Installing it, licensing it, moving it, and paying for it.
Four things people write to us about, answered here rather than in an inbox. Where we have not decided something, this page says so instead of inventing an answer for you.
Install
Installing
There is one decision, and it is whether you want a model running on this machine. Everything else is a double-click. The download carries its own runtime, so there is nothing to install first, no package manager, and no command line anywhere in the supported path.
| Windows | Double-click install.bat once, then Launch FoundrySuite.bat for every session after that. |
| macOS | Double-click Launch FoundrySuite.command. It installs itself the first time you open it. |
| Linux | Run ./install.sh once, then ./Launch FoundrySuite.sh. Nothing goes system-wide. |
Unpack the whole archive rather than dragging a single file out of it — the folder and its contents travel together. Put it somewhere you can read without being an administrator; not in Program Files.
When something will not start
- It writes a log. Everything it did on the way to a failure is in a plain-text log in the logs folder inside your data folder. That file is the fastest route to an answer.
- There is a diagnostic command. foundrysuite doctor reports what is installed and how the application resolved its own settings. Nothing above depends on running it.
- macOS quits it once. The first launch is unquoted by Gatekeeper; the launcher handles that itself.
The full install page
What it asks the machine for, and what it will not ask for →
The licence
A licence is a file on your disk, signed by us and checked against a public key compiled into the program. The check reads one file and contacts nobody, which is why it works identically on a laptop that has never been online.
A paid licence is permanent: it carries no end date, and the software rejects any licence that does rather than honouring one. The thirty-day trial is a different kind of document with an expiry on it, and it is the only licence that has one.
The three commands that answer most licence questions
- foundrysuite license status says whether this copy is licensed, on trial, or neither — and names the reason when it is not.
- foundrysuite license install <file> installs a licence file from your receipt email.
- foundrysuite license fingerprint prints this machine's identifier. It is an opaque hash, it transmits nothing, and it is the one thing we genuinely cannot work out ourselves: we cannot issue a licence against a machine whose identifier we have never seen.
Licence it per workstation, never per user. The application does no seat counting, so questions about sharing one licence are a conversation with us rather than a wall in the product.
Reinstalling on a new machine
You bought it, so this is a supported thing to want, and it does not require a new purchase. A machine that failed, a disk replaced under warranty and a reinstalled operating system are all the same email.
- Send your licence identifier — it is in the licence file and on your receipt.
- Send the new machine’s fingerprint, printed by foundrysuite license fingerprint. Nothing else about the machine is asked for, and we cannot see it.
- Put your data folder across. The data/ folder is the database, your documents and the logs; copying it moves everything.
- Models travel too, if the old machine had them: copy models/ across and the AI features are ready without fetching anything again.
What we do not ask for
Not your hostname, not an inventory of your hardware, not an account on a machine you cannot see. The fingerprint is a hash the software computes locally, and the copy we hold is the one you paste into an email.
What happens next, stated plainly: we issue a licence for the new machine at no charge. Nothing about this is a dongle, because it is a file and not a piece of hardware — a dead machine is an email rather than a support call.
Refunds, and what we have not decided
Here is the honest position, which is mostly that this is not finished.
- The trial is the answer to that question. Thirty days, the whole product, no card, nothing to cancel. If it did not fit, you have not spent anything.
- A purchased licence carries no renewal and no term. There is nothing that will be charged again, so there is nothing to cancel in order to stop a payment.
- If you cancel an instalment plan early, the licence agreement commits us to refunding the unused period proportionally and the licence stays valid. That is written down, so it is a commitment rather than a courtesy.
- A refund for “this was not what I expected” is not something we have decided. We are not going to invent a policy on a web page to sound more considered than we are. Ask, and you will get a real answer from a person — and if the answer turns out to deserve to be a policy, we will write it down here.
What support is, and is not
The software, its documentation and the compliance documents ship with it. Beyond that, you get a person reading your message. We do not publish a support tier, a response time or a package, and we are not going to sell you one you may never use.
For a data protection request, put “data protection” in the subject line. We answer those in writing within one month, which is the deadline the privacy notice commits us to rather than an aspiration.
The questions that arrive most often
It says the licence is not valid.
The message names the reason — none, malformed, or issued for a different computer. Run foundrysuite license status to see which, then install the file from your receipt email with foundrysuite license install. If it says the licence is for another computer, that is the reissue path above.
Can I use it on more than one machine?
One licence, one workstation — including on a trial. Adding a second desk is a second licence from the same purchase. The application does not count seats, so if you want to talk about sharing one, ask; it will not be blocked in the product.
Do I lose my data if I uninstall?
No, and this is the practical answer to almost every question about leaving. The database is a SQLite file in your data folder. Copy it anywhere, open it with any SQLite tool, and export every record type to CSV from Settings.
The model features say they are unavailable.
They need a model, and FoundrySuite does not ship one. The application reports them as absent rather than returning an empty result that looks like an answer. Everything else — the ledger, the pipeline, the documents — works regardless.