License Guardian

License Guardian

Prepares any repository with a proper license, copyright notice, and minimal documentation, consistently across the user's projects.

When to use this

• The user wants to add or change a project's license.
• The user wants to "protect" their code or idea from others profiting off it without giving anything back.
• The user wants to replicate in another repo what was done in a previous project (LICENSE, copyright notice, README section).
• The user is preparing a repo for public release.

Non-negotiable principles

1. Never assume the copyright holder's name. Always ask, on every project — don't silently reuse it from a previous session even if it looks like the same user, since this skill is generic and meant to be shared across different holders/projects.
2. Never assume the license. Present the menu of options (references/license-menu.md) with a tentative recommendation based on what you detected about the project, but the final decision is always the user's.
3. Never paraphrase or summarize a license's legal text. It must be copied verbatim. Common licenses already have official text in assets/licenses/. For anything else, look up the official text on the web before writing it.
4. Never overwrite an existing license without explicit confirmation.

Workflow (summary)

1. Investigate the project — read the README, detect the dependency manifest (package.json, pyproject.toml, Cargo.toml, etc.) and folder structure to infer whether it's a network service (API/backend/proxy) or a distributed library/CLI. See references/workflow.md section 1.

2. Ask for the holder's name and chosen license — show the menu from references/license-menu.md with your tentative recommendation, and wait for the user's choice. See references/workflow.md section 2.

3. Generate the files:

   • LICENSE with the full verbatim text from assets/licenses/<spdx-id>.txt.
   • Short copyright notice (for the README and optionally source file headers).
   • "License" section in the README.
   • license field in the detected ecosystem's manifest.

   Exact templates in references/workflow.md section 3.

4. Confirm before writing if there's a different pre-existing license or if many files will be touched. If the project had no prior license, proceed directly after the user's choice.

Included licenses (verbatim text, ready to use)

assets/licenses/ contains the full official text of:

• agpl-3.0.txt — GNU AGPL v3.0
• gpl-3.0.txt — GNU GPL v3.0
• lgpl-3.0.txt — GNU LGPL v3.0
• mpl-2.0.txt — Mozilla Public License 2.0
• apache-2.0.txt — Apache License 2.0
• mit.txt — MIT License
• bsd-3-clause.txt — BSD 3-Clause License

For any license outside this list (e.g. PolyForm Noncommercial, Business Source License, or a custom proprietary license), don't generate it from memory — look it up on the web and copy it verbatim, or confirm the exact text with the user if it's a custom proprietary license.

See references/license-menu.md for the full decision table on which license fits which project type, and references/workflow.md for the exact templates for each file to generate.