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This is one of the two ways to license an on-premise (BYOK) install. For machines with no network access at all, see Air-gapped license. A floating license is one product key with a set number of seats. Any machine can activate with the key while a seat is free; deactivating a machine frees its seat for another. There is no Cosmon account involved — the key is the credential.

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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 the product key, in the form COSMON-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX, and the number of seats it carries.

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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

Allow the license server

Allow outbound HTTPS from the machine to api.keygen.sh. If the machine uses a proxy, set it on the first screen under Network / proxy settings before activating.
3

Activate with the product key

On the first screen, choose Activate a license key, enter the product key and choose Activate license. The machine takes one seat.If every seat is taken, Argus says All seats for this license are in use. Deactivate another machine first.
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.

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Moving a seat

A seat is freed only when its machine is deactivated. A machine that is switched off or offline keeps its seat, so a closed laptop opens a week later without losing it.
  • From the machine: open Settings → Account, choose Deactivate license and confirm. The seat is free right away.
  • Machine lost or rebuilt: ask Cosmon to release its seat.

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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.