Licensing API

Base URL: https://api.klippster.app

Content type: every JSON response is application/json; charset=utf-8 with Cache-Control: no-store. A few failure modes are deliberately text/plain — they are listed under Errors.

Authentication: none of these endpoints takes an API key. Activation authenticates with the licence credential in its own body; the revocation list is signed, so its authenticity does not depend on who asked for it.

Surfaces: the service answers three hostnames from one process, and a route belongs to exactly one of them. Matching on the path alone would put the admin pages on the customer portal with nothing but an unguessed URL in the way. Only the api. surface is documented here.

CORS: exactly two routes accept cross-origin calls, and only from the site's own origin — see Cross-origin requests. A request with no Origin header at all (the native app, curl, server-to-server) is allowed through.

Bodies are capped at 256 KiB.

#Endpoints

/healthz answers on any hostname. Everything else is api. only; a request for one of these paths on another host gets 404 Not found.

#POST /v1/licenses/activate

POST https://api.klippster.app/v1/licenses/activate

Exchanges a licence credential plus a device code for a signed, device-bound licence. This is the only licence-related network call the app ever makes, and it makes it once.

Supply either activationKey or claimCode. If both are present, activationKey is used.

Request

{
  "activationKey": "K7X2M-9QP4R-3BTVW-6HZND",
  "deviceCode": "0ABC-1DEF-2GHJ-3KM4",
  "appVersion": "0.5.0",
  "osVersion": "14.5",
  "label": "MacBook Pro"
}

#200 — activated

Response

{
  "license": "{\n  \"v\": 1,\n  \"payload\": \"eyJwcm9kdWN0Ijoi…\",\n  \"sig\": \"MEUCIQC…\"\n}",
  "licenseId": "KL-1A2B-3C4D",
  "kind": "personal",
  "seats": { "used": 2, "total": 3 }
}

• license is a string: the complete contents of the .klippsterlicense file, pretty-printed. Write it to disk as-is.
• seats here is an object — { used, total }. Note that the seats field inside the licence payload is an integer. They are not the same thing.
• kind is one of personal, family, team, press, complimentary.

#Errors

Every error except the last also carries a message written for a person, which the app can show directly:

409

{
  "error": "seat_limit",
  "message": "This licence is already active on all of its Macs. Release one first, then try again.",
  "detail": { "seats": 3 }
}

unknown_credential deliberately does not distinguish between "no such key" and "that claim code was already used". Both are answered the same way, and the customer's route forward is the same: use the permanent activation key, or mint a fresh link from the licence page.

#GET /v1/licenses/by-session

GET https://api.klippster.app/v1/licenses/by-session?session_id=…

What the success page calls immediately after checkout. It returns a claim link, never a licence file — a licence names the Mac it runs on, and a browser cannot say which Mac that is. The link can, because it opens the app.

#200 — ready

Response

{
  "status": "ready",
  "licenseId": "KL-1A2B-3C4D",
  "kind": "personal",
  "seats": 3,
  "email": "buyer@example.com",
  "claimURL": "klippster-license://claim?code=ABC123DEF456",
  "expiresAt": "2026-08-19T10:00:00.000Z"
}

expiresAt is the claim code's expiry, 14 days out — not the licence's. seats is an integer here, unlike the object returned by activation.

Each call mints a fresh claim code and retires any previous live one, so reloading the success page is safe and always hands out a working link.

#Other responses

#GET /v1/revocations

GET https://api.klippster.app/v1/revocations

The signed list of revoked licences. Public and unauthenticated on purpose: it is signed, so its authenticity does not depend on who asked for it, and the ids in it are derived from order ids and name nobody.

200

{
  "v": 1,
  "payload": "eyJwcm9kdWN0Ijoia2xpcHBzdGVyLnBybyI…",
  "sig": "MEUCIQCx8s…"
}

Same envelope as a licence token. payload is base64 of the exact signed bytes; verify sig over those bytes with the pinned Ed25519 public key before decoding. Decoded:

Decoded payload

{
  "product": "klippster.pro",
  "serial": 7,
  "generatedAt": "2026-08-05T10:00:00Z",
  "revoked": ["KL-1A2B-3C4D", "KL-9F8E-7D6C"]
}

serial is monotonic and inside the signed bytes, so an older list cannot be replayed over a newer one. revoked is sorted.

404 {"error":"no_list_published"} when no list has ever been published.

#POST /v1/checkout

POST https://api.klippster.app/v1/checkout

Turns a tier id into a Stripe Checkout Session URL. Called by the pricing page.

The client never sends an amount. The price is resolved server-side from the tier id, so a tampered request can pick a different product but not a different price.

#GET /healthz

GET /healthz — any host

200 {"ok":true}, or 503 {"ok":false,"error":"database_unavailable"} when the database does not answer. It runs a real query rather than reporting that the process is up, because a service that cannot reach its database is not healthy in any useful sense.

#The licence payload

The contract between the service and the macOS app. The file is:

klippster-pro.klippsterlicense

{
  "v": 1,
  "payload": "<base64 of the payload JSON bytes>",
  "sig": "<base64 Ed25519 signature over those exact bytes>"
}

The signature covers the bytes, not a re-serialised object, which is what lets both sides skip canonical JSON. Decoded, the payload is:

Decoded payload

{
  "product": "klippster.pro",
  "email": "buyer@example.com",
  "orderId": "cs_live_a1B2c3D4",
  "licenseId": "KL-1A2B-3C4D",
  "issuedAt": "2026-08-05T10:00:00Z",
  "kind": "personal",
  "seats": 3,
  "name": "Buyer",
  "deviceHash": "0ABC1DEF2GHJ3KM4",
  "expiresAt": "2027-08-05T10:00:00Z"
}

#Device codes

Parsing tolerates lower case, spaces, hyphens and underscores, and applies the Crockford aliases O→0, I/L→1 before verifying the check symbol. The serial number is never sent and never stored; 75 bits of a salted hash is not reversible.

#The claim URL scheme

klippster-license://claim?code=ABC123DEF456

The code is 12 Crockford characters and is the only thing the link carries — no email, no licence id, no order id. The code alone identifies the licence server-side, which is what makes the link safe to appear in a browser history or a support screenshot.

A client registering this scheme should, on open, derive the device code locally and POST both to /v1/licenses/activate, then write the returned license string to disk.

#Cross-origin requests

Two routes send CORS headers, and only for the site's own origin:

Preflights are answered 204 with an empty body. An Origin that is not the site is answered 403 {"error":"forbidden"} — including on the preflight, so a browser cannot learn anything from it. Credentials are never allowed, so cookies do not travel cross-origin.

Everything else — activation, revocations, the webhook, /healthz — sends no CORS headers at all and is not callable from a web page. Activation is a native-app call.

#Errors

Route-level errors are JSON: {"error":"code"}, sometimes with a human message. A few conditions are detected before a route is reached and are returned as text/plain, where the body is the code:

A client should branch on the HTTP status first and treat a non-JSON body as an opaque failure, rather than assuming every error parses.

#The webhook

POST /v1/stripe/webhook exists on this surface but is not a public API. It consumes the raw body and verifies the Stripe signature before parsing anything, and it answers 500 on a fulfilment failure on purpose, so that Stripe retries — the mail provider's idempotency key is what stops the retry sending a second licence email.

It handles checkout.session.completed, checkout.session.async_payment_succeeded, charge.refunded, charge.dispute.created and charge.dispute.closed. Everything else is acknowledged and ignored.

Refunds and disputes set a flag for a human to look at. Nothing revokes a licence automatically — see Revocation.