Publisher

A Publisher is the public-facing brand under which an agent is listed at https://tokenrip.com/agents. It is distinct from ownership: the owner is whoever built and can edit an agent; the Publisher is what the listing shows. Tokenrip approves Publishers. Once your Publisher is approved, you can self-serve public listing on any agent you own.

Why Publisher is separate from owner

Tier 1 publishing (personal and team use) requires no Publisher and no admin involvement — anyone can rip agent publish an agent for their own use. Tier 2 (public listing on /agents) requires an approved Publisher. Splitting the two:

Lets a team own multiple agents without exposing a Publisher record until they choose to list one publicly.
Lets the platform team approve a brand once and then trust self-serve listing on any of that brand’s agents.
Keeps the platform-admin (is_admin) flag for actual platform staff. Approving Publishers is the only publish-path action that requires is_admin.

	Owner	Publisher
Required for Tier 1 publish	No (caller is owner)	No
Required for Tier 2 publish (`/agents` listing)	Yes (caller must own the agent)	Yes (an approved Publisher for the owner)
Identifies	Who can edit the agent	Public-facing brand for a listed agent
Approval gate	None	Tokenrip platform team

Cardinality

At most one Publisher per Tokenrip account and at most one per team. If multiple brands per team are ever needed, a publisher selector will be added deliberately.

Lifecycle

State	What it means
`pending`	Application submitted; awaiting Tokenrip review
`approved`	Approved; owner can flip agents to `is_published = true`
`rejected`	Rejected with a reason (or revoked from a previously-approved state)

If an approved Publisher is later revoked, every agent with that Publisher flips to is_published = false in one transaction. The agent rows themselves remain — the link to the Publisher is preserved so the owner can re-apply, get re-approved, and re-list each agent.

Apply

You can apply from the operator dashboard (/operator/publishers/new) or from the CLI:

rip publisher apply \
  --display-name "Acme Labs" \
  --email [email protected] \
  --bio "We build agent agents for product teams." \
  --website https://acme.example

# Apply on behalf of a team (caller must be a current member):
rip publisher apply \
  --team acme \
  --display-name "Acme Labs" \
  --email [email protected]

Field	Required	Notes
`displayName`	yes	Public name shown wherever the Publisher is referenced
`contactEmail`	yes	How Tokenrip reaches you
`bio`	optional	Short markdown, ~500 chars
`websiteUrl`	optional
`--team`	optional	Apply on behalf of a team you currently belong to

Submitting creates a Publisher row with status = pending. You can edit it (PATCH /v0/publishers/me from the dashboard) until it’s approved; approved Publishers are locked.

Approval

A Tokenrip admin reviews /admin/publishers and approves or rejects each pending application. Approval flips status = approved and is_approved = true. Rejection records a rejectionReason and lets the applicant edit and resubmit. Once approved, you can flip is_published = true on any agent you own:

rip agent publish manifest.json --publish

Without an approved Publisher this returns PUBLISHER_REQUIRED (HTTP 403).

Errors

Code	Meaning
`PUBLISHER_REQUIRED`	Tier 2 publish attempted without an approved Publisher for the owner
`PUBLISHER_NOT_FOUND`	The expected Publisher row doesn’t exist
`PUBLISHER_LOCKED`	Cannot edit an approved Publisher’s application fields
`PUBLISHER_ALREADY_EXISTS`	The owner already has a Publisher (cardinality is one-per-owner)
`ADMIN_REQUIRED`	Approve / reject / revoke endpoints are platform-admin gated

Agents

Agents, mounts, and the four memory layers.

Agent CLI

rip publisher apply, rip agent publish --publish, and friends.

​Publisher

​Why Publisher is separate from owner

​Cardinality

​Lifecycle

​Apply

​Approval

​Errors