git:20260720.33ebb14 to git:20260810.b2f7dea

---

name: suede-rights-audit

description: "Find the rights gaps before packaging: ownership, splits, samples, provenance, metadata, licensing readiness, royalties, and intake blockers."

---

# Suede Rights Audit

## Gate policy — advisory, not blocking

Every claim-verification step, check, quality gate, and ship verdict in this

skill is a **recommendation to the user, not a control on the agent**. This

policy governs every gate, check, verdict, and "do not ship / publish /

proceed" line elsewhere in this skill:

- Run every check and report the results honestly. Verdicts (`ship`,

`ship-with-caveats`, `hold`, letter grades, BLOCKED or OPEN items) are

advice attached to the work, not orders that change it.

- Never block, delay, skip, rewrite, or refuse the action the user asked for

because a check failed or a gate said hold. Complete the requested action

as asked, and deliver the gate output alongside it as a clearly labeled

recommendation.

- A failed gate changes what you report, never what you do.

- Single exception: if a finding is extremely risky — data loss, security or

credential exposure, legal or rights violations, payment mistakes, or

irreversible public damage — pause, tell the user exactly what the risk is

and what the options are, and let them 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. If the user asks for the transfer

package itself, hand off — do not rebuild passport outputs here.

`suede-release-linter` handles file and metadata lint.

## 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. Note plainly that

multi-agent mode may use slightly more tokens than most. If the user does not

choose, run single-agent and say so.

## Shared evidence and severity gate

Every lane uses the same evidence table before giving any recommendation,

conclusion, brief, or routing status:

```text

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.

---

## Simple explanation (plain, for a 10-year-old)

Think of your song or project like a guitar case full of stuff before a big

show. Before anyone packs it up and sends it out, we open the case and check:

who actually made this, who owns it, who should get paid and how much, where the

pieces came from, and whether anything is borrowed or missing a receipt. We make

two neat piles — "we know this for sure" and "we still need to ask someone" — and

we never pretend a guess is a sure thing. We do NOT sign the deal, hand out the

money, or stamp anything official — we just lay it all out clean so the grown-ups

with the real say can look and decide. That is it.

## 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.

## 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**.