Agentic Spatial Pathologist Commercialization Plan

This document outlines a practical way to commercialize spatho while keeping a strong academic and non-commercial entry point.

Reference Pattern: CyteType

CyteType is a useful benchmark because it separates free academic access from paid commercial access instead of forcing a single licensing mode.

Public documentation currently states:

• academic and non-commercial use is free

• free use is capped at three annotation runs per day

• users can also bring their own LLM API keys or run local models

• commercial use is licensed with an annual fee plus a usage-based fee

• enterprise options include isolated or on-prem deployments

Reference:

• CyteType documentation

Recommended Spatial Pathologist Edition Split

1. Academic Community Edition

Goal:

• maximize adoption in academic labs

• make methods reproducible

• let users run locally with their own OpenAI key or local models

Recommended scope:

• local CLI and Python package

• built-in organ packs such as lung and breast

• workflow JSON templates

• HTML reports

• artifact manifests

• community support only

Recommended license approach:

• keep the public code under a non-commercial research license

• require commercial users to obtain a separate commercial license

Operational model:

• software itself is free for academic and non-commercial use

• API spend is paid by the user through their own OpenAI account

• no service-level guarantee

2. Commercial Team Edition

Goal:

• sell productivity and governance, not just source code

Recommended scope:

• commercial-use license

• managed updates and validated builds

• private organ packs and customer reference packs

• shared reports and review dashboards

• organization settings, role-based access, and audit logs

• support and onboarding

Pricing model:

• annual platform fee per organization or team

• usage-based fee per analyzed case or per annotated cluster bundle

• optionally allow bring-your-own OpenAI key for customers who want direct model billing

3. Enterprise Edition

Goal:

• support clinical-adjacent and regulated environments

Recommended scope:

• private cloud or on-prem deployment

• customer-managed OpenAI or local LLM credentials

• zero-retention data paths

• longer report retention controls

• SSO, audit export, and procurement support

Pricing model:

• larger annual contract

• implementation / deployment fee

• optional premium support SLA

Why This Split Fits Spatial Pathologist

Unlike a purely algorithmic library, spatho has a real marginal cost when users rely on managed LLM inference. That means a good product split is:

• free software for academic self-service users

• paid convenience, governance, support, and managed inference for commercial users

This avoids blocking academic adoption while still creating a business model.

Recommended Technical Architecture for Editions

To support both free and paid editions cleanly, the codebase should separate four concerns:

1. Core workflow engine Local workflow orchestration, organ packs, schema validation, and artifact manifests.

2. Provider layer OpenAI, Anthropic, and local-model adapters behind a stable interface.

3. Entitlement layer Edition flags such as community vs commercial vs enterprise.

4. Service layer Optional hosted APIs, team workspaces, report storage, billing, and admin UI.

Concrete Product Recommendation

The cleanest product packaging is:

• spatho Community Edition Local package and CLI, non-commercial, BYO API key or local models.

• spatho Commercial Licensed commercial build and support, optional managed OpenAI billing, optional hosted collaboration layer.

• spatho Enterprise Private deployment, customer-managed credentials, governance and security controls.

Suggested Next Business Steps

1. Keep the local CLI and organ-pack workflow public and non-commercial.

2. Add provider abstraction so commercial customers can choose managed inference or BYO key.

3. Add token and job metering at the case, cluster, and structure-review levels.

4. Add authenticated report storage and organization-level access control.

5. Define a commercial license and order form separate from the public repo license.