Tier 2 Operator Guide — NeuralMind

Last updated: 2026-07-22
Version: v1.7.0
Audience: Operators who just ran neuralmind onboarding or neuralmind wakeup .

What Tier 2 (Team) gives you

Tier 2 is the paid tier on top of the MIT core. The MIT core’s 12-50x token reduction is free forever, and the tier2 feature set — governance, audit, self-hosted — runs under the auto-issued free 1-seat license too. A paid Team license buys seats beyond one (5-50), priority support, and an annual invoice, not hidden features.

Feature	Free license (1 seat)	Team ($29/user/mo, 5-50 seats)
12-50x token reduction	Yes	Yes
Synapse learning	Yes	Yes
MCP server	Yes	Yes
Memory publish/inherit	Yes	Yes
Governance (publish scope, weight threshold)	Yes, at 1 seat	Yes
Audit log (SHA-256 hash-chained)	Yes, at 1 seat	Yes
Self-hosted deployment	Yes, at 1 seat	Yes, with deployment support
Seats beyond one	No	Yes (up to 50)
Priority support + annual invoice	No	Yes
License validation (Ed25519 + 30-day grace)	Auto-issued free license	Signed Team license

You are paying for seats and support, not for features — everything is evaluable free at 1 seat.

Quick Start (first 5 minutes)

Install + activate free tier:

pip install neuralmind
cd /path/to/your-project
neuralmind build .
neuralmind wakeup .          # auto-issues free license

Run the onboarding wizard:
```
neuralmind onboarding --quick   # skip prompts, defaults only
```
Or just neuralmind onboarding for interactive mode. Walks through license activation, governance defaults, admin emails, and seat audit.

Verify:

neuralmind team license status
neuralmind team seats list

Tier 2 Commands

License

neuralmind team license status       # current tier, seats, expiry, issued-to
neuralmind team license activate <file>   # activate with Ed25519-signed license

Seats

neuralmind team seats list            # list all seats
neuralmind team seats add <email>     # invite a seat (idempotent, soft-delete aware)
neuralmind team seats remove <email>  # remove a seat (soft-delete)

Governance

neuralmind team governance status
neuralmind team governance set-scope <personal|shared|both>
neuralmind team governance set-weight-threshold <0.0-1.0>
neuralmind team governance set-governance-enabled <true|false>
neuralmind team governance list-shared
neuralmind team governance remove-edge <edge_id>

Audit

neuralmind team audit list            # recent audit events
neuralmind team audit export --format csv|json
neuralmind team audit verify          # verify SHA-256 hash chain integrity

Self-hosted

neuralmind team self-hosted init      # initialize self-hosted data dir (0700 perms)
neuralmind team self-hosted status
neuralmind team self-hosted validate-license

Honest scope (what Tier 2 does NOT do yet)

Claim	Status	Honest framing
SSO/SAML/OIDC	Not shipped	PRD-scoped for future wave
Real-time cross-machine sync	Not shipped	Paid tier future
Customer self-serve dashboard	Not shipped	Decide later
License portal	Deferred	D12: defer until 3+ customers

Do not market Tier 2 as SSO-enabled or multi-machine-synced. Architecture is ready; features are not shipped.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
“License not found”	`neuralmind wakeup .` auto-issues free tier on first run
“Downgrade guard triggered”	Fresh `tier2.yaml` should have `tier: free` (v1.7.0+). If not, delete and re-`wakeup`
“Seat limit exceeded”	`neuralmind team seats remove <email>` to free a seat
“Audit log empty”	Audit events only fire on Team-tier governance/seat operations
“Self-hosted data dir permission denied”	`neuralmind team self-hosted init` sets 0700 permissions

When to skip Tier 2

Under 5K lines, free-tier, inline-only, prompt-caching already covering you
No compliance/audit requirements
Solo developer (1-seat free tier is sufficient)

The honest boundary is documented on the NeuralMind site at https://neuralmind.uk/effectiveness/ — free-tier users whose codebases fall below the sweet spot should verify their own reduction ratio before purchasing.

Wiki v1.0. Next review: after SSO/SAML ships.