Propose Masster skill

[lfnothias]

See https://github.com/zamboni-lab/masster-dist
https://metabolomics.blog/2026/03/how-we-analyze-untargeted-metabolomics-data/

[lfnothias]

🤖 Curator triage → blocked

Field	Resolved
Identity	Masster (MASSter) — Zamboni-lab untargeted metabolomics tool (zamboni-lab/masster-dist)
DOI	❌ none found
License	⚠️ Masster Noncommercial and Commercial Services License 1.0.0 — source-available but non-open / non-OSI
Open access	❌ fails the OA gate
Decision	blocked

The license restricts commercial use, so it fails OPEN_ACCESS_POLICY regardless of the software-DOI policy — it cannot be staged to included. To reconsider, upstream would need to (a) adopt an open license and (b) provide a citable reference. Recorded in the wave file for transparency.

[lfnothias]

I have talked with Nicola Zamboni (@htmonkey) and he approved including masster it in the skill collection. We do have the non commercial tier that makes the user aware of possible restrictions for some libraries.

[lfnothias]

Curator triage — unblocking confirmed, but the skill is not yet discoverable.

Thanks again to @htmonkey for the go-ahead. Recording where this actually stands, because the blocked label was no longer accurate.

Field	Resolved
Licence	Masster Noncommercial and Commercial Services License 1.0.0 — mapped in governance/LICENSE_TIERS.md
Tier	noncommercial (link-only grounding + blocking runtime acknowledgment)
Skill	collections/metabolomics/v2/skills/masster/SKILL.md (requires_ack: true)
Status	not blocked — but not shipped either

What is still missing. The skill file exists on main, but it is absent from all three indexes: skills_index.json, kb_bundle.json and docs-site/search_index.json. In practice that means asbb search, the MCP skill-server and the documentation site cannot find it.

The cause is structural, not an oversight in one file. scripts/propagate_license_tiers.py joins tiers onto entries that are already in skills_index.json, keyed by DOI; it never adds one. Masster has no DOI and no corpus.yaml entry (it sits in collections/metabolomics/proposals/wave-2026-06-community.yaml as status: hold), so it cannot enter the index by that route. And scripts/check_license_tiers.py only cross-checks skills that are already indexed (if slug in slug_to_index_tier), so CI stays green and the orphan goes unnoticed.

The open decision is whether a noncommercial tool may hold a corpus.yaml entry at all. Today access.type: restricted would fail the verify-paper open-access gate, which is why the entry is parked at hold. Either the index is generated from the skills directory rather than the corpus, or the corpus grows a way to carry a non-OA tool. That is a governance call, so this issue stays open.

Relabelling: removing blocked, adding triaged.

[lfnothias]

Update — the fix is in #25, awaiting review. Not closing this until it lands on main.

The governance question resolved in favour of deriving the index from the skills directory, rather than letting corpus.yaml carry non-open tools. corpus.yaml is a paper corpus keyed by DOI and access.type; a tool with no paper has no source to redistribute, so gating its discoverability on an open-access field is wrong by construction. The alternative would have coupled discovery to the legal gate and admitted non-OA entries into the corpus that verify-paper polices.

What #25 does:

• scripts/skill_index.py derives an index entry from a skill's own frontmatter, so a skill with no DOI can still be indexed.
• Masster now carries metadata.license_tier: noncommercial and appears in skills_index.json, kb_bundle.json and docs-site/search_index.json.
• A new CI gate fails when a skill exists on disk but in no index — the guard that would have caught this. It covers packs/ too, which ships 4,961 skills and had the same exposure.
• --fix refuses to index a skill with no licence tier, so a non-open skill can never become searchable while shedding the label that governs its use. check_license_tiers.py now cross-checks Masster, because it is finally visible.

The acknowledgment gate is intact: requires_ack: true, and the NONCOMMERCIAL notice is carried in the description a consumer reads.

Thanks again @htmonkey.