Know Which Suggestion Came With a License

A routine for flagged suggestions that resemble open-source code: decide licenses up front, record attribution, or rewrite from behavior.

aws-codewhisperer aws licensing open-source compliance code-review

What it is for

A working routine for the moment a suggestion is flagged as resembling open-source code: what to decide beforehand, what to record, and when to rewrite instead. Use it on any project whose code you cannot show a customer. It prevents license contamination that is cheap to handle in the second it appears and very expensive a year later.

The skill

Do this once, then on every flagged suggestion.

Once:
- Turn on the code reference setting, so suggestions resembling known
  open-source code are flagged with their repository and license.
- Write down, before you are in a hurry, which licenses this project can
  accept. Most commercial work cannot take copyleft.

On every flagged suggestion:
1. Stop. Do not accept it to clean up later. Once it is in the file and
   committed, nobody will remember where it came from.
2. Read the license it names. If it is outside your accepted list, reject
   the suggestion outright.
3. If it is acceptable, record the attribution now: repository, license,
   and date, in a comment beside the code or in a NOTICE file.
   Attribution you did not record is attribution you did not give.
4. If you cannot use it, do not paraphrase it line by line. Close the
   suggestion, write the behavior you need in one sentence, and implement
   from the sentence.

Every release:
- Read the reference log for the whole project, not just today's file, and
  confirm every entry still has a matching attribution.
- Ask whether any flagged block has since been copied into another file.

Failure this prevents: a customer's legal review finding licensed code
inside a proprietary product, with no record of how it arrived and nobody
left who wrote it.

How to install it

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

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Where it came from

Skills app Original