Marklight
Prove what your AI made
Problem
An agency ships thousands of AI-assisted images, clips, and voiceovers a month for clients who are about to be legally required to declare exactly that. Nobody can currently answer the simple question of which asset was machine-made, by what, and when, because the answer was never written down at the one moment it was true.
Why now
The EU AI Act's transparency obligations for artificially generated content, including marking it as such, apply from 2 December 2026. That is a fixed date on a calendar, not a trend, and it turns a nice-to-have into a line item with a deadline behind it.
Solution
A drop box that stamps provenance at the moment of creation. Assets go in, come out with durable content credentials embedded and a signed record kept alongside, and the client gets a shareable manifest that says what was generated, with which tool, on which date. When the auditor asks, the answer is a link.
Who it is for
A small creative studio shipping thousands of AI-assisted assets a month for clients inside the EU, with the obligation landing on them and no compliance department to hand it to. The person who feels this is usually the founder or the producer, not a lawyer, and they discover the problem the first time a client asks which assets were machine-made and the honest answer is that nobody wrote it down. They are not looking for a policy. They are looking for the record they should have been keeping since the first job.
What you could earn from Marklight
Say you build Marklight and charge your own customers $49 a month, the price the score suggests. The numbers below are the revenue that would come from them. This is money you earn, never a fee you pay UpgradIQ, and we never take a cut. It is arithmetic off the price, not a promise the customers arrive on their own.
See what Marklight produces
Drop your assets in and Marklight stamps provenance at the moment of creation. Each one comes out with a durable content credential embedded and a signed record kept alongside. This is the manifest a studio hands the client, and the auditor, when the AI Act asks what was machine-made.
Your build kit for Marklight
Start the build and the kit opens two steps in, then drip-feeds the rest one phase at a time. Every phase is a copy-paste prompt for your agent with its own verification before the next unlocks, so Marklight moves from an empty folder to a running MVP without you ever holding the whole plan in your head.
Progress saves across every device, and the workspace always reopens on the exact step you left, so a build that runs over several weeks survives them instead of dying in a browser tab you eventually close.
How you actually build it
Connect your coding agent once. It pulls the current phase straight from your kit over MCP: the exact prompt, the outcome to aim for, and the check to run before it moves on. You review and ship, it does the typing.
No copy-paste juggling, no thread to lose. The kit stays the single source of truth, and your agent works through it one phase at a time, verifying its own work at each step before the next phase is unlocked.
Take the context file, free
This is the AGENTS.md that keeps your coding agent on scope for the entire build: what Marklight is, who it is for, the stack, the non-goals, and the rules it must follow. Copy it into your project now, no account needed, and your agent is briefed before you write a line.
# Marklight Prove what your AI made ## What this is A drop box that stamps provenance at the moment of creation. Assets go in, come out with durable content credentials embedded and a signed record kept alongside, and the client gets a shareable manifest that says what was generated, with which tool, on which date. When the auditor asks, the answer is a link. ## The problem it solves An agency ships thousands of AI-assisted images, clips, and voiceovers a month for clients who are about to be legally required to declare exactly that. Nobody can currently answer the simple question of which asset was machine-made, by what, and when, because the answer was never written down at the one moment it was true. ## Who it is for A small creative studio shipping thousands of AI-assisted assets a month for clients inside the EU, with the obligation landing on them and no compliance department to hand it to. The person who feels this is usually the founder or the producer, not a lawyer, and they discover the problem the first time a client asks which assets were machine-made and the honest answer is that nobody wrote it down. They are not looking for a policy. They are looking for the record they should have been keeping since the first job. ## Stack Next.js + Postgres ## Non-goals Do not build features outside the core job above. This product exists to do one thing well. Every extra feature is a reason it does not ship. ## Rules for the agent - Build one phase at a time. Do not run ahead into later phases. - Validate input at every boundary where data enters. - Never put a permission or plan check in client code. - Ask before adding a dependency that a few lines would cover. - If something is ambiguous, say so rather than inventing a requirement. --- Context file from UpgradIQ · idea marklight · prompts kit-v4
Then start free to get the ten-phase kit and run the first prompt.
The path to a running MVP
Foundation
Scaffold the stack, then wire the data model and sign-in. It is the skeleton Marklight stands on, and it goes up in an evening rather than a lost week of config.
The product
Build the core feature end to end, then wire how it charges. This is where Marklight finally turns into something that a stranger will actually pay you for.
Ship it
Test and harden, deploy it live, then open the launch-day toolkit that lands the first ten users who prove it.
Is Marklight for you?
- You want revenue reasonably soon, not a science project
- You can give it evenings and a couple of weekends
- You can reach Agencies and studios shipping AI-made media
- You are not ready to talk to a first real customer
- You want it fully passive, with zero maintenance
- You expect it to find its own customers without you
The 3 sections that decide whether you should actually build it, plus the full kit, are one click away.
3 more sections decide whether you build Marklight
You have the case and the plan. Pro opens how it makes money, the one risk that kills it, and the build notes, plus the 10-phase kit that takes Marklight to a running MVP, on this idea and all 200.
How it makes money
Main risk
Build notes
What is free here, and what Pro unlocks
Frequently asked
Is Marklight actually validated?
It scored UIQ 86 with a GO verdict, weighed across eight sub-scores on the same rubric as every idea. GO means 75 and above, so demand and buildability were judged, not guessed.
What stack does it use?
Marklight is built on Next.js + Postgres, chosen because a coding agent can carry most of it. You are not fighting infrastructure, you are shipping the feature that matters.
How long to a running MVP?
The kit is ten phases, drip-fed one at a time so you always know the single next step. An evening and a weekend for the lighter builds, a few focused weeks for the deeper ones.
What does the $49 a month mean?
It is the price the model suggests Marklight could charge its own customers, not a fee to us. It is here so the money question is answered before you build, not after.
Which agent do I need?
Any capable coding agent: Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, or Bolt. Every phase is a copy-paste prompt with its own check, so the agent does the typing and you keep the judgement.
What is free versus Pro?
The whole case above is free: the problem, timing, solution, buyer, and the full score. Pro adds how it makes money, the one risk that could kill it, and the full kit that carries Marklight from an empty folder to a running MVP.
More like Marklight
All 14 AI governance ideasBuild Marklight, not just read about it
You have the problem, the timing, the solution and the buyer. A plan opens how it makes money, the risk that kills it, and the kit that takes it to a running MVP.
Start building Marklight