Before an AI workflow handles real content, make its data and rights pass

Input gate: authority and necessity exist before upload

List every input category, source, owner or data subject where relevant, purpose, personal or sensitive fields, confidentiality, license or permission, attribution, minimum subset, geography, and approver. PASS means the workflow uses only necessary authorized material for the described job. REVIEW means a nonessential field is removed before launch. STOP covers credentials, unrelated personal data, client secrets without authority, protected work with unclear use, sensitive inference, or public content assumed free of obligations. Attach redaction evidence and synthetic alternatives. This gate asks whether data may enter, not whether a provider can technically accept it.

Evidence: Information Commissioner's Office; Creative Commons

Route gate: contract, configuration, and tested flow agree

Record exact product, plan, account, terms and privacy versions, roles, training or improvement settings, retention, abuse monitoring, regions, subprocessors, encryption, support access, model routing, connectors, logs, deletion, export, and incident channel. PASS means current official evidence and configuration support the approved data class. REVIEW covers a disabled nonessential feature awaiting formal removal. STOP covers a personal account bypass, unknown fallback provider, unapproved connector, indefinite or unexplained retention, broad public sharing, or contract and UI conflict. Test with synthetic records and inspect downstream copies. A policy PDF without configured enforcement is not a route.

Evidence: Information Commissioner's Office; National Institute of Standards and Technology

Security-and-access gate: least privilege survives normal mistakes

Verify identity, multifactor authentication, scoped roles, keys, device access, storage, network destinations, logging redaction, clipboard and export controls, backups, offboarding, and credential rotation. PASS means users and services can reach only the data and actions needed, with auditable revocation. REVIEW covers a low-risk legacy role scheduled for removal before broader use. STOP covers shared credentials, secrets inside prompts, public links, unrestricted plugins, raw sensitive logs, or no one able to revoke access. Simulate accidental sharing and lost-account recovery. Privacy promises fail when a correct provider route is surrounded by uncontrolled local copies.

Evidence: Information Commissioner's Office; National Institute of Standards and Technology

Output gate: factual, personal, confidential, and rights review are separate

Test source support, unexpected personal information, confidential inference, quotation, attribution, meaningful similarity, trademark or publicity concerns, and the record of human selection and modification. PASS means each publication risk has a named reviewer and defensible evidence. REVIEW means a suspect passage is removed or rewritten before use. STOP covers fabricated authorship, invented license, output too close to protected input without authority, disclosed private data, or legal certainty inferred from a model. The U.S. Copyright Office report applies to a defined United States copyrightability question; counsel may be needed for infringement, ownership, foreign law, or contracts.

Evidence: United States Copyright Office; Creative Commons

Publication-and-retention gate: the reviewed version has an ending

Attach audience, channel, disclosure, license and attribution, consent or release, accessibility, commercial relationships, correction contact, approved version, storage locations, retention, deletion, suppression, and legal-hold process. PASS means sharing is authorized and every copy has an owner and review or expiry. REVIEW covers a nonpublic draft store with a short scheduled cleanup. STOP covers publication before approval, missing disclosure, syndication outside license, analytics that add unreviewed processing, dynamic content that changes rights, or indefinite raw-input retention. Test deletion and rollback without destroying evidence required to honor restrictions or investigate incidents.

Evidence: National Institute of Standards and Technology; United States Copyright Office

Ruling: zero STOP findings and qualified escalation

The next action is to run the record on one proposed workflow using synthetic or public low-risk material, and withhold real content until every STOP is resolved. Each REVIEW item needs an owner, date, safe fallback, and reason it cannot affect the approved use. Preserve dated evidence without storing unnecessary sensitive content. Limits remain: provider behavior and terms change, laws and licenses differ, rights analysis is fact-specific, and a passing test cannot prove absence of future leaks. Re-run after data, provider, plan, model, connector, audience, jurisdiction, purpose, or retention changes. Commercial tool links remain subject to independent criteria, affiliate disclosure, and the same hard gates.