Terms of Service.

Effective date: 2026-10-02

1. The short version

• The plugin is free to install. The AI service needs a free trial or a paid plan.
• You buy the plan and credit packs from Polar, our reseller. These terms cover what you get.
• Your audio stays on your Mac and your work is yours. The AI can be wrong; your ears decide.
• You can cancel at any time. Within 14 days of your first payment you can withdraw and get a full refund.

The numbered sections below are the actual terms.

2. Who you are dealing with

Knobpilot is made and run by Lukáš Kostka, a sole trader in the Czech Republic (details at the end of this page), called “we” here. “You” are the person using Knobpilot.

Payments are handled by Polar Software, Inc. (“Polar”), which sells the plan and credit packs to you as merchant of record and authorised reseller. Polar’s own buyer terms apply to the payment itself: the checkout, the charge, taxes, invoices and the billing portal. These terms apply to the software and the service you get.

3. What Knobpilot is

• The plugin: an AU and VST3 effect rack for macOS. It hosts effect plugins you have installed, and you can use it by hand without any plan.
• The AI service: the assistant inside the plugin. It runs on our server, reads your message and the measurements of the audio in the rack, and loads and sets plugins in the rack. It needs an internet connection and credits.
• Credits: the unit the AI service is measured in. A request uses credits according to the AI work it did.

Knobpilot does not generate music, voices or other audio. The sound comes from your plugins.

4. Licence to use the plugin

We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and use the Knobpilot plugin on computers you own or control, for personal or commercial music work. The licence lasts until you stop using Knobpilot or it ends under section 12.

You may not:

• sell, rent, share or redistribute the plugin or access to the AI service;
• decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer it, except where the law allows you to do so anyway (for example, to make it work with other software);
• get around the trial, credit, device or access limits, for example by starting several trials on one computer or by faking device identifiers;
• use the AI service to attack, overload or probe our systems, or for anything unlawful.

Some parts of the plugin are open-source components licensed under their own terms; those terms apply to those parts. Everything else in Knobpilot stays ours.

5. Your plugins, your audio, your work

Knobpilot works with third-party plugins you install. You need a valid licence for each of them, and their own terms apply. We don’t sell, include or support third-party plugins, and we don’t promise that any particular plugin works inside Knobpilot; see the compatibility page.

Your recordings, projects and mixes are yours. Audio is processed on your Mac and is not uploaded. To answer a request we process your message, the recent conversation, and the rack’s plugin names, settings and measurements, as the privacy policy describes. We claim no rights in your work or in the settings Knobpilot chooses for you.

Don’t put information in a message that you have no right to share.

6. The AI can be wrong

Knobpilot’s assistant is an AI system. It works from numbers it measures, not from hearing, and its choices and explanations can be unsuitable or wrong. Every change is listed and can be undone; you decide what to keep. We don’t promise a particular sound, a finished mix, a loudness target or any creative result. Keep backups of important projects.

7. The free trial

Each computer can start one free trial from the plugin: 14 days and 100 credits. It asks only for an email address, where we send the trial's service messages; no card and no password. When either runs out, the AI stops until you subscribe. We may limit how many trials start from one network per day to prevent abuse.

8. The plan and credits

• The plan costs $15 a month and renews monthly until you cancel. The price and any tax are shown at checkout before you pay.
• It includes 3,000 credits each calendar month. They reset on the 1st of the month at 00:00 UTC; unused monthly credits don’t roll over.
• Credit packs ($10 for 1,500 credits, $25 for 4,000) can be bought while you have an active plan. They never expire. They’re used after your monthly credits while you’re subscribed; if your plan lapses, they wait until you subscribe again.
• A request is charged for the AI work it actually did, is stopped when it reaches its cost limit (about 50 credits), and is never charged more than you have left. A stopped request is charged only for the work it finished; a request that fails before its usage is known costs nothing.
• One plan can be active on two computers at a time. Signing out on one frees its place.
• Credits have no cash value. They can’t be transferred, sold or paid out, except as a refund under the refund policy.

We may change the price or the number of included credits for future billing periods. We will tell paying customers at least 30 days before such a change applies to them, and you can cancel before it does.

9. Cancelling

Cancel at any time in the billing portal, linked from your account and from the plugin. Signing out of the plugin or the website does not cancel. After cancelling, the AI works until the end of the period you paid for. The rack, your chains and the manual controls keep working after that.

10. Withdrawal and refunds

If you are a consumer, you can withdraw within 14 days of your first payment and get a full refund. How this works, and when refunds are possible after that, is in the refund policy, which is part of these terms.

11. Availability and changes

Knobpilot is in beta. We work to keep the AI service running, but it can be slow, interrupted or unavailable, for example for maintenance or when a provider fails. We may change, improve or remove features. If a change takes away a main feature you pay for, you can cancel and ask for a refund of the unused part of the current month.

The macOS installer may not be signed or notarised by Apple during the beta; the install guide explains what that means.

12. Suspension and ending

We may suspend or end access to the AI service if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, for example by abusing trials or attacking the service. Unless the breach is serious or the law requires otherwise, we will warn you first. If we end a paid plan without such a breach, we refund the unused part of the current month and any unused credit packs.

13. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits your statutory rights as a consumer, or our liability for harm caused intentionally or by gross negligence, or for injury to life or health.

Otherwise, and as far as the law allows: we are not liable for losses you could have avoided with reasonable care (such as keeping project backups), for how third-party plugins behave, or for indirect losses such as lost profit or lost opportunities. Our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

14. Law, disputes and complaints

Czech law governs these terms. If you are a consumer living in another country, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of that country, and you can bring a claim in the courts where you live.

Please write to us first; most problems can be solved by email. Consumers can also use out-of-court dispute resolution by the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (Česká obchodní inspekce, coi.gov.cz/informace-o-adr). The Czech Trade Inspection Authority also supervises consumer protection.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For changes that affect paying customers to their disadvantage we give at least 30 days’ notice, by email where we have it or in the plugin, and you can cancel before the change applies. The effective date at the top shows the current version.

16. Trademarks

Knobpilot and its logo are ours. Plugin names shown on this site and in the plugin, such as FabFilter, Soundtoys or Valhalla, are trademarks of their owners and are used only to name their products. VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. Apple, Logic Pro, macOS and Audio Units are trademarks of Apple Inc. Knobpilot is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

Who we are

Also read: Terms · Privacy · Refunds · AI disclosure