TIDAL feasibility gate

Result: REQUIRES_WRITTEN_APPROVAL

No TIDAL adapter, runtime configuration, dependency, environment variable or branding is included in this phase.

Legal finding

The current TIDAL Developer Guidelines, incorporated into the Developer Terms, list as prohibited offerings—unless TIDAL gives express written approval—an offering that uses TIDAL content in connection with artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies. The same section separately prohibits enabling transfer of data to another service and analyzing TIDAL content. These restrictions cover metadata/catalog and playlist data, not only audio playback: TIDAL's Design Guidelines expressly describe track, artist, playlist and album titles supplied by the API as TIDAL content.

Short relevant excerpts:

“in connection with any artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies”

“Enabling the transfer of data to another service”

The exception is expressly written approval from TIDAL. No approval is present in this repository or in the reviewed public documentation. Self-hosted or personal use does not remove the Developer Terms requirement. An MCP tool operated by an AI client remains an AI-connected offering for this gate.

Technical finding

TIDAL technically documents OAuth 2.1, Authorization Code and refresh-token flows, PKCE, client-credentials catalog access, and bearer-token API calls in its Authorization documentation. The Quick Start also documents catalog API access. Technical availability is not permission to use the content in JamRelay's AI/MCP workflow.

Decision and required next step

The decision is REQUIRES_WRITTEN_APPROVAL, rather than ALLOWED_WITH_CONSTRAINTS, because the documented prohibition directly matches JamRelay's AI/MCP control surface and its cross-service transfer/planning behavior. It is not marked BLOCKED because the Guidelines provide an express-written-approval path.

Before any future implementation, obtain written approval that specifically covers: AI/MCP operation, metadata/catalog and playlist reads/writes, any cross-provider transfer, storage/retention, end-user data handling, and the required TIDAL attribution/branding. Until then, do not add TIDAL code or expose TIDAL data through JamRelay.