reader: someone installing or running meow-licence on Pi answers: what meow-licence provides, what it adds to a session and how to install it kind: reference describes: [@meowshed/meow-licence@0.7.1]

@meowshed/meow-licence

Adds the licence header a repository declares to each file Pi creates, never rewrites one, and checks that every tracked file is covered by the licensing declared in REUSE.toml, in .meowpaw/profile.toml or in its files' headers. Distributed as a Pi package.

Install it

pi install npm:@meowshed/meow-licence

The paw executable ships with @meowshed/meow-core alone (REQ-4612): this package's launchers run their subcommands through it, so install the core package beside this one for the binary-backed checks. Without it, every check reports unrun and lets the command through.

pi install npm:@meowshed/meow-core   # carries the binary the launchers run

Installing from this repository's checkout is the development install: it loads the package in place and runs no lifecycle script.

Declare your licensing

Declare it in any of three ways, and combine them if you like:

• a REUSE.toml at the repository's root, whose annotations cover files in bulk;
• a [licence] table in .meowpaw/profile.toml, listing your header's lines;
• a header in each file: an SPDX-FileCopyrightText line and an SPDX-License-Identifier line within its first 20 lines, or in a file beside it named <file>.license.

[licence]
header = [
  "SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 A Person <a@example.org>",
  "SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0",
]

A licence text, in LICENSES/ or in a file named LICENSE, LICENCE or COPYING, needs no declaration, and neither does REUSE.toml.

Have Pi head new files

When Pi creates a file in a repository that declares licensing, the meow-licence:header skill adds the header you declared, in the comment form the file's format permits, or in a <file>.license file beside a file that can't carry a comment. It writes the lines under [licence], or where you declare none, copies the header your files already carry. It skips a file an annotation in REUSE.toml covers, never changes a header a file already carries, and where you declare nothing, writes nothing and says so.

What it costs you The

check is a native binary shipped inside the unit, so it needs nothing installed on the machine except git, which it reads the tracked files through. On a machine the unit carries no binary for, the check reports the repository as unchecked and exits 3.

Read a subcommand's help

meow-licence --help lists the subcommands, and meow-licence <subcommand> --help names what it determines, what you read to reach the same answer without the tool, and the first word of each kind of line it prints. A test holds each subcommand's output to those words.