faq · the honest answers

Questions, answered.

Everything people ask before they run it — what it reads, what never leaves your machine, how the scoring works, and why it's a map, not a ranking. Search, or skim it all.

Is it really free?
Yes — free forever for developers, and open source under Apache-2.0. There's no paid tier gating your own profile, and no account required to run the assessment.
What does nextmillionai actually read?
Your AI coding sessions that already sit on your machine — Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex — plus your local git history. It derives signals about how you work (prompting, orchestration, recovery), and it never reads your source code into your profile.
Does it upload my code or prompts?
No. The assessment runs entirely offline from local files — there's no server in the path. Nothing leaves your machine unless you explicitly run publish, which shares derived signals only, never your code or prompts, and is revocable any time.
Can it see my private or NDA'd code?
It measures patterns and signals from how you build, never the source itself — so your strongest, least-shareable work becomes provable without exposing a single line.
Which AI tools does it support?
Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex sessions today, plus your local git history. The reader is adapter-based and open source, so support for more tools grows with the community.
How do I install and run it?
One clone and one command: git clone https://github.com/nextmillionai/nextmillionai && cd nextmillionai && python3 -m nextmillionai start. It runs on Python 3.9+ — no Docker, no account, no signup.
Do I need to be online?
No. The whole assessment is computed locally from files already on disk, so it works fully offline. The only time anything touches the network is if you choose to publish a derived profile.
What exactly does “publish” share — and can I undo it?
Only derived signals — your scores, archetypes, and positioning — never your code, prompts, or files. It's explicit (it never happens silently) and revocable: you can take a published profile down any time.
How are the scores calculated?
Plain arithmetic over counted signals from your sessions, against research-anchored bands. No model ever writes your number, the methodology is versioned and public, and anything unmeasurable is marked insufficient, never estimated.
Does it rank me against other developers?
No — and it never will. There are no percentiles, cohorts, leaderboards, or “top X%”. Your positioning is a map of how you build, not a ladder. Different builder kinds are crafts, not rungs.
How is this different from Paxel?
It's open. Paxel shipped closed, so no one could see it uploading data until the community caught it. Here the scoring, the methodology, and exactly what leaves your machine are all there to read — you don't have to trust a pitch, you can read the code.
Is my data used to train any AI model?
No. A model is used only to write the narrative of your own profile — it never assigns a score, never sees other people's data, and nothing of yours is used to train anything.
What platforms does it run on?
macOS and Linux, on Python 3.9 or newer. It's a local command-line tool with an optional local web view — it doesn't need Docker or any cloud service.
What's the license, and who's behind it?
Apache-2.0 — permissive and free forever. It's built by nokk labs and shaped in the open: the code, the scoring, and the methodology are all community-contributable on GitHub.
No question matches that yet. Try a broader word — or ask it on GitHub Discussions.

Still have a question? Ask it in the open — the answer helps the next builder too.