You're in. Here's how to activate your license.

1. Install mcpgawk

The same install as everyone else — your key is the only thing a licence adds. No GitHub account, no Node toolchain, nothing built on your machine.

uv tool install --force mcpgawk

No uv? curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh — no admin rights needed. pipx install --force mcpgawk works too.

2. Log in with your key

mcpgawk login 'your-key-from-our-email'

The quotes matter: the key contains | characters, which your shell would otherwise read as a pipe and split the key at the first one.

login fetches the paid engine with your key — a pre-built package, checked against the sha256 the server published — installs it into the same place as the free scanner, and saves the key to ~/.gawk/config.json (mode 0600). The paid pillars (monitor, enforce) become subcommands of the one mcpgawk binary. A key that is not on a live trial or licence gets one line saying so and nothing is installed. (Lost your key? email us and we'll resend it.)

For CI, set GAWK_LICENSE_KEY as a secret instead — the env var takes priority over a saved key.

3. Verify it's working

mcpgawk enforce status

The first time you run any paid pillar (enforce, monitor) on a machine, it activates your key — this registers that machine as one of your license's seats (up to 3 per key). After that, it's checked automatically before each run, with a 24-hour local cache so you're not making a network call on every single command.

4. Run the paid pillars

mcpgawk verify is free and needs no key — sandboxed behavioural verification ships with the open-source scanner. A licence adds the capabilities below.

mcpgawk enforce serve ... — the gateway: one endpoint in front of your MCP fleet, per-principal keys and policy, hash-chained audit

mcpgawk monitor run — continuous drift monitoring

mcpgawk build openapi.json — generate an MCP server from an OpenAPI spec (in development)

Run mcpgawk <pillar> --help for each tool's own full usage — mcpgawk passes your arguments straight through, it doesn't reinterpret them.

Troubleshooting

• "license required" / exits immediately — GAWK_LICENSE_KEY isn't set, or isn't set in the shell/process actually running the command (common in CI: check it's in the job's env, not just your local shell).
• Works locally, fails offline — the license is checked against Lemon Squeezy's API. If you're offline and your last successful check was within the last 24 hours, it still works. Beyond 24 hours offline, it fails closed until you're back online.
• "used on too many machines" — each key activates up to 3 machines. Email us to add seats or reset an old machine's activation.
• Still stuck — email hello@nativerse-ventures.com.

What's free vs. paid