.

14. Privacy

The Developer's handling of information is described in the Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference and which you accept when you accept these Terms (see Section 1). In the event of any conflict between these Terms and the Privacy Policy specifically regarding the handling of personal information, the Privacy Policy controls as to that subject matter; in all other respects these Terms control.

15. Disclaimer of Warranties

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE APP AND ALL CONTENT, FEATURES, AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS, WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. THE DEVELOPER EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS, AND CONDITIONS, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, ACCURACY, QUIET ENJOYMENT, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

THE DEVELOPER DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE APP WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, ERROR-FREE, OR FREE OF HARMFUL COMPONENTS; THAT SYSTEM ENVIRONMENTS, PACKAGES, OR CONFIGURATIONS WILL BE PRESERVED WITHOUT CORRUPTION OR LOSS; THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED; OR THAT THE APP OR ITS RESULTS WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS. NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM THE APP OR THE DEVELOPER CREATES ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY STATED HEREIN. YOU ASSUME TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY AND RISK FOR YOUR USE OF THE APP. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN WARRANTY EXCLUSIONS, SO SOME EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU; IN SUCH CASES WARRANTIES ARE LIMITED TO THE MINIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.

16. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE DEVELOPER (THE APP FOUNDRY), OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, CONTRACTORS, OR REPRESENTATIVES, BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR ENHANCED DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, SOURCE CODE, SYSTEM INTEGRITY, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO YOUR ACCESS TO, USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE THE APP, REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY (CONTRACT, TORT INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE) AND EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, THE DEVELOPER SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, HARM, OR LOSS ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO: (a) any action initiated through the App, including file or directory deletion, package installation or removal, sudo execution, PATH or shell-profile modification, or any other system change; (b) any data loss, configuration loss, or operating-system instability; (c) your reliance on any output, health score, diagnostic, or recommendation of the App; (d) any act, omission, failure, downtime, or security incident of any Third-Party Service, including macOS, Homebrew, pip, GitHub, Vercel, PyPI, or Sparkle; (e) any unauthorized access to or alteration of your device or data; (f) any secret that automated redaction failed to remove from a Snapshot, or any Snapshot you shared; or (g) any interruption, suspension, or discontinuation of the App.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE DEVELOPER'S TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY FOR ANY AND ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE APP OR THIS AGREEMENT SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (i) THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU ACTUALLY PAID TO THE DEVELOPER FOR THE APP IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM (WHICH, THE APP BEING FREE OF CHARGE, IS ORDINARILY NIL), OR (ii) FIVE U.S. DOLLARS (US $5.00). YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THESE LIMITATIONS ARE AN ESSENTIAL BASIS OF THE BARGAIN AND THAT THE APP WOULD NOT BE PROVIDED WITHOUT THEM. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS, SO SOME MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU; IN SUCH CASES LIABILITY IS LIMITED TO THE SMALLEST AMOUNT PERMITTED BY LAW. NOTHING HEREIN EXCLUDES LIABILITY THAT CANNOT LAWFULLY BE EXCLUDED.

17. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Developer and its affiliates, contractors, and representatives from and against any and all claims, demands, actions, liabilities, damages, losses, judgments, settlements, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your access to or use of the App; (b) your violation of these Terms or the Privacy Policy; (c) your violation of any applicable law or the rights of any third party; (d) your execution of any destructive, privileged, or system-altering command through the App; or (e) any content or information you submit, generate, or transmit. The Developer may, at its own expense, assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification, in which case you agree to cooperate.

18. Assumption of Risk & Release

You knowingly and voluntarily acknowledge and accept that installing, uninstalling, cleaning, modifying, migrating, or otherwise administering a macOS developer environment carries inherent risks — including irreversible data loss, loss of configuration, corruption of system or Python environments, and operating-system instability — and that you assume full and exclusive responsibility for all such risks. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you hereby release, waive, and forever discharge the Developer from any and all claims, liabilities, and causes of action, known or unknown, arising out of or relating to your use of the App, including any data loss, financial loss, or damage of any kind. You agree that you use the App of your own free will and at your own risk, and that the Developer bears no responsibility for the consequences of your choices.

19. Updates & Availability

The App may check for and install updates using the Sparkle framework, verifying each update's cryptographic signature before applying it. By using the App, you consent to receiving such updates, which may add, change, or remove features. You may decline an update or disable the check, in which case you continue using the version you have. The Developer does not guarantee that any particular version, feature, or endpoint will remain available, and may discontinue support for older versions. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance of that version.

20. Term & Termination

This Agreement is effective until terminated. You may terminate it at any time by ceasing all use of and uninstalling the App. Because the App has no account and the software is licensed to you under the GPL, the Developer cannot and does not purport to revoke your GPL rights in the code; the Developer may, however, at its sole discretion and without notice or liability, restrict or discontinue access to its hosted services — including the update feed, catalog hosts, and website — in whole or in part, including for any actual or suspected violation of Section 5 or Section 12, or for any reason permitted by law. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including Sections 11 through 18 and 22 through 23 — survive termination of this Agreement.

21. Changes to These Terms

The Developer may update these Terms and the Privacy Policy from time to time. When changes are made, the version number and effective date at the top of each document are updated, and the App — which checks the published version numbers at most once every 14 days — will ask you to review and accept the updated document before continuing. As stated in Section 1, your acceptance of any updated Terms also constitutes acceptance of the then-current Privacy Policy, and your continued use of the App after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of both. If you do not agree to the updated documents, you must stop using and uninstall the App.

22. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them, the Privacy Policy, or the App shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of India, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles, except where the mandatory consumer-protection laws of your country of residence apply and cannot be excluded. You agree to first attempt to resolve any dispute informally by contacting the Developer before initiating formal proceedings. Subject to any mandatory laws that apply to you, any dispute that is not resolved informally shall be resolved exclusively by binding arbitration seated in Bengaluru, India, conducted in English under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. To the fullest extent permitted by law, disputes shall be resolved on an individual basis, and class actions and representative proceedings are not permitted.

23. General Provisions

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy incorporated by reference and the GPL as it applies to the software, constitute the entire agreement between you and the Developer regarding the App and supersede all prior or contemporaneous understandings, including all earlier versions of these Terms. Severability. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it shall be limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect. No waiver. The Developer's failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it. Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms; the Developer may assign them, including in connection with a transfer of the App or its assets. No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms create no third-party beneficiary rights. Headings. Section headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation. Force majeure. The Developer is not liable for any delay or failure to perform due to causes beyond its reasonable control.

24. Contact

If you have any questions about these Terms or the App, you may contact the Developer:
The App Foundry — theappfoundryco@gmail.com.

This document is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. The Developer recommends consulting a qualified attorney to confirm these Terms meet all legal requirements applicable to the App's distribution markets.