AI agents can execute tasks. But they still don't understand rights.

Humans already struggle with usage rights. Agents will struggle at scale.

Autonomous systems now consume datasets, call APIs, remix prompts, reuse generated outputs and chain tools together — often without a machine-verifiable answer to a basic question: is this allowed, under which terms, with what proof?

The agentic era needs programmable rights infrastructure — the same way the web needed HTTP, not another storefront.

Three layers. One clear separation.

ProofMeta is an open specification and reference implementation — not a hosted product, not a marketplace, not a take rate on your artefacts. Commercial applications built on the protocol are separate.

Status: v1 draft. The Tier-1 reference flow and npm packages work today; this is not yet a tagged v1 release.

The license is a pointer, not a contract. ProofMeta references terms, scopes and proof — it does not replace counsel. It makes permission computable for machines.

Signed envelopes. Verifiable by design.

Every ProofMeta artifact is a signed envelope: who wrote it, what exactly was written, when, and in what order. Agents verify before they act — no bare JSON, no implied consent.

Discover. Request. Decide. Act with proof.

An agent discovers permission metadata attached to an artefact, requests access, receives a machine-readable grant or denial, and acts only inside the terms — with an auditable trail.

{
  "payload": {
    "items": [
      {
        "item_id": "training-corpus-v2",
        "name": "Training Corpus v2",
        "available_licenses": ["commercial-standard"],
        "content_hash": "sha256:0da2a7cd70ea24dcbd53fa22c29528c99a71021248c5ab4c86ecd13a8f34a1d2"
      }
    ],
    "license_types": [
      {
        "id": "commercial-standard",
        "terms_url": "https://example.com/terms/commercial-standard",
        "terms_hash": "sha256:bcfd030a074d8f9b09c84fe7950537814ad72f511db0cac8a6495f67ffe59688",
        "scope": ["commercial", "derivative-allowed", "ai-training-excluded"]
      }
    ]
  }
}

OPEN → PENDING → GRANTED
          └────→ DENIED (terminal)
GRANTED → SUSPENDED → GRANTED (reinstate)
GRANTED → REVOKED (terminal)
SUSPENDED → REVOKED (terminal)

Every state is machine-readable. SUSPENDED is temporary and reinstatable; REVOKED is permanent. Expiry is derived from valid_until, not a stored status.

One permission primitive. Any digital artefact.

ProofMeta does not assume a single content type. Any resource an agent might discover, compose or execute can carry the same signed permission envelope — datasets, APIs, code, documents, media, model outputs and agent capabilities.

Open infrastructure for the agentic era.

ProofMeta is written in public under Apache 2.0. Implement without permission. Fork without capture. No vendor account. No marketplace listing required.

I'm Daud — in software since the late 1990s, most of the last decade on licensing and IP. ProofMeta compounds that work into infrastructure for an era where agents, not lawyers, need to parse what is allowed.