Home / ClaimScout / ClaimScout Specification
ClaimScout
The Scout for Your Intellectual Property
Specification
ClaimScout is an open-source, modular AI system for monitoring, identifying, documenting, and analyzing potential unauthorized use of copyrighted works across public code repositories, websites, social platforms, and other publicly accessible sources.
The system is designed to help copyright owners establish provenance, identify potential infringement, understand applicable licenses and notices, preserve evidence, identify distribution hubs, and prepare evidence-based reports for human review and potential DMCA action.
ClaimScout must prioritize accuracy, traceability, transparency, responsible evidence handling, license awareness, and human approval before any legal notice or enforcement action is initiated.
Core Principles
ClaimScout must be designed around the following principles:
- Open source architecture
- Modular design
- Local-first operation where practical
- Human-in-the-loop review
- Evidence preservation
- Source and provenance tracking
- License-aware analysis
- Transparent confidence scoring
- Reproducible findings
- Respect for applicable laws and platform terms
- No unauthorized access to private systems or restricted content
- No automatic submission of legal notices without explicit human authorization
- Clear separation between factual findings and legal conclusions
Core System
The core system provides the foundational capabilities required for monitoring, analysis, evidence collection, provenance tracking, reporting, and case management.
Configuration Core
The Configuration Core manages system-wide settings and user-defined monitoring profiles.
It must support:
- Copyrighted work registration
- Keyword and phrase configuration
- File and directory monitoring
- Content fingerprint registration
- Media fingerprint registration
- Repository and platform selection
- Search frequency configuration
- Monitoring priority configuration
- Confidence thresholds
- Evidence retention settings
- Notification preferences
- Report configuration
- User roles and permissions
- Local and remote storage configuration
Copyright Work Registry
The Copyright Work Registry maintains authoritative records for works that the user wants ClaimScout to monitor.
Each work may include:
- Work title
- Work description
- Author or rights holder
- Creation date
- Publication date
- First known publication location
- Original repository or website
- Source URL
- File names
- Content hashes
- Text fingerprints
- Media fingerprints
- Keywords
- Distinctive phrases
- Associated domains
- Associated accounts
- License information
- Notice information
- Registration information where applicable
- Supporting provenance records
The registry must support multiple versions of the same work and maintain historical relationships between versions.
Repository Discovery Core
The Repository Discovery Core searches publicly accessible repositories and code hosting services for potential matches.
It must support:
- Keyword searches
- Exact phrase searches
- Filename searches
- Repository name searches
- Owner searches
- Content searches
- License searches
- URL searches
- Metadata searches
- Search result deduplication
- Repository indexing
- Repository ownership identification
- Repository activity tracking
- Repository update tracking
- Public commit history analysis
The system should identify potential distribution hubs where the same work appears across multiple repositories, forks, mirrors, organizations, or accounts.
Web and Social Discovery Core
The Web and Social Discovery Core monitors publicly accessible websites and supported social platforms for potential reuse.
It must support:
- Keyword searches
- Exact phrase searches
- URL searches
- Content similarity searches
- Public post discovery
- Public profile identification
- Publication date and time collection
- Source URL collection
- Author or account identification
- Cross-platform matching
- Link relationship analysis
- Public content change tracking
Platform integrations must operate through authorized APIs or otherwise permitted public access methods.
Content Matching Core
The Content Matching Core determines whether discovered material may correspond to a monitored work.
It must support:
- Exact matching
- Partial matching
- Fuzzy matching
- Semantic similarity
- Phrase similarity
- Structural similarity
- Code similarity
- Variable and identifier normalization
- Formatting normalization
- Whitespace normalization
- Paraphrase detection
- Reordered-content detection
- Modified-content detection
- Duplicate detection
- Near-duplicate detection
Every match must include an explainable basis for the similarity determination.
Media Fingerprinting Core
The Media Fingerprinting Core analyzes visual, audio, and video material.
It must support:
- Cryptographic hashes
- Perceptual hashes
- Image similarity
- Cropping detection
- Resizing detection
- Compression detection
- Minor modification detection
- Audio fingerprinting
- Video fingerprinting
- Frame similarity
- Thumbnail matching
- Metadata comparison
The system must distinguish between an exact match, probable derivative match, visually similar material, and an inconclusive result.
Code Analysis Core
The Code Analysis Core specializes in software repositories.
It must support:
- Source code comparison
- Normalized code comparison
- Abstract syntax analysis where available
- Identifier normalization
- Comment comparison
- Documentation comparison
- Function similarity
- File similarity
- Directory similarity
- Commit history analysis
- Earliest known appearance detection
- Fork relationship analysis
- Mirror detection
- Version comparison
- Dependency identification
The system should identify potentially copied portions without automatically determining legal infringement.
Provenance and Ownership Core
The Provenance and Ownership Core builds a chronological record surrounding a copyrighted work.
It must collect and correlate:
- Creation records
- Publication records
- Repository creation dates
- Commit timestamps
- Release dates
- Website publication dates
- Social media publication dates
- Archived versions
- Original URLs
- Author identities or account names
- Public ownership statements
- License declarations
- Notice files
- Copyright statements
- Attribution records
- Registration information supplied by the user
The system must preserve source references for every provenance claim.
Evidence Collection Core
The Evidence Collection Core preserves information necessary for later human review.
It must support:
- Timestamped evidence records
- Source URLs
- Repository metadata
- File paths
- Content hashes
- Relevant content excerpts
- Screenshots where permitted
- Public page snapshots where permitted
- Commit references
- Social media post references
- Publication timestamps
- Platform metadata
- License files
- NOTICE files
- Evidence acquisition timestamps
- Evidence integrity hashes
Evidence must be stored with provenance metadata so that users can determine when, where, and how each record was collected.
Evidence Integrity Core
The Evidence Integrity Core protects collected evidence from unnoticed alteration.
It must support:
- Cryptographic hashing
- Evidence manifests
- Acquisition timestamps
- Immutable or append-only records where available
- Chain-of-custody records
- Evidence versioning
- Source verification
- Integrity validation
- Duplicate evidence detection
ClaimScout must never alter original evidence while generating analytical interpretations.
License and Notice Core
The License and Notice Core analyzes the legal and attribution information associated with discovered material.
It must detect:
- LICENSE files
- COPYING files
- NOTICE files
- NOTICE.md files
- Copyright headers
- Attribution statements
- Repository license metadata
- Platform license declarations
- Embedded licensing terms
It must identify relevant conditions such as:
- Attribution requirements
- Redistribution requirements
- Modification requirements
- Copyleft requirements
- Source availability requirements
- Notice preservation requirements
- Additional permissions
- Restrictions
- Disclaimers
The system must distinguish between license compliance issues and potential copyright infringement.
License Compliance Recommendation Core
The License Compliance Recommendation Core evaluates whether a discovered use may have an available licensing pathway.
Possible findings should include:
- License appears compatible
- Attribution appears incomplete
- Required notice appears missing
- License conditions require review
- License information is ambiguous
- License could not be identified
- Potential infringement requires human review
The system must not treat the absence of a license as automatic proof of infringement.
Cross-Platform Correlation Core
The Cross-Platform Correlation Core connects related findings across repositories, websites, and social platforms.
It must identify:
- Shared content
- Shared URLs
- Shared authors
- Shared organizations
- Shared repository owners
- Common publication patterns
- Common filenames
- Common fingerprints
- Common phrases
- Repository forks
- Mirrors
- Distribution networks
- Repeated appearances
The system should create a relationship graph showing how potentially related instances are connected.
Distribution Hub Analysis Core
The Distribution Hub Analysis Core identifies locations where potentially unauthorized copies are concentrated.
A hub may be identified based on:
- Number of matching works
- Number of repositories
- Number of mirrors
- Number of forks
- Number of associated accounts
- Cross-platform presence
- Frequency of reuse
- Historical activity
- Content similarity
- Relationship between discovered locations
Reports must identify the repository or platform, repository name, owner or account, relevant URLs, matched work, evidence, timestamps, and confidence level.
Case Building Core
The Case Building Core organizes findings into individual cases.
Each case should contain:
- Case identifier
- Copyrighted work
- Rights holder
- Potentially matching material
- Repository or platform
- Owner or account
- URLs
- Dates and times
- Evidence
- Provenance records
- License information
- NOTICE information
- Similarity analysis
- Distribution relationships
- Confidence score
- Missing evidence
- Human review status
- Recommended next step
Cases must remain editable by authorized users.
Case Strength Assessment Core
The Case Strength Assessment Core evaluates evidence completeness and consistency.
It may consider:
- Strength of the content match
- Quality of provenance evidence
- Reliability of timestamps
- Availability of original work records
- Availability of source history
- License information
- Attribution information
- Evidence integrity
- Number of independent corroborating sources
- Relationship between original and discovered material
The system must clearly label its assessment as an analytical recommendation rather than a legal determination.
DMCA Recommendation Core
The DMCA Recommendation Core prepares potential takedown documentation for human review.
It must:
- Identify the relevant work
- Identify potentially infringing material
- Provide source URLs
- Provide evidence references
- Identify the hosting platform
- Identify repository or account ownership information
- Summarize provenance
- Summarize relevant licensing information
- Identify missing information
- Generate a draft notice
- Provide platform-specific submission guidance
- Record review status
ClaimScout must not automatically submit a DMCA notice without explicit authorization from the rights holder or authorized representative.
Report Generation Core
The Report Generation Core produces structured reports for investigation, record keeping, legal review, and potential takedown preparation.
Reports should support:
- HTML
- Markdown
- CSV
- JSON
Reports may include:
- Executive summary
- Monitored work information
- Findings
- Repository information
- Owner information
- Platform information
- URLs
- Match analysis
- Evidence
- Timeline
- License analysis
- NOTICE analysis
- Distribution hub analysis
- Related findings
- Confidence scores
- Case strength assessment
- Recommended actions
- Human review notes
Timeline Core
The Timeline Core constructs chronological histories for monitored works and discovered uses.
It must correlate:
- Creation dates
- Publication dates
- Commit dates
- Release dates
- Social media dates
- Website publication dates
- Repository changes
- Evidence acquisition dates
Timeline entries must preserve their original source and confidence.
Alerting Core
The Alerting Core notifies users about significant monitoring events.
Alerts may include:
- New potential match
- High-confidence match
- New repository appearance
- New social media appearance
- New distribution hub
- Repository change
- License change
- NOTICE change
- New related account
- Repeat appearance
- Evidence integrity issue
- Case status change
Dashboard Core
The Dashboard Core provides a user interface for monitoring and reviewing ClaimScout activity.
It should provide:
- Active monitoring profiles
- Recent findings
- High-confidence matches
- Open cases
- Evidence status
- Repository activity
- Distribution hubs
- License findings
- Timeline views
- Cross-platform relationships
- Alerts
- Reports
- Review queues
Search and Query Core
The Search and Query Core provides unified access to collected information.
It must support:
- Full-text search
- Keyword search
- Boolean search
- Repository filtering
- Owner filtering
- Platform filtering
- Date filtering
- License filtering
- Confidence filtering
- Case filtering
- Evidence filtering
- Work filtering
Audit and Accountability Core
The Audit and Accountability Core records important ClaimScout operations.
It should record:
- User actions
- Configuration changes
- Evidence collection events
- Analysis events
- Report generation
- Case changes
- Review decisions
- Export events
- Notice generation
- Authorization events
Audit records must support investigation and reproducibility.
Privacy and Security Core
The Privacy and Security Core protects collected information.
It must support:
- Access controls
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Encryption where appropriate
- Secure credential storage
- Data retention controls
- Evidence access controls
- Audit logging
- Sensitive data minimization
- Secure deletion
- Local-first storage options
ClaimScout must not collect private credentials, bypass authentication, or access private repositories without authorization.
Human Review Core
The Human Review Core ensures that consequential decisions remain subject to human oversight.
Users must be able to:
- Confirm findings
- Reject findings
- Mark findings as inconclusive
- Add evidence
- Correct metadata
- Add provenance
- Review licenses
- Review NOTICE files
- Edit reports
- Approve DMCA drafts
- Record decisions
- Add case notes
AI-generated conclusions must remain distinguishable from verified factual records.
Optional Plugin Modules
ClaimScout must support an extensible plugin system so additional capabilities can be added without modifying the core architecture.
Repository Plugins
Optional repository plugins may provide integrations for:
- GitHub
- GitLab
- Codeberg
- Bitbucket
- Other compatible public code hosting services
Each plugin should provide repository discovery, metadata retrieval, content search, commit history, and licensing information where supported.
Social Platform Plugins
Optional plugins may support publicly accessible content from:
- X
- Other compatible platforms
Plugins must use authorized interfaces and comply with applicable platform requirements.
Web Archive Plugins
Optional archive plugins may integrate with permitted archival services to retrieve historical versions of publicly accessible pages.
Media Analysis Plugins
Optional plugins may provide advanced:
- Image analysis
- Audio fingerprinting
- Video fingerprinting
- OCR
- Visual similarity
- Speech-to-text
- Media metadata analysis
Advanced AI Plugins
Optional AI plugins may provide:
- Additional embedding models
- Local language models
- Specialized code models
- Multilingual analysis
- Advanced semantic matching
- Document classification
- Entity resolution
- Relationship extraction
Users should be able to select local models where practical to reduce vendor dependency.
Legal Reference Plugins
Optional legal reference plugins may provide:
- Platform takedown procedures
- DMCA form guidance
- Copyright office references
- Jurisdiction-specific reference material
- Legal terminology
- Notice templates
Legal reference plugins must present information as reference material and must not represent AI output as legal advice.
Legal Service Plugins
Optional integrations may connect ClaimScout with authorized legal service providers or internal legal workflows.
All legal service integrations must require explicit user authorization before transmitting case information or initiating external actions.
Notification Plugins
Optional notification plugins may support:
- Webhooks
- Messaging services
- Desktop notifications
- Mobile notifications
- Team collaboration platforms
Collaboration Plugins
Optional collaboration plugins may provide:
- Team case review
- Assignment workflows
- Comments
- Evidence annotations
- Approval workflows
- Shared investigations
- Role-based review
Storage Plugins
Optional storage plugins may support:
- Local databases
- PostgreSQL
- SQLite
- Object storage
- Encrypted evidence stores
- Compatible archival systems
Export Plugins
Optional plugins may support additional output formats and integrations for:
- Legal case management
- Document management
- Spreadsheet systems
- Evidence management systems
- Reporting platforms
Matching and Confidence Framework
ClaimScout must use transparent confidence classifications.
Recommended classifications include:
- Exact Match
- Strong Match
- Probable Match
- Possible Match
- Weak Match
- Inconclusive
- False Positive
- License-Compliant Use
- Requires Human Review
Confidence scores must be accompanied by an explanation of the evidence supporting the classification.
Evidence Standards
Every significant finding should maintain a clear distinction between:
- Source material
- Collected metadata
- Derived analysis
- AI interpretation
- Human verification
- Legal recommendation
ClaimScout must never present an AI inference as an established fact without identifying the underlying evidence.
Responsible Monitoring
ClaimScout is intended for lawful monitoring of publicly accessible information and authorized data sources.
The system must not be designed to:
- Bypass authentication
- Access private repositories without permission
- Circumvent security controls
- Obtain private credentials
- Evade platform restrictions
- Conduct unauthorized intrusion
- Harass individuals
- Automatically submit unsupported legal claims
Users remain responsible for ensuring that their monitoring activities comply with applicable laws, regulations, contracts, licenses, and platform terms.
Data Retention
Users must be able to configure retention policies for:
- Search results
- Evidence
- Screenshots
- Snapshots
- Metadata
- Audit records
- Case records
- Reports
Retention controls should support automatic expiration, manual deletion, archival, and preservation of selected evidence.
Reproducibility
ClaimScout should make investigations reproducible by recording:
- Search parameters
- Monitoring configuration
- Collection timestamps
- Source URLs
- Source metadata
- Matching methods
- Model information
- Confidence calculations
- Evidence hashes
- Human decisions
- Report generation timestamps
Extensibility
All major ClaimScout capabilities should use modular interfaces so that new repositories, platforms, models, storage systems, analysis engines, notification systems, and reporting formats can be added without requiring changes to unrelated core components.
Plugins should be independently configurable, enableable, disableable, and replaceable.
Operational Workflow
ClaimScout should operate through the following general process:
- Register copyrighted works.
- Configure keywords, fingerprints, repositories, platforms, and monitoring rules.
- Discover publicly accessible content.
- Collect permitted metadata and evidence.
- Normalize and fingerprint discovered material.
- Compare discovered content against registered works.
- Analyze repository history and publication history.
- Detect related appearances across platforms.
- Identify repositories, owners, accounts, and distribution hubs.
- Detect and analyze licenses and NOTICE files.
- Evaluate potential license compliance.
- Build provenance timelines.
- Preserve supporting evidence.
- Create or update a case.
- Calculate confidence and evidence strength.
- Present findings for human review.
- Generate a report.
- Generate a draft DMCA notice when appropriate.
- Require explicit human approval before external legal action.
- Record the final decision and maintain the investigation history.
Reporting Requirements
A standard infringement investigation report should include:
- Case title
- Case identifier
- Rights holder
- Monitored work
- Original source
- Original publication information
- Potentially matching source
- Repository name
- Repository owner
- Platform
- Relevant file path
- Relevant URL
- Publication date and time
- Commit information
- Match type
- Similarity explanation
- Evidence references
- License information
- NOTICE information
- Compliance analysis
- Related sources
- Distribution hubs
- Timeline
- Confidence assessment
- Missing information
- Human review status
- Recommended next step
Specification Branding License (SBL)
Standard
- Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
- Copyleft enforced for network deployments
- Required attribution:
- Roxanne Ardary
- https://www.roxanneardary.com/
Optional
- Specification Branding License (SBL)
- Attribution-free commercial deployment
- Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
- https://roxanneardary.com/claimscout/
License & Notice Requirements
ClaimScout is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
By contributing to this project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.
Please note the following:
- All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
- Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to:
Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com. - ClaimScout specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated for attribution-free commercial deployment.
- The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments.
Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also updatenotice.md. - When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
- Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including source availability requirements applicable under the license.
For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.
Notice – ClaimScout
Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
Contributors
This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.
- Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – April 4, 2026
Created the repository for ClaimScout. Designed the core concept of an AI system for detecting, documenting, and reporting potential copyright infringements across repositories and online platforms. - [Add other contributors here] – [Date]
[Describe contribution in one sentence]
License – ClaimScout
This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
Key Points
- You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
- All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
- The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.
For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.