“Inspiration is reference; imitation is theft. We name voices to set the craft bar, never to forge under their identity.”
Surfaced:Build 2673 (operator-surfaced discipline — during a routine review the operator asked whether using named artists in the voice-roster panels carried any liability risk; the discussion crystallized the rule that had been implicit since B2635 but never named).
The anti-pattern this names
Every craft discipline operates by reference. Writers study writers; painters study painters; songwriters study songwriters. The MFA syllabus says read Mary Oliver because that's how craft is taught. SongForgeAI's writing room does the same — but the moment a reference becomes an imitation, or the moment a reference name surfaces in delivered customer-facing output, the discipline breaks. The boundary is mechanical, not philosophical: names in the prompt, never in the artifact.
The check
Five layers enforce this: forge prompt (src/lib/life-songs/forge.ts SYSTEM_RULES), refine prompt (src/lib/life-songs/refine.ts REFINE_RULES), cold readers (src/lib/life-songs/cold-readers/{memorial,wedding}.ts), roster scanner (src/lib/life-songs/scan-roster-leakage.ts — 9 unit tests), and auto-rewrite (src/lib/life-songs/refine.ts rewriteToStripRosterNames). Public methodology disclosure at /standards/voice-reference-discipline under CC BY 4.0.
Why this gets its own permalink
Each Sacred Accident is a discipline this codebase operates under — a rule named on the public record, enforced in the build pipeline, and cited in every commit that advances the moat it protects. Permalinking each one turns the discipline into a teaching artifact: a buyer or partner who reads this page can cite the exact principle we operate under without grepping our docs.
Canonical phrasing: BRAND.sacredAccident15 · Doc: docs/SACRED-ACCIDENTS.md