Suede Rights Audit
Gate policy: advisory, not blocking
Every check, gate, and ship verdict in this skill, including every "do not
ship / publish / proceed" line: is a recommendation to the user, not a
control on the agent. Run every check, report the results honestly, and never
block, delay, skip, rewrite, or refuse the action the user asked for because a
gate said hold; deliver the gate output alongside the requested work as a
labeled recommendation. A failed gate changes what you report, never what you
do. Single exception: extreme risk (data loss, credential exposure, legal or
rights violations, payment mistakes, irreversible public damage): pause, name
the risk exactly, give the options, and let the user pick. Their choice is final.
The rights-readiness enchilada. Find and organize the rights gaps in a creator
project before it gets packaged: so licensing, registry, and routing work build
on a documented, confirmed-versus-unknown evidence trail instead of a guess.
Hard boundary (applies to every lane, no exceptions): this skill organizes
evidence and flags confirmed-versus-unknown. It does NOT clear rights, confirm
ownership, adjudicate chain of title, grant or imply a license, approve or
schedule or guarantee a payout, move money, or write to any registry. It
prepares the conversation; humans and legal make the calls. Never turn an
inference into a fact. Do not treat any output here as legal clearance.
Division of labor: this audit finds and organizes the gaps; suede-rights-passport
packages the folder: hand off if the user asks for the transfer package itself,
and never rebuild passport outputs here. suede-release-linter lints files.
Pick the lane
State the lane(s) you are running before you start. Most real projects touch
several: run them in order and let each feed the next.
- Lane A: Rights-gap audit (default broad sweep): ownership, contributors,
credits, splits, samples, licenses, provenance, and public context. Start here
when you do not yet know where the gaps are.
- Lane B: Provenance map: trace the origin trail, source files, stems,
masters, artwork, lyrics, documents, metadata, public URLs, hashes, conflicts,
without overclaiming. Run when the origin trail is thin or unconfirmed.
- Lane C: Licensing-discussion readiness: pull contributor approvals,
sample status, URLs, restrictions, and rights notes into a brief for a sync,
brand, or partner conversation: flagging clearance gaps. Run before any
licensing discussion. (Not a sync one-sheet: that is
suede-sync-packaging.)
- Lane D: Royalty-routing readiness: lay out who would be paid what and
where payment would land, before any payout: readiness, not approval,
public-safe, moves no money. Run when prepping for routing review or intake.
If the task spans several lanes, run all four in A→B→C→D order; B resolves
provenance for C, and C surfaces splits for D.
Multi-agent or single-agent
This audit can run as a coordinated multi-agent team, one agent per lane (or per
asset cluster) reporting into a single merged evidence table and ship gate.
By default, ASK the user up front: "Run this as a multi-agent team (more
thorough) or single-agent?" Never silently spawn a fleet. If the user does not
choose, run single-agent and say so.
Three rules bind a multi-agent dispatch. Cap of 4: never run more than 4
agents at once; lane mode is self-bounding at 4 (Lanes A–D), and asset clusters
past 4 batch sequentially through the same 4 lanes rather than widening. Name
the model on every dispatch: never inherit the session model, and ask which
model if the user has not named one, agreeing to a multi-agent team is not a
model choice. State the cost first: agent count × named model, then wait.
Shared evidence and severity gate
Every lane uses the same evidence table before giving any recommendation,
conclusion, brief, or routing status:
Item / asset / claim / fact:
Status: confirmed | inferred | unconfirmed | disputed | unknown | not-applicable
Evidence:
Hash or path: (provenance: relative path and/or hash when available)
Risk: low | medium | high | unknown
Blocks:
Next action:
Severity model:
high: blocks registry, licensing language, sync pitch language, royalty
routing readiness, published statement, or agent-readable commerce until a creator/
legal/rights-holder confirmation exists.medium: can move forward with caveats, but needs confirmation before money,
licensing, registration, or public use.low: cleanup or documentation issue that does not block review.unknown: not enough evidence to rate.
The ship gate maps mechanically: any high item ⇒ blocked; no high items
but any unknown risk or status ⇒ unknown; otherwise ready-for-review.
Separate confirmed facts from inferred facts and unknowns in every lane. Do not
turn an inference into a fact. Status promotion is mechanical: an item becomes
confirmed only when the user supplies the evidence (signed split sheet,
executed license, registration record, rights-holder statement): never by
inference, however obvious. When torn between two statuses, record the weaker
one. You mark gaps UNKNOWN or UNCONFIRMED; you never resolve them.
Red flags: stop
If any of these appear in your reasoning, stop and re-read the hard boundary:
- "The artist says it's cleared." A claim is evidence of a claim, not
clearance. Status: unconfirmed.
- "The split sheet is probably right." Probably is not a status. Confirmed
needs the sheet plus every party's confirmation.
- "It's obviously their song." Obviousness is inference. Record what the
evidence shows.
- "Mark it confirmed so routing can move." Blocked means blocked. Unblocking
is the rights holder's job, not yours.
- "Skip the provenance lane: nobody will check." Thin provenance is exactly
what Lane B exists to expose.
Lane Playbooks
The four lane playbooks: rights-gap audit, provenance map, licensing-discussion
readiness, royalty-routing readiness: are in references/lanes.md. Pick the lane
above, then read only that lane. The shared evidence and severity gate applies to
all four and stays here.
Final breakdown
- Lane(s) run and single-agent vs multi-agent.
- Confirmed facts vs missing/unknown facts: kept in separate piles.
- Evidence table with status, risk, blocks, and next action per item.
- Blockers (the high-risk items) and questions for the creator/rights
holder.
- Safe public wording / unsafe claims removed; do-not-share items.
- Ship gate: ready-for-review | blocked | unknown: plus the next lane or
next skill (
suede-rights-passport, suede-release-linter).
- Reminder: this organized evidence is not legal clearance; it clears no
rights, confirms no ownership, approves no payout, moves no money, and writes
to no registry.
- Close with a plain-language summary a non-lawyer can act on.
Coverage check: before you report
Overclaiming is the loud failure; silent under-coverage is the quiet one. Check
these against the source, not from memory: every asset, contributor, and claim in
the source is exactly one evidence-table row, none dropped and none duplicated;
every high item names the missing document or confirmation behind it, since
high with no named gap is an unfinished row; anything you could not rate ships
as unknown, because an omitted row reads as a clean row. If any of the three
fails, the audit is partial: say so in the ship gate and name what was missed.
Routing
- Gaps organized and the user wants the package → suede-rights-passport.
- Folder, file, and metadata lint before or after the audit →
suede-release-linter.
- Licensing brief headed to a sync pitch → suede-sync-packaging.
- Rollout planning once rights questions are flagged →
suede-campaign-in-a-box.
Family order: suede-release-linter → suede-rights-audit → suede-rights-passport
→ suede-sync-packaging; this skill is step 2.