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Legal

Licensing and attribution details. For precise attributions see NOTICE.md. For shadow libraries see DISCLAIMER.md.

Plugin license

paper-trail is distributed under the MIT License (see LICENSE).

This means you can:

  • Use the plugin for commercial and non-commercial purposes
  • Modify, fork, and redistribute it
  • Include it in a proprietary product

Subject to:

  • Preserving the original copyright notice and the MIT license text in all copies or substantial portions

Imported components

Some components are imported from other projects by the same author, relicensed under MIT for this repository (see NOTICE.md for detail):

  • Worker engine (pipeline/, tools/) — originally written for a personal project, relicensed MIT
  • PDF acquisition helpers (lib/) — originally written for a personal Claude Code plugin, relicensed MIT
  • Writing and audit skills (skills/sota-writer, skills/sota-auditor, skills/citation-receipts, skills/paper-writer) — originally written for a private academic research project, generalized and relicensed MIT

Inspiration patterns (no code copied)

The following architectural patterns are inspired by third-party projects, without any line of source code being copied. This preserves the MIT licensing compatibility of the plugin:

  • Imbad0202/academic-research-skills (ARS) — CC BY-NC 4.0: multi-stage pipeline concept, audit anchors, adapter pattern. No code copied.
  • Agents365-ai/paper-fetch — MIT: JSON output format, naming convention. Inspiration pattern.
  • JamesWeatherhead/receipts — MIT: local PDF↔claim audit pattern, RECEIPTS.md format. Independent Python reimplementation.
  • fcakyon/phd-skills — MIT: integrity hooks design.
  • Psypeal/claude-knowledge-vault — MIT: YAML frontmatter, Sci-Hub opt-in pattern.

Shadow libraries (Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub)

See DISCLAIMER.md for full detail.

Legal summary:

  • Disabled by default
  • Explicit activation via RESEARCH_ENABLE_SHADOW_LIBS=1
  • The user acknowledges legal responsibility according to their jurisdiction
  • The plugin hosts no copyrighted content
  • Traced in the registry (acquisition_attempts[].via prefixed with _optin)

External MCPs (paper-search, notebooklm, rtfm)

The plugin documents the use of third-party MCP servers (paper-search, notebooklm, rtfm) that the user configures independently in their ~/.claude/mcp.json or <project>/.mcp.json.

These MCPs are not distributed with paper-trail. The plugin does not formally depend on their presence (skills operate in degraded mode without paper-search, for example, by prompting the user to provide references).

In case of legal question

  • For questions about MIT license and attribution: open an issue at https://github.com/roomi-fields/paper-trail/issues
  • For questions about your use of shadow libraries in your jurisdiction: consult a legal professional, do not seek advice via the repo issues