[RFC/Docs]: Standardize Statutory Knowledge Notice and informational disclaimer for compliance skills (MiCA, GDPR, EU AI Act) #397

Summary

Establish a standardized, informational Statutory Knowledge Notice across all regulatory and legal knowledge skills in the Skillware registry (e.g. compliance/mica_module, upcoming compliance/gdpr_module #74, and compliance/eu_ai_act_module).

This notice supplements the existing commercial enterprise disclaimer by establishing clear operational boundaries:

1. Clarifying that statutory RAG and policy evaluation are informational tools, not formal legal advice.
2. Explicitly stating that the skill operates on an offline statutory snapshot frozen as of a documented cutoff/publication date.
3. Highlighting the primary engineering purpose: providing deterministic, offline compliance context for local, edge, and air-gapped agent models where access to external legal portals is restricted or unavailable.
4. Advising operators to verify current statutory amendments and consult qualified legal counsel for binding compliance determinations.

Motivation

The Gap in Current Catalog Pages

Today, regulatory skills such as compliance/mica_module only feature the generic commercial enterprise disclaimer at the bottom of their catalog page (docs/skills/compliance/mica_module.md line 295):

## Enterprise disclaimer

This skill is provided for demonstration and integration purposes. It is intended as a starting point that you can adapt to your own data, schemas, and operational requirements. For an enterprise-grade version of this skill with dedicated support, SLAs, and customization, contact skills@arpacorp.net.

While effective for commercial boundaries, this disclaimer does not address the legal reality of regulatory knowledge skills:

• Statutes are dynamic: Regulations evolve via Delegated Regulations, Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS), Implementing Acts, guidelines from regulatory authorities (EBA, ESMA, AI Office), and judicial case law. An agent using an offline corpus needs explicit framing that it is querying a frozen snapshot.
• Agent Hallucination Mitigation: Host LLMs without explicit prompt directives may authoritatively declare compliance or non-compliance to end-users without clarifying that output is decision-support, not licensed legal advice.
• Air-Gapped & Edge Value Proposition: The true value of Skillware's statutory skills is enabling agents to operate locally, deterministically, and offline when external web access is blocked (e.g. internal bank networks, sovereign cloud, secure edge clusters). We should highlight this engineering intent proudly rather than hiding behind generic boilerplate.

Why "Not Scary, Informational" Tone Matters

Overly aggressive, block-caps corporate waivers ("DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES, USE ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK") frighten developers, crowd out host system prompts, and degrade LLM reasoning performance. The notice must be concise, professional, balanced, and informational.

Detailed Design

1. The Standardized Notice Format

To be added in catalog documentation (docs/skills/compliance/<skill_name>.md) directly above ## Enterprise disclaimer:

## Statutory knowledge notice

> [!NOTE]
> **Statutory Snapshot Cutoff:** [Documented publication or amendment date, e.g. 12 July 2024 (OJ L_202401689)]
>
> This skill provides deterministic, offline access to bundled statutory provisions to enable local compliance pre-flight checks, agent grounding, and automated evaluation in environments where live legal portal access is restricted or unavailable.
> 
> **Informational Reference Only:** This capability is designed for demonstration and decision-support purposes and does not constitute formal legal counsel. Statutory frameworks evolve over time through delegated legislation, regulatory technical standards (RTS), and regulatory enforcement; operators and developers should verify current statutory amendments and consult qualified legal professionals for binding determinations.

2. Multi-Layer Implementation Across the Skill Bundle Anatomy

The notice is not just a footer in markdown documentation—it integrates across the core Skillware skill roles:

3. Backfill & Rollout Scope

This standard will be applied to:

1. compliance/mica_module: Backfill catalog page, instructions.md, and manifest.yaml with the snapshot date (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, OJ L 150/40, 9 June 2023).
2. compliance/gdpr_module (#74): Include notice in the initial bundle design (Regulation (EU) 2016/679).
3. compliance/eu_ai_act_module: Include notice in the initial bundle design (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689).
4. Future regulatory skills: Any upcoming compliance skills (e.g., DORA, NIS2, Cyber Resilience Act).

Drawbacks

• Alternative 1: Keep only the generic enterprise disclaimer.
  Why rejected: Leaves legal risk unaddressed; doesn't inform the host model; doesn't explain the offline/edge value proposition.
• Alternative 2: Add a lengthy 3-paragraph legal waiver.
  Why rejected: Bloats context windows, reduces readability, creates an unnecessarily adversarial or scary tone for developers evaluating open-source skills.
• Proposed Approach: A clean, 2-paragraph informational GitHub alert callout ([!NOTE]) that is transparent, respectful, and operationally helpful.