Can someone finally clarify whether Nylas Mail requires a Nylas account to use Basic-tier or not? I see comments by searching through HN, where people suggest

Can someone finally clarify whether Nylas Mail requires a Nylas account to use Basic-tier or not? I see comments by searching through HN, where people suggest that after the somewhat recent change from N1 to Mail, it doesn't require a Nylas account anymore (example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14017581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14017581), but I can't for the life of me find a way to set it up without creating an account, since it is an unskippable step in the initial setup.