Openly Useful distribution control

This directory is the provider-neutral control layer for Openly Useful Agent Skills and MCP servers. It records publisher policy and component identities once, then generates plans for OpenAI/Codex, Claude, the official MCP Registry, and host discovery. It does not install, publish, authenticate, submit, deploy, or modify another repository.

The company record is intentionally formation-pending. Openly Useful LLC is one planned legal publisher/operator/licensee, not an active entity claim. Until formation is accepted, Openly Useful is founder-operated and external source, package, registry, and provider publication is directly authorized by the founder-owner. Provider account authentication, namespace verification, and provider review remain independent technical gates; they do not require representing the planned LLC as already formed.

RunGlance is founder-created and personally owned. Its record explicitly says that no assignment or ownership transfer is required; the planned company relationship is publisher/operator/licensee.

Canonical inputs

• publisher/publisher.json — the editable source of truth for the shared brand, planned legal identity, domain authority, namespaces, policy URLs, and publication gates.
• components/*.json — component version, provenance, skills, MCP identity, provider mapping, and independently modeled local/source/registry/marketplace states.
• schemas/*.schema.json — portable JSON Schemas for the records.

Generated files under generated/ are reproducible views, not independent sources of truth. The public projection authority endpoint is https://openlyuseful.org/publisher/manifest.json. check can compare a local site projection using --site-projection <path> or OPENLY_USEFUL_SITE_PUBLISHER_MANIFEST; this control layer never writes the website copy.

Commands

npm run sync
npm run check
npm test

sync writes only generated/. check is read-only and fails on invalid canonical data or generated drift. Tests use only Node.js built-ins.

The host plan deliberately contains no executable install actions. A future installer must require separate user authorization and must verify source digests before creating provider discovery links or copies.

MCP identity contract

For an MCP component, these values must remain identical:

component.mcp.registryName
  = package.json.mcpName
  = server.json.name

Open-source servers use org.openlyuseful/<slug> and npm packages use @openly-useful/<slug>-mcp. com.openlyuseful/* is reserved for future Studio/proprietary services.

The MCP Registry is still in preview. Registry records target the current official 2025-12-11 schema, but publication and domain authentication remain separate, owner-authorized operations.