Teams building an AI video rights API should write down the product contract before implementing endpoints. Clear entity definitions and status meanings prevent client applications from inferring more than the service can verify.
Define the user and asset model
Specify organizations, clients, rights holders, contributors, assets, evidence, licenses, requests, provider reviews, and usage events. For each entity, define its owner, permitted viewers, lifecycle, and relationship to other records.
Identify which fields are sensitive and which service stores the media bytes. Keep raw ID or biometric information out of ordinary API payloads unless an authorized provider flow and reviewed data design require it.
Write the decision contract
Define allowed, blocked, pending, expired, paused, unavailable, and unknown. Include the decision source, checked scope, terms version, and reason. A client app should be able to explain a result without inventing a legal or provider conclusion.
Specify whether a status is current, how long it can be cached, and which event invalidates it. Critical actions should recheck when terms or account eligibility may have changed.
Plan failure and audit behavior
Describe authorization errors, provider outages, conflicts, duplicate requests, invalid callback signatures, and partial results. Make retries idempotent and ensure a failure does not appear as a successful provider action.
Define audit fields, access, retention, and deletion. Log enough to investigate a decision without turning operational telemetry into an unnecessary collection of personal information.
Ship in capability-gated stages
Start with read-only rights records and status checks. Add submissions, identity verification, signed contracts, payouts, or generation only when the corresponding authorized provider, user consent, and support path are ready.
Approved.video follows this gated principle for provider-dependent actions. The API direction is for studios and app builders, but each capability should be described according to its live provider and operational readiness.
CLARIFICATIONS
Questions & answers
Should an AI video rights API fail open when status is unavailable?
No. For a sensitive action, unknown or unavailable status should block the request and explain which check could not be completed.