Who pays for a screenwriting app's free trial

A screenwriting app's free trial runs on the developer's own credit, so the release now proves that credit exists before it builds anything.

The trial is not a coupon. It is an OpenRouter key compiled into the app, and it pays for the first three answers a new writer asks for. Fifteen days on the clock, three generations off it, and every one of those answers is billed to the person who shipped the app. That is the deal a free trial is: it costs money to give away, and it costs it whether or not the writer ever buys.

Nothing in the build knows whether that key still has credit. The app is signed, installed, and it opens on the Writer with the trial offered and nothing behind the offer. From the outside the failure does not look like a failure. It looks like a stranger's first question going unanswered.

So the release asks before it builds. One request to the key's own endpoint, which costs no credit and returns the limit and the usage against it. A refused key fails the release. A drained key fails the release. Both happen while saying no is still free, hours before a build or a signature exists to waste. It is the rule behind six days when the trial refused everyone: the failure that matters is the one no error message announces.

A first act promises that the rest of the screenplay can be paid for. A free trial is that promise at someone else's expense, and it is the only part of this product with a meter running. Three questions are the closest thing here to a first act. They are worth checking before a stranger reads them.