# Provenance record

This file records where project claims came from and separates verified facts, creator statements, recommendations, and future decisions.

## Project origin

- **Project:** 50 Ways to Leave Another
- **Originator:** Dominique Devereaux / Loptr Lab
- **Repository created:** September 11, 2026
- **Repository purpose:** a transparent, rights-aware pre-production record for a proposed five-song EP
- **Creative source archive:** private and not reproduced here
- **Prospective collaborator:** Charlie J; no attachment, endorsement, delivery, or rights grant is claimed

## Legacy-project validation continuity

The project now records a reusable validation pattern for bringing older or previously paused projects forward. The pattern extends this repository's rights/provenance discipline into game-development validation without treating the repository as a rights authority:

~~~
DISCOVERY → ASSUMPTION → VERIFICATION → CORRECTION → CONTROL → RETEST
~~~

Paragon ReBorn / Return to the Void is one controlled game-development sandbox for applying that pattern. Its role is validation and proving, not automatic rights clearance, canon, ownership transfer, or production acceptance. See [Legacy Project Validation](docs/legacy-project-validation.md).

## Evidence classes

| Label | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Creator statement | Dominique's account of her own concept, archive, intent, or contribution |
| Public-source fact | A claim supported by a linked third-party page and checked on the access date |
| Calculation | Arithmetic derived from stated public prices or fees |
| Recommendation | A proposed term, workflow, price, or architecture; not an accepted fact |
| Pending evidence | A claim requiring a contract, receipt, source file, permission, or contributor confirmation |

## External professional resources

- **Producer Dojo / ill.Gates** — professional music-production education and ecosystem resource relevant to the Making Waves programming record. Relationship is informational/prospective only; no partnership, endorsement, authorship, license, or participation is claimed. See `docs/professional-resources.md` and `docs/program-making-waves.md`.
- **Lex Nova Lawyer** — external legal/business education resource. Relationship remains a professional resource; no attorney-client relationship or project endorsement is claimed.

## Current claim register

| Claim | Class | Evidence or status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Dominique created the concept, source lyrics, and narrative direction | Creator statement | To be substantiated privately with dated source files where needed |
| Suno generated the audible demo performance and production | Creator statement | Record the exact generation date, model/version, prompt record, and track identifier privately |
| Charlie's public Fiverr packages and prices | Public-source fact | Linked in `docs/charlie-offer.md`; re-check before sending an offer |
| Fiverr seller and buyer fee effects | Public-source fact + calculation | Linked and calculated in `docs/charlie-offer.md`; fees may change |
| $500 pilot and $2,500–$3,500 EP scope | Recommendation | Nonbinding until accepted in a signed agreement |
| PLYR/AT Protocol listening test | Recommendation | No results are claimed until a disclosed test occurs |
| Charlie participation or approval | Pending evidence | Not obtained |

## Change protocol

1. Cite public claims near the claim and record an access date in `SOURCES.md`.
2. Store contracts, receipts, source audio, prompts, sessions, and private correspondence outside the public repository.
3. Use a private evidence locator rather than a public link for protected material.
4. Correct material errors in a new commit; do not erase revision history.
5. Obtain contributor approval before publishing private work, quotes, identity details, or a named case study.
6. Record each accepted track with the contribution, split-sheet, rights-envelope, and delivery templates.

This record documents provenance; it does not itself prove ownership or grant permission.

## Battle the Beast as a historical interactive-narrative case

The repository's legacy-project validation model can include **Battle the Beast** as a historical validation case: an early participatory/transmedia narrative experiment whose surviving record can be used to study the transition from prose into interactive narrative structure.

This is not a dependency or authority for current 50 Ways production.

The useful lineage is:

```text
HISTORICAL SOURCE / PROJECT RECORD
        ↓
PROVENANCE
        ↓
RIGHTS / PERMISSION REVIEW
        ↓
TECHNICAL LESSON
        ↓
CONTROLLED REBUILD
        ↓
DOCUMENTED RESULT
```

For the Ink-specific training exercise, the transferable lesson is **narrative continuity under code change**: how scene structure, choices, variables, and handoffs can be changed while preserving a coherent player experience.

The historical Battle the Beast material should therefore be treated as an **origin artifact / case study**, while actual training implementations should use original or appropriately cleared material.

See the training repository's `docs/NARRATIVE_CONTINUITY_INK.md` for the exercise specification.

### Evidence boundary

A historical project record can establish that a creative/technical experiment occurred and can document its development lineage. It does not, by itself, establish present-day permission to reuse third-party characters, dialogue, terminology, recordings, images, brands, or other protected material.

The 50 Ways rule remains:

> Preserve the history. Extract the technique. Verify the rights. Rebuild the technique in a controlled environment. Document what changed.

This keeps historical provenance useful without turning the archive into an implied rights grant.


## Rights-contract review provenance

The proposed rights-contract v0.3 draft and rule catalog were developed through iterative human review with AI-assisted drafting and critique.

- **Accepted review inputs:** recursive derivation, explicit derivation completeness, fixed gate status vocabulary with reason codes, sync-specific scope checks, halt-on-control-document-conflict behavior, and separate sync versus post-exit commercial-use rules.
- **Corrected AI claim:** a SuperMe review stated that source documents were missing; repository inspection corrected that factual claim. The error is retained in disclosure rather than erased.
- **Rejected/superseded proposal:** the Hercules integration PDF is retained as review input rather than authority. Its Google AI origin is inferred from the PDF footer and is not independently confirmed.
- **Practitioner input:** consultation may inform rule design, but individual comments must not be quoted or attributed without permission.
- **Repository state note:** no `docs/architecture/rights-contract-v0.2.md` file was present on the `main` branch when the 2026-09-28 review branch was created. The v0.3 draft therefore records that missing public baseline explicitly instead of reconstructing it silently.
- **Identity provenance:** PR #58 is AI-authored under the maintainer identity, before the identity split. The commits therefore appear under the maintainer account even though the implementation work was performed with Codex assistance.
- **Merge provenance:** If PR #58 is merged, record it as a maintainer-bypass merge of AI work authored before the identity split; do not describe repository protections as having independently enforced review for this PR.

Material mistakes are corrected additively and remain part of the provenance trail.