Detect License

Overview

When you supply license text or declared metadata, we match it against a pinned SPDX phrase dataset and return identifiers with confidence, method, and evidence counts. This is best-effort identification — not legal advice, and no match does not prove absence of obligations. We do not fetch remote license lists or run probabilistic models — do not use this as a substitute for legal review or full composition scanning.

License calls should be evidence-based and repeatable. We fingerprint text against a pinned dataset so your policy gates see the same answer every time.

When to use it

Scope

Non-goals

• Does not give legal advice
• Does not declare licenses compatible or safe
• Does not fetch remote license lists
• Does not use probabilistic AI scoring

Properties

Capabilities

Cost & billing

Flat rate per invocation

File handling

How we handle your data

Input schema

Output schema

API contract

curl -sS -X POST "$BASE/v1/execute" -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"skillKey":"code.detect_license","input":{"documents":[{"path":"LICENSE","content":"..."}]}}'

import { Squillify } from "@squillify/sdk";

const sq = new Squillify({ apiKey: process.env.SQUILLIFY_API_KEY });

const { output } = await sq.execute("code.detect_license", {"documents":[{"content":"MIT License\n\nPermission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files, to deal in the Software without restriction.\n\nThe above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.\n\nTHE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, express or implied.","path":"LICENSE"}]});

Errors

Other limits

Limitations

• Does not give legal advice
• Does not declare licenses compatible or safe
• Does not fetch remote license lists
• Does not use probabilistic AI scoring
• Legal compliance conclusions
• Full-repo software composition analysis

How to call

POST /v1/execute (requires authentication)

{
  "skillKey": "code.detect_license",
  "input": {
    "documents": [
      {
        "content": "MIT License\n\nPermission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files, to deal in the Software without restriction.\n\nThe above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.\n\nTHE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, express or implied.",
        "path": "LICENSE"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Examples

{
  "documents": [
    {
      "content": "MIT License\n\nPermission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files, to deal in the Software without restriction.\n\nThe above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.\n\nTHE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, express or implied.",
      "path": "LICENSE"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "warnings": [],
  "detected": [
    {
      "method": "normalized_fingerprint",
      "spdxId": "MIT",
      "path": "LICENSE",
      "matchedPhraseCount": 3,
      "name": "MIT License",
      "missingPhraseCount": 0,
      "confidence": 1
    }
  ],
  "datasetVersion": "spdx-phrase-2026-07"
}

{
  "documents": [
    {
      "content": "This is just some random text.",
      "path": "README"
    }
  ]
}

{
  "warnings": [
    {
      "code": "LICENSE_NOT_DETECTED",
      "message": "No license matched with sufficient confidence; absence is not proof of no obligations",
      "severity": "warning"
    }
  ],
  "detected": [],
  "datasetVersion": "spdx-phrase-2026-07"
}

Recommended use cases

• Tag a LICENSE file with an SPDX id before policy checks
• Flag metadata conflicts between declared and detected licenses
• Pre-screen text before human legal review

Avoid for

• Legal compliance conclusions
• Full-repo software composition analysis

Related skills

Composable with

Safety & privacy

• Runs without calling any external service.
• Your payloads are never stored permanently.
• Telemetry captures metadata only — never your payload contents.
• We never train models on your payloads.
• No human reviews your payloads.

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