License

License is where the appliance states what it is entitled to run, until when, and what it will do when that lapses. The page works offline, it works on an expired licence, and it is deliberately never blocked — the page that fixes a licensing problem can never be hidden by one.

Read the page

What the states mean

Each transition into expiring, grace, expired or trial-expired writes an event — LICENSE_EXPIRING, LICENSE_GRACE, LICENSE_EXPIRED, LICENSE_TRIAL_EXPIRED — so a lapse can be alerted on in your SIEM rather than discovered by someone opening this page.

What a lapse actually blocks

A 402 is narrow by design. It blocks the product paths — chat, guardrails, gateway API-key validation, the inline-proxy inspection intake, image analysis, document analysis, and posting a message into a session — and leaves everything else working. Sign-in, the dashboard, the whole administrative surface, this page and the upload on it are never blocked, so an appliance can always be re-licensed without a rescue procedure.

The body is explicit about the remedy:

{
  "statusCode": 402,
  "code": "LICENSE_EXPIRED",
  "state": "expired",
  "message": "CID license is expired or invalid. An administrator can install a renewal in the dashboard under Settings → License."
}

In the dashboard the same condition raises one banner: This appliance's licence has expired — chat, the proxy and inspection are blocked. An administrator can install a renewal under Settings → License.

Capabilities and grandfathering

The licence file carries a tier, and the tier carries a capability set. The appliance grants the union of the capabilities named in the file and the capabilities of its tier. A capability added to the product after your licence was signed therefore works without a re-issue, and the page says so in its own words under Capabilities: a licence keeps every capability its tier includes, including ones added after it was issued.

An endpoint outside your package answers 403 FEATURE_NOT_LICENSED, naming the capability and your tier. In the dashboard that becomes Not included in this installation's licence package. Contact your CID222 representative to add it. Which capability belongs to which package is generated from the code on the licence tiers reference.

Install a renewal

The full procedure, including the air-gapped path, is on Licensing and activation. From this page it is three actions.

Fields reference

GET /admin/license/status returns what the page shows.

A separate read, GET /admin/license/entitlements, is what every screen consults to know what is licensed. It carries no role guard on purpose — gating it would make the answer depend on itself.

Verify

1. License state reads Valid, Tier names your package, and Expires is in the future.
2. The Warnings tile is absent, or names only the soft-binding notice.
3. Make one chat request. It succeeds rather than returning 402.
4. Open a page that belongs to your tier. It opens instead of reporting that the capability is not licensed.
5. Sign in as a viewer and confirm the page renders read-only: the upload is refused with READ_ONLY_ROLE, not with a licence error.

If it fails

The upload is refused with a 400 naming the signature:

Everything answers 402 although the setup wizard completed:

Shorter answers:

• license is for installation X, this box is Y → the file was issued against a different appliance. Export the activation request again and ask for a re-issue.
• license is already expired → the file's term ended before you uploaded it.
• A page or endpoint reports FEATURE_NOT_LICENSED → the capability is not in your package.
• Creating a user is refused with LIMIT_EXCEEDED → the seat cap is reached. The refusal names the limit and how many are in use. Deactivating a leaver frees a seat, and existing users are never blocked from signing in. The refusal also writes LICENSE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED.
• The warnings tile reports a clock rollback → fix the host clock and NTP. The appliance keeps a high-water mark and treats a large backward jump as tampering.
• The warnings tile reports that the installation identity is self-generated → the licence is bound to a file rather than to the machine. It is enforced normally; bind it to the hardware before the next renewal.

Next steps

• Licensing and activation — the full activation procedure, online and across an air gap.
• Licence tiers — the generated table of which capability each package entitles.
• System updates — updates never change your package; the licence file is what defines capabilities.