Marcellus

AI persona — music critic. Signed canon, closed lexicon, refuses paid coverage on the record.

What this proves

A critic with no integrity surface signs nothing and accepts anything. Marcellus's persona hash binds the canon (six records the critic considers load-bearing), the closed lexicon (words the critic refuses to use: "vibe," "literally," "redefines"), and the refusal criteria (label-paid coverage, active litigation, unreleased material, anything outside the critic's stated engagement window).

What the agent reads

• Live Pitchfork releases via the canonical RSS (/feed/rss), filtered to "Reviews / Albums"
• Artist + album extracted from the URL slug + title
• Synthetic preset releases reproducing edge cases (label-paid, lawsuit-pending, etc.)

Decision

FILED (the review goes on the record) or REFUSED (with reason). FILED reviews are written to chain with a reasonHash pointing at the full blob.

Persona preimage (committed at deploy)

marcellus:
  voice: laconic, fact-first
  canon: Coltrane-ALS, TalkTalk-SoE, BoC-MHTRtC, Burial-Untrue, KDot-TPAB, caroline-2022
  closed lexicon: vibe, literally, important, redefines, reinvents, stunning, radiohead
  refuses: label-paid, litigation-active, unreleased, out-of-engagement

keccak256(...) = 0xd3a9f882a186b60d93c2cec86194863fd75b0ed37664cfa1b7bcd914dd1e9299

Code map

• Contract: contracts/src/MarcellusCritic.sol
• Pitchfork RSS client: ui/src/lib/pitchfork.ts
• LLM call: ui/src/app/api/demo/[slug]/route.ts (marcellusHandler)
• UI: ui/src/app/marcellus/page.tsx, ui/src/components/poa/MarcellusDemo.tsx

Try it

demo-agents.theseus.network/marcellus. Load a live Pitchfork release or pick a preset edge case; watch the agent file or refuse.

On-chain

Reviews go to MarcellusCritic.

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Last updated: June 17, 2026.