Licensing

NIA requires a valid Telerik license to run workflow commands (for example, nia issue plan, nia code create, and nia pr review). License files are provided to private preview participants — contact your Progress representative if you need access. The quickest way to get a license is to run nia auth login, which signs you in with your Telerik account in the browser and downloads your license key automatically. The manual options below remain supported for CI and offline use.

NIA discovers the license automatically at the start of each workflow command, so in most cases you only need to place the license file in one location and NIA finds it.

Commands that require a license

In protected release builds, license validation applies to agent-backed work regardless of how it is invoked: direct commands such as ask, run, issue plan, and code create; commands inside workflows, apps, and tutorials; and agent-type automation steps, including pre/post items. app discover --auto also requires a license for its AI analysis.

These operations remain available without a valid license:

• All auth and config commands, including AI-assisted configuration.
• status diagnostic probes, diagnose, guide, shell, update, telemetry, help, version information, and trace viewing with --tail.
• Ordinary app discover, learn init, and learn list.
• Deterministic backlog plan and command prompt previews with --print-prompt.
• Workflow management (list, status, validate, graph, approve, reject, unlock), workflow run --dry-run, and workflow run --list-states.

Approving or resuming a workflow does not bypass validation of subsequent agent work. Prompt previews skip that command’s pre/post items; independent agent steps in a workflow still require a license. Shell-only automation is not gated solely because it is a workflow.

A missing or invalid license stops the affected execution without an agent retry or an ordinary workflow failure transition. App execution reports licensing failures as command failures; concurrently scheduled repositories validate their own licenses independently. License validation does not delete your session or license file. Signing in does not itself grant entitlement, and a valid license does not require an active login session.

Development builds retain their existing bypass. These exemptions affect licensing only; configuration prerequisites, consent, and agent-provider authentication still apply.

License file names

NIA looks for either of these file names:

• telerik-license.txt
• kendo-ui-license.txt

The file contains a signed license key (a JWT). Do not rename, edit, or reformat it — NIA verifies its signature and will reject a modified file. The file must be under 1 MB.

Getting a license with nia auth login

nia auth login

nia auth login signs you in with your browser and downloads your license key to ~/.telerik/telerik-license.txt (Windows: %APPDATA%\Telerik\telerik-license.txt) — one of the locations NIA already searches (see Full discovery order below), so no further configuration is needed.

This is the same directory the other Telerik and Kendo CLIs use, so a single nia auth login licenses your whole toolchain, not just NIA.

• nia auth refresh re-downloads the key (for example, if it was deleted or has expired).
• nia auth whoami shows the stored key’s path and status.
• nia auth logout deletes your local session but deliberately leaves the license file in place.
• A licensing HTTP 403 means insufficient permission on your account, not a proven missing entitlement — contact your Progress representative with the status code and the environment you selected so they can check your scope and registration.

See Authentication Commands for the full flag reference for nia auth login, nia auth logout, nia auth whoami and nia auth refresh.

Where to place the license file

This section covers the manual path — CI, air-gapped machines, or a license supplied to you as a file. If you can run nia auth login interactively, it handles this for you.

The simplest and recommended manual approach is to place the license file in your project’s NIA directory:

<your-project>/.nia/license/telerik-license.txt

NIA finds it automatically the next time you run a workflow command from that project.

Tip: If you keep the license outside version control, add .nia/license/ to your .gitignore so the key is never committed. See Version Control Setup for complete .gitignore patterns.

Full discovery order

If you prefer a different location, NIA searches the following sources in order and uses the first license it finds:

1. Environment variable (license content): TELERIK_LICENSE or KENDO_UI_LICENSE. Set the variable to the contents of the license file, not a path. This is useful in CI/CD pipelines where you inject the key as a secret.
2. Environment variable (path hint): TELERIK_LICENSE_PATH, set to the full path of a license file.
3. Current directory: ./telerik-license.txt in the directory where you run the command.
4. Project (recommended): .nia/license/telerik-license.txt at the repository root.
5. Connected application: .nia/license/telerik-license.txt at the root of a connected multi-repository application, if one is configured.
6. User profile:
   • macOS / Linux: ~/.config/nia/license/telerik-license.txt (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nia/license/, falling back to ~/.nia/license/)
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\nia\license\telerik-license.txt
7. Telerik fallback directory:
   • macOS / Linux: ~/.telerik/telerik-license.txt
   • Windows: %APPDATA%\Telerik\telerik-license.txt

The user-profile location (option 6) is convenient when you work across several repositories, because a single license applies to every project on your machine.

Using an environment variable

To provide the license without a file — for example, in a CI job — set TELERIK_LICENSE to the license contents:

export TELERIK_LICENSE="$(cat telerik-license.txt)"

Or point NIA at an existing file with a path hint:

export TELERIK_LICENSE_PATH="/secure/location/telerik-license.txt"

Verifying the license

Run any workflow command from your configured project. If the license is missing or invalid, NIA stops before running the agent and prints the searched locations along with the reason.

Troubleshooting

• License file not found — Run nia auth login first; NIA lists every location it searched. Alternatively, place telerik-license.txt in .nia/license/ at your project root, or set the TELERIK_LICENSE environment variable.
• License expired — Run nia auth refresh to renew your session and download a fresh key. Contact your Progress representative if it is still expired afterward.
• License signature verification failed / corrupted — Run nia auth login to download a fresh key. Do not hand-edit the file.
• License validation not configured — The NIA binary was built without an embedded public key. Use an official release build and contact your Progress representative if the problem persists.
• nia auth login succeeded but no license was downloaded — Signing in and downloading a license are independent steps: authentication can succeed even when the license download fails. Follow the reported download error, then retry with nia auth refresh. An HTTP 403 alone does not establish that you are missing an entitlement — see Getting a license with nia auth login above.