Registers work
Seals works, declares licences and authorized accounts, funds campaigns, and classifies matches against their own work.
CannotVerify their own ownership, or label a match on someone else's work.
How it works
Seven stages.Three human gates.
Sentinel is an evidence and rights workflow, and matching is one stage inside it. Here is what happens at each step, who acts, what gets recorded, and what that record does not mean.
Separation of duties
Five roles.Each with limits.
No single party can carry a case from a match to a payout. The limits below are enforced in code and covered by adversarial tests.
Reports leads
Submits public URLs and evidence while signed in, so any award is attributable.
CannotWin an award on a case where they have a conflict of interest, or approve their own payout.
Validates leads
Works the 13-point checklist on every lead, from scouts and from discovery alike.
CannotSee the reward amount, or send an owner notice without a second approval.
Decides
Confirms or denies ownership, classifies the use, reports false positives, and records resolutions.
CannotStand in for the reviewer. Owner actions never write a reviewer finding.
Approves payouts
Approves, holds or claws back payouts and resolves appeals with a named decision.
CannotApprove a payout to themselves, or approve one while a hold is in place.
The seven stages
Register, seal, discover.Review, decide, reward.
Gated stages glow. A case can stop at any of them, and stopping is recorded like any other outcome.
-
Creator
Register work
Creators sign in and request identity verification (in this build, manual staff attestation; no government ID is stored). They upload the original, whether an image, video, audio, text or source file, with their own claimed creation and publication dates. Works can be grouped into catalogs. Creators declare authorized accounts, licensees and permitted uses up front, so reuse they already allow never becomes a lead.
- Recorded
- Registered work and its first version. Ownership status: claimed owner.
- Does not mean
- Uploading does not verify ownership. Verification is a separate human workflow, and AI can never promote it.
In the prototype: the creator registry -
Sentinel
Seal private evidence
On upload Sentinel seals the file's SHA-256 hash, timestamps and a provenance snapshot. The database itself rejects any update or deletion of a seal. Replacing a file creates a new version with its own seal, and the old seal is untouched. Creators can export a private evidence certificate and work through an informational copyright-registration checklist.
- Recorded
- Immutable evidence seal and an exportable certificate.
- Does not mean
- A seal is not a U.S. Copyright Office registration or a legal determination of ownership. Sentinel never files with the Copyright Office.
In the prototype: the creator registry -
Discovery pipeline or scout
Discover or report possible reuse
Two sources feed the same pipeline. Sentinel's own discovery collects pages only under a fail-closed source policy with an emergency pause; in this build its only source is a local fixture server. Signed-in scouts submit the public URL of a suspected copy with notes. Private, loopback and cloud-metadata addresses are refused. Duplicate, conflict-of-interest and rules-based fraud checks run before review.
- Recorded
- A lead with its submission time. The first valid reporter is tracked; leads Sentinel already had count as prior discovery.
- Does not mean
- A report is a lead, not an allegation. A fraud score routes a case to more human review and never denies anyone on its own.
In the prototype: scout reports -
Matching engine
Compare technical signals
Images are compared with perceptual fingerprints. Video is compared with frame hashes and temporal alignment, and audio with spectral landmark fingerprints that tolerate speed and pitch changes. A region-aware second stage looks for crops, borders, picture-in-picture and split screens. Each signal is scored and shown on its own.
- Recorded
- AI-detected match: per-signal scores, the detected transformation, and the matched segment.
- Does not mean
- A score is a signal, not a conclusion. Text is not evaluated in this build.
In the prototype: a live evidence record -
Named reviewer· Human gate
Human review
A reviewer with review permission works the same 13-point checklist for discovered and scout-reported cases: is the work distinctive, is the source relationship plausible, is the original itself a repost, is there a known licence, is the proposed message neutral, and more. They advance, reject or ask for more evidence. Advancing requires every check, and every finding is audited. A second, distinct approval is needed before any owner notice goes out.
- Recorded
- Human-validated lead (a reviewer finding with the full checklist).
- Does not mean
- Validation means the lead is credible enough to show the owner. It does not mean the use was unauthorized.
In the prototype: the review queue -
Verified owner· Owner gate
Rights-holder decision
The probable owner receives a neutral, private notice, never an accusation and never a payment demand, plus a portal. There they confirm or deny ownership, say whether this use was authorized, licensed, unknown or unauthorized, report a false positive, and can record a resolution such as attribution, a licensing offer or a removal request. Saying a use was authorized is an accurate, successful outcome.
- Recorded
- The owner's ownership and authorization statements, with time and source.
- Does not mean
- An owner's confirmation is their statement, not a court finding. A platform removal on its own is never treated as proof.
In the prototype: the owner portal -
Bounty administrator· Payout gate
Qualified bounty, possibly
If the case is covered by a funded campaign and the first valid scout qualifies, Sentinel computes an award tied to the specific qualifying record. A bounty administrator who is not the scout approves the payout once. Holds pause it, clawbacks reverse it with a named reason, and scouts can appeal to a different person. Donors and funders never influence the review.
- Recorded
- An award tied to its qualifying record, the approval, and an audit trail.
- Does not mean
- Most cases end without a payment. In this demonstration every payment is simulated.
In the prototype: the bounty console
Rewards
Three award types.Three different records.
Amounts are set per campaign. Every award points at the specific human-sourced record that qualified it, so it is always clear why something was paid.
| Award | Qualifying record | Who creates that record | Then |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead reward | Reviewer advance decision | A named reviewer | Separate payout approval |
| Standard reward | Owner-confirmed unauthorized use | The verified owner | Separate payout approval |
| Resolution bonus | Standard award plus an owner-confirmed resolution | The verified owner | Separate payout approval |
Policy: Bounty policy · Payout policy
Evidence records
Four labels.Never blurred together.
Sentinel only uses language for the record that actually exists. Accusatory phrases are blocked in outbound messages unless a legal determination is on file for that exact case.
| Label | What it means | Produced by |
|---|---|---|
| AI-detected match | A similarity score and a candidate transformation. Not a conclusion. | The matching pipeline |
| Human-validated lead | A named reviewer checked the match against all 13 checks and advanced it. | A human reviewer |
| Owner-confirmed unauthorized use | The verified owner said this specific use was not authorized. | The probable owner |
| Legally determined infringement | A court or other authoritative process ruled on this case. Rare, and never assumed. | A court or authoritative process |
Reference: Terminology guide
See it run