The open spec
Parlance draws a deliberate line through its own codebase: the format is open; the tool is a product. This page is the map of that line.
The MIT surface
The spec — everything needed to read, write, validate, and execute Parlance data without us — is MIT-licensed and published at github.com/Orbitope/parlance-spec:
| Path | What it gives you |
|---|---|
schema/ |
JSON Schema for every entity type — the authoritative shape of the format, validatable with any JSON Schema library (schema-first data) |
docs/ |
The runtime contract (conditions, effects, checks, dialogue offers, quest resolution, RNG, every edge case), plus integration, naming, versioning, and migration guides |
conformance/ |
Executable vectors any port must pass — how a runtime proves itself. Where prose and vectors disagree, the vectors win |
validate/ |
The standalone Python reference validator |
The reference runtime is MIT too. From v0.16.0 the TypeScript engine the
editor plays with is published on npm as
@orbitope/parlance-runtime,
passing every conformance vector, and a game may ship it — commercial games
included.
The public Godot runtime is built on exactly this surface — as any engine port, importer, linter, or pipeline tool can be, in any license, commercial included.
Status: published. The repository is live and MIT, filled by a one-way sync from the upstream repo on every release tag — currently through v0.15.0. Contents track the tags exactly, because a spec repo pinned to an untagged version would give a port nothing to pin to, which is the whole point of publishing.
To adopt it: pin an exact tag, never a branch or a range, and vendor the conformance vectors at that tag. Pre-1.0, breaking changes may land in any minor release; the repo's versioning policy is the promise to read before pinning. Issues are welcome there; pull requests aren't, since the repo is a publication target and a merge would be overwritten by the next sync.
The product surface
The tool — editor, host, CLI, MCP server, desktop app — is free to use, including for commercial releases, but is not open source and may not be redistributed (licensing in six bullets). The product manuals on this site (notably the editor guide) are part of the product, not the MIT surface.
Your content
Not ours, in any layer. data/ and lore/ are your creative work; the tool's
license doesn't touch them. The demo project is
CC0 so you can strip it for parts.
Why the split matters
The asymmetry is the anti-lock-in guarantee, stated plainly:
- Your story lives in readable files whose meaning is publicly specified and testably portable.
- The worst case — we vanish, we displease you, we price wrong — leaves you with all your data, open schemas, an open contract, open vectors, and at least one open runtime. You lose an editor, not a game.
- And because that guarantee is MIT, it's irrevocable — it doesn't depend on our continued goodwill, which is the only kind of promise worth building on.
Related: the engine contract · FAQ on licensing