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This is one of the two ways to license an on-premise (BYOK) install. For machines that can reach a license server, see Floating license. An air-gapped license is a file (.lic) that Cosmon signs for one specific machine. Argus verifies the signature and the machine on every start, entirely offline: no license server, no account, no check-in.

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What you receive

Cosmon sends your team the installer for each operating system you’re testing on, plus a provenance file for each one (.sigstore.json) that proves where the build came from — see Release integrity. The installer is the same however the machine is licensed; there is no separate on-premise build.
Install: run Cosmon Setup <version>.exe. It installs for the current user into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Cosmon and never asks for administrator rights.
Allow about 2 GB of disk for the installed application. If your EDR restricts what runs, allowlist the Cosmon publisher certificate and process tree first, as described in IT prerequisites. You also receive one .lic file per machine, after you send Cosmon that machine’s fingerprint (step 2).

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Install and activate

1

Install the application

Install it as described in What you receive for the machine’s operating system.
2

Send Cosmon the machine fingerprint

Open Argus. On the first screen, choose Activate a license key. In the Air-gapped section, choose Copy next to the fingerprint — a 64-character code unique to this machine.Send it to Cosmon together with the machine’s hostname, so each license file can be matched back to its machine. The fingerprint is a hash; the raw hardware identifier never leaves the machine.
3

Import the license file

When the .lic file arrives, return to the same screen, choose Import license file… in the Air-gapped section and select it. Argus opens immediately and makes no license calls from then on.The file only works on the machine it was issued for. Moving to another machine, or reinstalling the operating system, changes the fingerprint and needs a new file.
4

Connect your LLM

On the Bring your own key step of setup, or later under Settings → Model & provider:
  1. Pick the Provider: Anthropic, OpenAI or Google.
  2. Enter the API key.
  3. For a gateway or internal model, enter its root address in Gateway URL (or Anthropic Base URL / OpenAI Base URL in Settings). Argus adds /v1/messages (Anthropic) or /v1/chat/completions (OpenAI) itself; OpenAI reasoning and Responses-only models use /v1/responses instead, so a gateway serving them must expose that path too. Gateways such as LiteLLM work with the Anthropic and OpenAI providers only.
  4. Choose Test connection. It shows Connected with the response time once the endpoint answers.
Keys are encrypted with the operating system’s keystore: DPAPI on Windows, Keychain on macOS, and the Secret Service keyring (GNOME Keyring or KWallet) on Linux. On a Linux machine with no keyring running, keys are stored base64-encoded, not encrypted — run a keyring, or pass the key through the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY or GOOGLE_API_KEY environment variable instead. Prompts, responses and files go straight to this endpoint, never through Cosmon.If the machine reaches the internet through a proxy, set it first: choose Network / proxy settings on the first screen (or Settings → Network), set Proxy mode to Manual, and enter the Proxy URL. A TLS-inspecting proxy’s root CA goes in the operating system’s certificate store — see TLS inspection.
5

Check it works

Open a supported CAD or CAE application, start a new chat and send a short prompt. See Quickstart for examples.
To move a license off a machine, open Settings → Account and choose Deactivate license. This removes the file from the machine; importing it again restores access.

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What still reaches Cosmon

The current build contacts Cosmon for the connections below, whichever license the machine uses. The machine only talks to the hosts in the Destination column; the Processed by column names the services the Cosmon backend forwards that data to.
Turn off Share conversation history for analytics under Settings → Privacy & security on every machine. It is on by default, and while it is on, operational traces include prompts, responses and tool results. With it off, none of the connections below carry conversation content.
See Data handling for what each connection carries.

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Updates

To update by hand, run the new installer over the current version; chats, settings and the license are kept. Keep the previous installer in case you need to roll back.

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Where Argus stores data

Uninstall: remove Cosmon in Settings → Apps. To also delete chats, settings and the license, delete %APPDATA%\nexus.
When you report a problem, send the logs folder from the affected machine.