TLDR: AskScout is MIT licensed because trust matters more than moat for a tool that reads your code. Every line is on GitHub, including the LLM prompt and the way we handle your data. The CLI uses your own API key, so on the local surface your data never touches our servers. Open source is the baseline, not a marketing feature.
The problem with closed-source AI tools that read your code
Most of the AI tooling shipping right now is closed source. The code that decides what data leaves your machine, what gets sent to an LLM, what gets logged, what gets stored, all of that lives behind a binary you can't inspect.
For a code editor or a chat assistant, that is a tradeoff people have decided they can live with. For a tool that reads your repository, it is a harder ask. You are not just trusting the model. You are trusting whatever pipeline gets your diffs to the model.
We didn't want to ask anyone to take that on faith.
Open source as the baseline
From day one, the assumption was that AskScout would be open source. Not as a growth tactic. As the only honest way to ship a tool in this category.
The whole codebase is public at github.com/charleshonig5/askscout. The web app, the CLI, the shared core library, the LLM prompt that decides what the digest sounds like, all of it. If you want to see what gets sent to your LLM provider, the call sites are right there in the repo. If you want to fork it and run your own version, MIT lets you do that with no restrictions.
We thought about a stricter license. Permissive open source can be copied by larger companies. We decided we cared more about being trusted than about being protected. For a tool whose entire job is to read your repo, that felt like the only option.
BYOK on the CLI: control over data
The CLI takes the trust story one layer further. You bring your own LLM API key. That means your diffs go from your machine straight to your chosen provider. No proxy. No middleman. No AskScout server in the path.
The CLI stores nothing online. Your config (with the key at chmod 600 in your home folder) and per-project state file live on disk only. There is no telemetry, no analytics, no opt-out flag because there is nothing to opt out of.
For developers who care about where their code goes, the CLI is the version we recommend. The hosted web app is faster to start with, but the CLI is the version that proves the trust story.
What this means for users
You do not have to take any of this on faith. You can read the source code. You can audit the network calls. You can verify that the only egress from the CLI is to the LLM provider you configured. Whatever we say about privacy, you can check.
That is the version of trust we wanted to ship. Not a privacy policy you have to believe. A codebase you can verify.
What it means for our business
We don't pretend to have a perfect answer here. Open source under MIT means anyone can take the code and run with it. We accept that. The bet is that being the most trusted version of this tool is worth more than being the only version of it.
If a company forks AskScout and ships a paid product on top, that is fine. We'd rather have an honest open codebase than a moat that depends on developers not being able to look inside.
(For the longer argument about why a tool like this needs to exist at all, The Hidden Cost of Vibe Coding covers the why.)
Frequently asked questions
Is AskScout really fully open source?
Yes. The web app, the CLI, and the shared core library are all public on GitHub under the MIT license. Every line, including the LLM prompt, is auditable. Nothing is closed-source or hidden behind a server-only fork.
What license is AskScout under?
MIT. You can read, fork, modify, redistribute, and build commercial products on top of AskScout with no restrictions beyond preserving the copyright notice. Same license used by most modern developer tools.
Can I self-host AskScout?
Yes. The CLI runs entirely on your machine by design, so it's already self-hosted. The web app can be deployed to your own infrastructure since the code is public, though we maintain the hosted version at askscout.dev as the easiest path for most users.
How does AskScout make money?
Right now it does not. The CLI is free open source software with you bringing your own LLM API key. The web app is free with a soft cap of 30 digests per day. We're focused on building the right product. A paid tier might come later for teams or higher limits, but the core will always be free.