casset/docs
FeaturesOpen app
docs indexreference
00Overview01Thesis02Architecture03System reality04Roadmap05Investor brief06Technical brief07Full tech HTML08API reference09Playback10Audio pipeline11Commerce12Base anchoring13Hook system14Music video15Theming16Creator guide17Glossary
system reality

System reality.

The source-of-truth map for what is real, what is canonical, what is peripheral, and how architecture claims stay verified.

Casset is a realtime audiovisual music identity platform, not a loose pile of routes. This page keeps the docs honest by tying product language to source files, route families, release infrastructure, and verification commands.

Source-of-truth map

The docs ecosystem has several audiences. These files decide which story wins when public copy, roadmap language, architecture notes, or code comments disagree.

Question
Canonical source
Secondary surfaces
What is Casset?
README, product philosophy, founder brief
Which terms should docs use?
Glossary, public docs, README
What exists in the codebase?
Architecture, API, audio, commerce docs
Which systems are core or peripheral?
Roadmap, investor brief, product philosophy
Which claims are verified by code?
Architecture, audit, investor docs
strategy source

Canonical thesis

docs/strategy/canonical-thesis.md

Casset Canonical Thesis

Status: Canonical strategy source · Owner: Founder · Last updated: 2026-05-24

One-Line Thesis

Casset is the artist home for audiovisual identity in the generative media era: humans enter cinematic Profile Worlds, while agents read canonical release context, provenance, permissions, and lineage.

Why Now

Music is entering an abundance phase. Audio, visuals, captions, remixes, and release assets can be generated faster than culture can interpret them. Distribution platforms still flatten releases into inventory, and generative systems can multiply content without carrying authorship, consent, atmosphere, or context forward.

The scarce layer is no longer only the file. It is:

  • artist identity
  • authored audiovisual context
  • provenance
  • contributor intent
  • permission semantics
  • release lineage
  • social memory
  • taste

Casset exists to be that layer. It is the place an artist's music world becomes emotionally legible to people and structurally legible to machines.

Category

Casset is an audiovisual music identity platform with an emerging canonical release layer underneath it.

The public product remains:

  • Profile Worlds
  • Hook Objects
  • Release Rituals
  • Listening Rooms
  • atmosphere/world authoring
  • cinematic playback
  • social release memory

The infrastructure layer quietly adds:

  • release manifests
  • provenance events
  • contributor graphs
  • permission policies
  • agent access policies
  • derivative lineage
  • release hashes
  • optional Base anchoring for proof

Casset is not:

  • a streaming app
  • a generic music social network
  • an AI music generator
  • a generated-content firehose
  • a creator monetization SaaS
  • a rights-management dashboard
  • a crypto product
  • a creator coin or market platform
  • a smart-link or pre-save utility

Core Loop

text
human loop:
enter Profile World
-> play Hook Object
-> feel Atmosphere
-> join the Listening Room
-> participate in the Release Ritual
-> return to the artist home

machine loop:
resolve release
-> read canonical manifest
-> evaluate permissions
-> inspect provenance
-> traverse lineage
-> request access or register derivative

The two loops should not collapse into one UI. Humans should experience music and identity. Machines should consume structured release context.

Artist Home

The Profile World is the artist's home on Casset. It is not a static page, a link hub, or an admin wrapper around tracks.

It should answer:

  • What does this artist sound like?
  • What world does the song live inside?
  • What should listeners remember?
  • What is authored, assisted, remixed, or generated?
  • What release moment is happening now?
  • What can agents or systems do with this release?

The product surface should make that feel emotional. The infrastructure should make it durable.

Four Product Primitives

Profile World

The living audiovisual identity for a creator, fan, duo, group, label, estate, or scene. It contains sound fragments, atmosphere, visual language, social presence, provenance signals, collaborators, follow state, current rituals, and release context.

Hook Object

The smallest emotional audiovisual unit: an audio window plus timed lyrics or caption text, waveform state, visual world, theme tokens, social proof, provenance, share state, reply/remix affordances, and links back to the canonical artist home.

Release Ritual

A time-bound social moment around a song or hook: pre-release rooms, early supporters, presaves, fan clips, co-cassets, unlocks, comments, participation proof, and post-release memory.

Listening Room

The presence layer around a profile, hook, casset, or release. It is not generic chat. It should feel like people gathering inside the emotional weather of a song.

Emerging Infrastructure Primitives

These do not replace the four product primitives. They make them durable in a generative, agent-mediated media ecosystem.

Release Object

The canonical release definition behind a public music experience. It connects an artist, tracks, versions, contributors, permissions, provenance, lineage, and published state.

Release Manifest

A deterministic machine-readable snapshot of a release version: identity, tracks, audiovisual refs, contributors, splits, permissions, and schema version. Agents consume manifests; listeners consume the cinematic surface.

Permission Policy

Artist-authored or default release rules for remixing, stems, sync, visual reuse, AI training, AI generation, derivative registration, commercial usage, and licensing routes.

Provenance Event

An append-only record of release creation, versioning, manifest generation, signing, anchoring, contributor updates, permission changes, and derivative registration.

Agent Access Policy

A structured answer to the question: what can this agent do with this release, under which terms, and what path exists if a license is required?

Generative Content Stance

Casset is not anti-AI and not AI-utopian.

The risk is not that generated media exists. The risk is generated media with no home, no taste, no consent, no provenance, no artist context, and no permission surface for systems that need to act responsibly.

AI can:

  • lower friction for visual worlds, lyric timing, hook selection, captions, and

atmosphere variations

  • help non-technical creators shape audiovisual identity
  • support hybrid creators with transparent provenance
  • summarize fan traces or release momentum for artists
  • help agents discover allowed uses without scraping intent from prose

AI should not:

  • publish without user taste and intent
  • reward high-volume low-context output
  • erase provenance
  • blur permission boundaries
  • make the public product feel like content automation

Public language should be nuanced: human-made, no AI used, AI-assisted, generated visual world, remix, co-created, and derivative are provenance signals, not moral rankings.

Agentic Permissions

As agents begin to search, summarize, remix, license, train on, and route media, they need structured permission answers. Casset should become the place where an artist can express those answers once and have them travel with the release.

The near-term permission surface is not a legal operating system. It is a clear, machine-readable policy layer:

  • allowed
  • denied
  • contact owner
  • license required

The strategic direction is:

text
agent asks: may I use this release for X?
-> Casset resolves the canonical release
-> Casset evaluates the permission policy
-> Casset returns decision, reasons, and route
-> license, access, or derivative registration can happen without losing provenance

This is artist infrastructure, not a dashboard aesthetic.

Base Stance

Base is not the product.

Base can support Casset by anchoring release manifest hashes, provenance proofs, settlement references, and future licensing receipts. The listener should not need to understand Base, wallets, markets, or token mechanics to experience a release.

Use Base language only as infrastructure language:

  • anchored proof
  • manifest hash
  • provenance anchor
  • receipt
  • settlement reference

Avoid:

  • creator coin
  • token tab
  • market mechanics
  • trading surface
  • speculative ownership language

Visual Studio Stance

Visual Studio is an atmosphere/world-authoring system for songs.

It should feel like choosing the emotional weather of a hook: source media, profile texture, color, lyric behavior, motion, and rendered artifacts. Shader or VFX language can describe internal implementation, but it should not be the primary product framing.

Optional And Peripheral Systems

Commerce, campaigns, drops, rewards, analytics, protocol experiments, and settlement primitives can remain in the platform, but they are not the category. They matter only when they deepen a Profile World, Hook Object, Release Ritual, Listening Room, or canonical release layer.

Implementation posture for support, experimental, and parked systems lives in docs/architecture/peripheral-systems.md.

Language To Prefer

  • audiovisual music identity platform
  • artist home
  • Profile World
  • Hook Object
  • Release Ritual
  • Listening Room
  • atmosphere
  • profile texture
  • audiovisual object
  • visual world
  • canonical release context
  • release manifest
  • provenance-aware identity
  • agent-readable permissions
  • release lineage
  • human, no-AI, AI-assisted, generated, remix, or co-created provenance

Language To Avoid As The Lead

  • social network for sound identities
  • AI-powered music platform
  • AI music generator
  • shader editor
  • VFX tool
  • growth platform
  • campaign dashboard
  • tokenized music platform
  • creator coin platform
  • blockchain product
  • pre-save optimization tool
  • fan monetization SaaS

Emotional Center

For creators: "This is the home for my music identity, release context, and permissioned future."

For listeners: "I understood the person and the song more deeply because I was inside the world around it."

For agents and systems: "This release has a canonical source, readable permissions, provenance, and lineage."

For culture: "Intentional music kept its identity as generation became abundant."

Route reality

The platform exposes canonical surfaces plus experiments. Public docs should make the canonical lanes obvious and keep experiments out of the primary product narrative until they replace a current lane.

Route family
Current posture
Profile Worlds
/[slug], /preview/[slug], /u/[username], /casset/[handle]
Creator Studio
/studio, /studio/onboarding, /studio/casset/[id]
Internal release dossier
/internal/releases/[releaseId], /api/internal/releases/*
Agent release APIs
/api/agents/releases/[releaseId]/*
Release dossier API
/api/releases/[releaseId]/dossier
Release cron jobs
/api/cron/releases/*
Visual Studio/runtime
/playground, /visual-qa, components/visual-studio/*, lib/visual-runtime/*
Feed/discovery
/feed as canonical; /feed-2, /feed3, /feed-4, /flow, /flow2 as experiments
Release quests
/drops, /studio/drops, /studio/campaign as optional/admin surfaces
Base anchoring note
/docs/base as support documentation, framed as quiet infrastructure

Core vs. peripheral systems

A system is core when it strengthens a Profile World, Hook Object, Release Ritual, Listening Room, or the canonical release layer that preserves provenance and permissions underneath them. Otherwise it is support, internal, experimental, or archived.

Profile Worlds
Core

Lead with identity, atmosphere, provenance, and social context.

Hook Objects
Core

Lead with audiovisual timing, shareability, lyrics/captions, and social travel.

Release Rituals
Core

Lead with anticipation, room energy, fan traces, and return moments.

Listening Rooms / Side B
Core with legacy naming

Use Listening Room strategically; use Side B only when naming implemented UI.

Visual Studio
Core creator system

Frame as atmosphere/world authoring, not shader tooling.

Canonical release layer
Core support layer

Frame as release context, manifests, provenance, permissions, lineage, and dossier state under the cinematic product.

Agentic permissions
Emerging infrastructure

Expose machine-readable release intent without making the product feel like rights SaaS or an AI dashboard.

Base anchoring
Quiet trust infrastructure

Use for manifest hash proofs and receipts; never lead with wallets, tokens, markets, or protocol UI.

Commerce / collect
Support layer

Accurate and real, but secondary to identity and participation.

Campaigns / drops
Peripheral unless ritual-linked

Consumer language should be release quests or fan missions.

Protocol editions / creator coins
Parked experiment

Keep out of primary IA and investor lead language; anchoring release proofs is separate from market mechanics.

Feed and landing variants
Experimental

Treat canonical routes as current; avoid promoting route variants.

Claim verification

Runtime and architecture docs should point to code. If a statement has no source file or verification command, it should be framed as strategy or intent rather than implementation reality.

Claim
Primary source
Verification command
Hook duration is 30 seconds.
lib/hook-constants.ts
rg -n "HOOK_DURATION_SEC|AUDIO_PROXY_WINDOW_SEC" lib app components
Locked audio is served through the preview proxy window.
lib/audio-access.ts, app/api/audio/[trackId]/route.ts
rg -n "AUDIO_PROXY_WINDOW_SEC|X-Preview-Duration|previewStartSec" lib/audio-access.ts app/api/audio
Playback timing resolves through shared runtime clocks.
lib/playback-clock.ts, lib/hook-playback-timeline.ts
rg -n "readPlaybackClockFrame|resolveHookPlaybackFrame" lib components app
Visual runtime scheduling is centralized.
lib/visual-runtime/render-scheduler.ts
rg -n "visualRenderScheduler" lib components app
Text-only shader config changes avoid heavy reload paths.
lib/visual-runtime/shader-config-diff.ts
rg -n "isTextLayerOnlyShaderConfigChange|shader-config-diff" lib components
Profile texture IDs are centralized.
lib/casset-profile-patterns.ts
rg -n "CASSET_PROFILE_TEXTURES|profilePatternId" lib app components docs
Side B/Listening Room realtime uses SSE and Redis acceleration.
app/api/casset/[slug]/*, lib/sideb-redis.ts
rg -n "text/event-stream|EventSource|sideb|publishSideBEvent" app lib hooks components
Stripe webhook fulfillment is server-authoritative.
app/api/webhooks/stripe/route.ts
rg -n "payment_intent.succeeded|checkout.session|webhook|PaymentIntent" app/api lib
Canonical release manifests, permissions, provenance, and lineage are implemented.
prisma/schema.prisma, lib/releases/*, app/api/agents/releases/*
rg -n "model Release|ReleaseManifest|AgentAccessPolicy|DerivativeLink|ProvenanceEvent" prisma/schema.prisma lib/releases app/api/agents
Base anchoring is release-proof infrastructure, not the product surface.
lib/base/release-anchor.ts, lib/releases/publish-runtime.ts
rg -n "ReleaseAnchor|queueReleaseManifestAnchor|recordReleaseAnchorSuccess|submitReleaseAnchorToBase" lib/base lib/releases app/api/cron/releases

Maintenance rules

  • Lead public docs with audiovisual identity, not campaign or commerce breadth.
  • Use Listening Room strategically and Side B only for implemented UI references.
  • Frame Visual Studio as atmosphere/world authoring before naming shader internals.
  • Frame agent APIs as release permission infrastructure, not as an AI dashboard.
  • Frame Base as quiet proof infrastructure, not as a crypto product.
  • Keep creator-coin, market, and protocol-edition work parked unless the product direction changes.
  • When code and docs disagree, update the docs or open an implementation task immediately.

Drift checks

Use these commands before major docs edits or investor-facing updates. Hits are acceptable in avoid lists, archive policy, or implementation notes that explicitly name legacy terms.

rg -n "social sound identity|AI-powered|shader editor|VFX tool|tokenized|growth platform|campaign dashboard|pre-save optimization|fan monetization" README.md docs app/docs
rg -n "Profile World|Hook Object|Release Ritual|Listening Room|profile texture|profilePatternId" README.md docs app/docs
rg -n "ReleaseManifest|AgentAccessPolicy|PermissionPolicy|ProvenanceEvent|DerivativeLink" prisma lib app docs
rg -n "Base|protocol|campaign|drop|Side B|creator coin|market" README.md docs app/docs
ArchitectureProduct thesisGlossary
© Casset 2026
PrivacyTrustTerms