Frequently asked questions

NodeTool is the open creative AI workspace. Every major model from every major provider, including FAL, KIE, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and Replicate, sits on one visual canvas that you run on your own machine or in the browser. Image, video, music, and text share that canvas, alongside agents that carry out longer jobs step by step.

Yes. The whole project is AGPL-3.0 on GitHub. Studio and Cloud are built from the same source, and nothing is held back for a paid tier. You can host it yourself at any time.

NodeTool Studio runs on your own machine: the workspace, your workflows, your files, and your API keys stay there, and open-weight models can run locally through MLX, Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM, and LM Studio. When you call a hosted model, that request goes from your machine straight to the provider you chose, on your key — it does not pass through NodeTool servers. Cloud is the same open-source app hosted in the browser, and your keys still call the providers directly.

Every editor in NodeTool — the node canvas, sketch pad, storyboard, video timeline, script editor, 3D scene, and app builder — is exposed to agents as tools, around 120 in all. An agent doesn't describe what you could do; it builds the workflow, runs it, and repairs what fails, on the same surfaces you use. The same tools are exposed over MCP, so outside agents such as Claude Desktop and Claude Code can drive NodeTool too.

It means you connect your own provider accounts and pay each provider directly at their list price. NodeTool never adds a markup, never sells its own credits, and never runs models on its own servers. Your keys, your bill, your data. You will sometimes see this written as BYOK.

NodeTool Studio, the desktop app, is free and open source. NodeTool Cloud is a subscription that covers hosting; it is in alpha and its price is set at full release. In both editions you bring your own API keys and pay each provider their list price directly, so what a run costs is whatever the provider charges for it. Local models through Ollama, MLX, or llama.cpp cost nothing per call.

No. There are no credits and no markup. You bring your own API keys and pay each provider their list price directly. You can also run local models with Ollama, MLX, or llama.cpp in the desktop app for no per-call cost at all.

Studio is the desktop app: free, open source, running on your machine, with support for local models through MLX, Ollama, and GGUF. Cloud is the same workspace in the browser, with nothing to install and no graphics card needed, and your keys still go straight to the providers. The workflows are the same either way.

The leading models, including Flux, Seedance, Wan, Veo, Kling, Hailuo, Qwen Image, Whisper, ElevenLabs, and Suno, reached through providers such as FAL, KIE, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Replicate, Together, Groq, Mistral, OpenRouter, and HuggingFace. Models can also run on your own computer through MLX, Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM, and LM Studio.

Yes. NodeTool Studio runs open-weight models on your own hardware through MLX (Apple Silicon), Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM, and LM Studio. Nothing leaves your machine unless you call a cloud provider yourself.

No. NodeTool works entirely with cloud providers — bring your own API key, and the model runs on the provider's hardware with nothing to install locally. A GPU only matters if you choose to run open-weight models yourself through Ollama, MLX, or llama.cpp: it speeds those up, but many smaller local models run fine on CPU too, just slower.

ComfyUI is an editor for image models. NodeTool is the studio around it: image, video, music, and words on one canvas, every major model a click away, and editing tools such as masks, inpaint, relight, and layers built in. Both are open source and both work by connecting blocks on a canvas.

Closed tools tie you to a credit system and a hand-picked list of models. NodeTool is open source and runs on your own provider keys. Your workflows, files, and keys belong to you, and you can switch providers the moment a better model appears.

n8n connects business apps and Flowise builds chatbots that answer from your documents; in both, generating an image, a video, or a soundtrack means an HTTP node you configure by hand. NodeTool makes that work native: image, video, music, and text models, agents, and editing tools on one canvas, with an agent that can author the pipeline. NodeTool is AGPL-3.0 open source rather than fair-code, runs as a desktop app, and calls every provider on your own keys.

Yes. Figma Weave (formerly Weavy, acquired by Figma in October 2025) is closed source, hosted only, and billed in its own AI credits. NodeTool covers the same kind of media work as an AGPL-3.0 open-source workspace: image, video, audio, and text on one canvas, run with your own keys at provider prices, as a desktop app, in the browser, or on your own server.

A node-based workflow is one you build by connecting boxes on a canvas instead of writing code. Each box does one thing, such as loading an image, running a model, or cropping a video, and the lines between them carry the result of one step into the next. The whole thing runs from start to finish, so you can watch every step and rearrange it whenever you like.

A diffusion model makes an image, video, or sound by starting from random noise and clearing it away step by step, guided by your prompt, until a clear result appears. Flux, Stable Diffusion, and most image generators work this way. In NodeTool you run them as blocks alongside everything else.

Before the model answers, NodeTool searches your documents and passes the most relevant passages along with your question, so the answer comes from your material rather than the model's general training. The search and document blocks are built in, so you can put this together on the canvas. The technique is often called RAG, short for retrieval-augmented generation.

A planning agent takes a goal, breaks it into steps, picks a model or tool for each step, and works through them in order, adjusting as it goes. In NodeTool an agent is a block on the canvas, so its results feed into the rest of your workflow.