Rules for every agent.

When do the agent rules apply, and when do they not?

While Crest is running on the teammate’s Mac. Then a never-allow rule is checked in every agent mode, including Claude Code’s bypass and accept-edits modes, Codex sessions that never ask and Copilot CLI started with --yolo, and the agent is told which team rule stopped it. While a team has a never-allow rule, Crest keeps its hooks for the three agents installed, even if that person has switched off answering prompts on the notch. An always-allow only answers a prompt that reaches the notch. If Crest is quit, or does not answer a check within about a second, the agents carry on as they would without it: their own prompt in the terminal, or no prompt in an autonomous mode. Codex runs Crest’s hook only after each person trusts it once in /hooks. The rules check commands, file edits and web fetches; Claude Code’s MCP tools do not pass through Crest’s hook. Crest is not a lock: for rules nobody on the Mac can change, Claude Code has managed settings and Codex has managed hooks in requirements.toml, both deployed by your IT, and Crest works beside them.

What does the approval log keep?

Outcomes only: who, when, which agent, the project folder’s name, the kind of action (run, edit, fetch or other), allowed or denied, and whether the person, a team rule or session trust decided. Never the command, the file path or the web address: the app has no field that could carry them, and our server refuses a batch that tries. The owner and the manager read it on the account page, it is kept for 90 days, and the manager can switch it off. Not in the log: prompts answered in the terminal while Crest was closed, and commands an agent ran without asking in an autonomous mode, unless a never-allow rule stopped one.

What do team servers share with teammates?

A name, the address, and a user and a port if you add them. The servers appear in every teammate’s Hosts in Crest, read-only, so nobody has to ask for the staging box’s address again. There is no field for a password or a key.

Is it a subscription?

No. You pay once for the number of people you pick, from 5 to 50, and the seats are yours, with updates through Crest 7. Teams that bought before October 6, 2026 keep every update for life. Nothing renews. Adding seats later is one more payment for the difference.

What happens when someone leaves?

Take their seat back from your account page. They lose Crest Pro, Take and Minutes, their Macs are signed out, and the seat is empty for the next person.

Do the apps send our recordings, notes or commands anywhere?

No. Take's recordings and Minutes' audio, transcripts and summaries stay on the Mac, and the apps do no tracking. They go online to sign in, check the licence every few days and look for updates. Coding agent approvals are answered on the Mac and never reach us.

Can we get an invoice with our company name and VAT number?

Yes. Paddle, our reseller and merchant of record, issues the invoice. Use Add tax number in the checkout to enter your company name, address and VAT or tax number, and they are printed on it. Every invoice can be downloaded again from your account page.

What if we are more than 50 people?

Email contact@crestnotch.app with how many people and we set the team up with you. The same address takes security questionnaires and questions before you buy.

Where the rules live

The owner or the manager writes the rules once, on the account page. Each teammate’s Crest fetches them within 15 minutes and applies them on that Mac, before a permission prompt reaches the person. The rule is matched against the command, the file path or the web address on the Mac itself, so the command is never sent to us. Offline, the last rules Crest fetched keep applying.

Never allow: block what nobody should run

A pattern such as git push --force* or rm -rf* for commands, a path for edits, or a web address for fetches. While Crest runs, a never-allow rule is checked in every agent mode: Claude Code in bypass or accept-edits mode, Codex sessions that never ask, and Copilot CLI started with --yolo. It catches the command inside a chain too, so cd app && git push is stopped by git push*, and the agent is told which team rule stopped it.

Always allow: wave through the boring ones

For what the team runs all day: npm test, a lint, edits under docs/. An always-allow answers a prompt that reaches the notch, so the agent asked, Crest is running and the person answers prompts there. It never covers a chained command, so npm test* cannot wave through npm test && curl … | sh: the person is asked instead. A teammate can switch an always-allow off for themselves and be asked again. Nobody can switch off a never-allow.

An approval log with outcomes only

Who, when, which agent, the project folder’s name, the kind of action (run, edit, fetch or other), allowed or denied, and whether the person, a team rule or session trust decided. Never the command, the file path or the web address: the app has no field that could carry them, and our server refuses a batch that tries. The owner and the manager read it on the account page. It is kept for 90 days, and the manager can switch it off.

Team servers and notices

List the team’s servers once and they appear in every teammate’s Hosts in Crest, read-only: a name, the address, and a user and a port if you add them. There is no field for a password or a key. A notice of up to 140 characters, with an end date if you want one, shows once on each teammate’s notch.

Crest has to be running

If a teammate quits Crest, or Crest does not answer a check within about a second, the agents carry on as they would without it: their own prompt in the terminal, or no prompt at all in an autonomous mode. That is on purpose, so a closed Crest never freezes a run.

Codex asks each person once

Codex runs a hook only after the person has reviewed and trusted it in /hooks, so Crest’s rules reach Codex from then on.

Commands, edits and web fetches

That is what the rules check. Tools outside those, such as an MCP server’s tools in Claude Code, do not pass through Crest’s hook.

It is not a lock

Crest works in each person’s own account, so someone who removes its hooks steps outside the rules. For rules nobody on the Mac can change, Claude Code has managed settings and Codex has managed hooks in requirements.toml, both deployed by your IT. Crest works beside them.

The price per person drops as the team grows. Every total ends in .99, tax included, and a team never costs more than a bigger one.

In short: $16 a person for 5 to 9, $14 for 10 to 24 and $12 for 25 to 50, so 5 people are $79.99, 10 are $139.99, 25 are $299.99 and 50 are $599.99. Paid through Paddle; crypto is not offered for teams. No discount codes apply to a team.

Buy for the team

Pick 5 to 50 people and pay once. The email you pay with becomes the team’s owner, and seat 1 is yours.

Give out the seats

From your account page: type one email per seat, paste a whole list at once, or turn on an invite link for your company’s email domain and share it. Only addresses at that domain can use the link, and free email domains such as Gmail or Outlook can never be a team domain.

Each person signs in

Inside Crest, Take and Minutes, with the email on their seat, and everything unlocks, on up to two Macs each. A seat is one person, on their own email. There are no licence keys to send around.

One manager besides you

They give and take back seats and run the invite link from their own account. Only you, the owner, add seats or choose the manager.

See which seats are used

Each seat shows when it was last used and on how many Macs, and seats nobody has used in 30 days are marked, so you can take them back.

Take a seat back any time

The person loses Crest Pro, Take and Minutes, their Macs are signed out, and the seat is empty for the next person. Every move is logged.

Add seats later, up to 50

You pay the difference between the two team prices: going from 8 to 12 people is $40.00, the price of 12 minus the price of 8.

Refunds

Refunds work like every purchase: 7 days, and a refunded team takes back every seat.

Paddle is our reseller and merchant of record, so Paddle is the seller on the invoice and charges the tax your country requires. In the checkout, use Add tax number to enter your company name, address and VAT or tax number, and they are printed on the invoice. Every invoice, for the team and for seats added later, can be downloaded again from your account page whenever you need it. Need a purchase order number on it, or a detail changed? Email contact@crestnotch.app.

The apps run on the Mac and do no tracking, apart from an anonymous install count sent with update checks that anyone can turn off. This is everything they send to us, and what never leaves. The full list, including the services a widget reaches straight from the Mac, is in the privacy policy.

Sent to us: signing in and the licence

When a person signs in inside an app, it sends their account sign-in, the Mac's hardware identifier and the Mac's name, so the licence is bound to that Mac and the Mac appears on their account page. Every few days the app sends its signed licence back to be renewed. The identifier is how the two-Mac limit and seat usage work, and it is used for nothing else.

Sent to us: updates and offers

Each app checks our update feed for a new version. Crest also asks our server twice a day whether a sale is on. Neither sends anything about what a person does in the app.

Stays on the Mac: recordings, calls and notes

Take's recordings are ordinary movie files in the person's Movies folder. Minutes records, transcribes and summarizes on the Mac with Apple's on-device models, and the audio, transcripts and summaries never leave it. Crest's widgets run locally.

Stays on the Mac: coding agent prompts

Claude Code, Codex and Copilot CLI permission prompts are answered on the Mac: the command, the file and the answer go between the agent's hook and Crest, and never to us. Crest's co-pilot talks to Claude through the person's own Claude Code, or the AI service and key they set.

Sent to us: team rules, notices and the approval log

The manager sets always-allow and never-allow rules for coding agents, posts short notices and lists the team’s servers; each teammate’s Crest reads them from us every 15 minutes. Never-allow rules apply in every agent mode while Crest runs, and a teammate can only be stricter. The approval log records outcomes only: who, when, which agent, the project folder’s name, the kind of action (run, edit, fetch or other), allowed or denied, and whether a person, a team rule or session trust decided. Never the command, the file path or the URL. The manager can turn the log off, and it is kept for 90 days.

Sent to us: your account page

Seat usage on the account page comes from the licence check-ins above: when a seat's Macs last checked in and how many there are. Nothing else about a person's day is recorded.

Signed and notarized by Apple, so macOS opens them with no warnings. Each app updates itself, and updates through Crest 7 are included.

Download links that stay put

crestnotch.app/download is always the newest Crest, crestnotch.app/take/download is Take and crestnotch.app/minutes/download is Minutes, each a signed disk image you can hand to your deployment tool.

Homebrew

Crest is in Homebrew: brew install --cask crest. Take and Minutes install from their download links.

Sign in with the seat email

Each person opens the app and signs in with the email on their seat. That is what unlocks it: there is no key to paste. Crest and Take need macOS 14 or later; Minutes needs macOS 26 or later on Apple Silicon.

Download Crest