lading

Trace licence obligations across Python dependencies and AI assets before they ship.

lading discovers packages, Hugging Face models and datasets, and vendored PEFT adapters, resolves their licences, and turns them into reviewable obligations and policy decisions. Its output is engineering evidence to review with counsel, not legal advice.

Install and run

uvx foretop-lading scan .

Without a policy, the command reports what it finds and exits successfully. Add a built-in policy only when you want the scan to gate CI:

uvx foretop-lading scan . --policy permissive-only

Run uvx foretop-lading scan --help for every option.

What it checks

• Python dependencies declared in uv.lock.
• Hugging Face model and dataset identifiers referenced in Python source.
• Vendored PEFT adapter configuration and base-model relationships.
• Optional artifacts from the local Hugging Face cache or an existing CycloneDX 1.6 JSON SBOM.
• Attribution, redistribution, acceptable-use, field-of-use, and share-alike obligations.

When discovery supplies a package version or Hugging Face revision, Lading resolves metadata for that exact release rather than the registry's latest state. Unresolved licences remain unknown; they are never treated as permissive.

Output and CI gating

--format supports table, json, mermaid, markdown, sarif, annotations, and triage-json. --policy accepts permissive-only, no-copyleft, no-field-of-use-restrictions, or a YAML policy path. Exit code 1 means an explicit policy failed, while 2 means the scan itself failed. Warnings alone never fail the command.

GitHub Action

- uses: foretop-dev/lading@v0.4.0
  with:
    policy: permissive-only

The Action uses permissive-only by default, emits inline annotations, and can maintain one summary comment on pull requests. Grant pull-requests: write when comments are enabled. Set policy to an empty string for report-only use.

Privacy

Repository discovery is local. Licence resolution sends package or asset identifiers—not source contents—to the public PyPI and Hugging Face APIs. The machine-wide Hugging Face cache is read only when --scan-hf-cache is passed. --report and --gate are explicit hosted-mode options and never send document or source bodies.

Current limitations

• Native dependency discovery currently reads uv.lock; other ecosystems require an imported CycloneDX SBOM.
• Namespace-less Hugging Face model identifiers may not be distinguishable from ordinary strings.
• Licence metadata can be absent or inconsistent, so unresolved evidence remains unknown.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.

Questions and bug reports are welcome in GitHub Issues.