IP-Superstate: A Reference Architecture for Continuous AI-Native Provenance, Attribution and Licensing

AI development pipelines continuously produce artifacts with potential intellectual property significance: model architectures, training methodologies, agent workflows, evaluation frameworks, datasets, prompts, and research outputs. Current IP infrastructure was designed for discrete, human-initiated legal filings and is largely disconnected from AI development toolchains. This paper proposes IP-Superstate, a five-layer reference architecture — Genesis, Vault, Alchemy, Nexus, Overseer — that integrates into AI development workflows to provide continuous artifact detection, cryptographic provenance, structured defensive disclosure, valuation metadata, programmable licensing, and feedback-driven lifecycle improvement. The architecture defines four composable primitives (provenance, attribution, licensing, audit) that can be adopted independently. This paper is a research proposal, not a product announcement. It is not legal advice and does not substitute for formal IP counsel or patent prosecution.