Legal

Engine Access License

Terms version: 2026-05-29-v1

Draft for counsel review — not legal advice. This is the customer-readable summary of the engine license granted under the Terms of Service. In case of conflict, the Terms govern.

What you license

Your subscription licenses hosted access to the Front End engine — not a downloadable design system or component library. You always own your application code and your frontend.manifest.json. We license the hosted engine, MCP tools, Hub, and optional Canvas.

The grant

Subject to an active subscription (or Free tier limits) and compliance with the Terms, Operator grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to:

Use the access key issued to your organization to authenticate to api.thefrontend.ai and mcp.thefrontend.ai.
Invoke engine capabilities (MCP tools and API endpoints) for your internal product design and development workflows.
Use the Hub and optional Canvas for account management and visual design tied to your projects.
Run the @thefrontend/connect CLI to register MCP and initialize your own project files.

No other rights are granted. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Operator.

Restrictions

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, scrape, mirror, or reimplement engine operations locally (promote/capture, re-grounding, cross-project meta-model, platform export) to substitute for or avoid subscription fees. You may not share, sell, or sublicense your access key (except Team seat invites), circumvent entitlement or tier limits, or resell/white-label engine access. Full restrictions: Acceptable Use Policy and Terms §3.

Non-compete (competitive use)

During your account term and for twelve (12) months after termination for cause related to a §3 breach, you may not develop, market, or distribute a product whose primary purpose is substantially the same as the Front End engine (bidirectional design-system governance for AI-assisted front-end development) where that product is built using unauthorized access, reverse engineering, or misappropriation of Front End trade secrets — nor assist a competitor in obtaining such access.

What this does not restrict: building normal websites, apps, design tools, or AI products. It prohibits using Front End access to clone or replace the Front End engine as a competing service. Building your product with your code is expected.

Your ownership

Your repository and frontend.manifest.json remain yours. If you cancel, engine calls stop at period end; your code and manifest stay with you.