Do I need an account to use CueCrux?

No. The Crux Daemon is one free binary that runs locally, on CPU, with no account and no licence check. Install it from the /install page and you are running in about a minute.

Two things are easy to confuse here:

• Passports are not accounts. A passport is the local cryptographic identity each connection binds to, so that writes are attributable and receipts resolve to an actor. It is created and held locally; nothing about it requires our servers.
• Accounts are for hosted features. Pro (hosted sync, multi-device passports, better-dense rerank) and Governance (fleet-wide attribution, policy gates, propagating revocation) are subscriptions, and those need an account and billing.

Everything the local daemon does, including signing receipts and verifying them offline, works forever without signing up for anything.