diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index fe98fb8..b549d4a 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -3,7 +3,10 @@ name = "continuum-ai-worker"
 version = "0.1.0"
 edition = "2021"
 description = "Continuum AI worker - consumes camera frame batches from Redis Streams and runs print-failure detection"
-license = "UNLICENSED"
+# Proprietary: deliberately not an SPDX id, so cargo-deny treats it as
+# first-party. See docs/LICENSES.md in continuum-common.
+license = "LicenseRef-Proprietary"
+publish = false
 
 [[bin]]
 name = "continuum-ai-worker"
diff --git a/deny.toml b/deny.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5563b7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/deny.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+# Licence policy for a closed-source commercial product.
+# See docs/LICENSES.md in continuum-common for the rationale and the
+# non-cargo dependencies (external binaries, ML models) this file cannot see.
+#
+# Run: cargo deny check licenses
+
+[licenses]
+# Permissive only. Anything copyleft reaching a shipped binary would make
+# the product undistributable without releasing our source.
+allow = [
+    "MIT",
+    "Apache-2.0",
+    "Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception",
+    "BSD-2-Clause",
+    "BSD-3-Clause",
+    "ISC",
+    "Zlib",
+    "Unicode-3.0",
+    "Unlicense",
+    "MPL-2.0",
+    "CC0-1.0",
+    "BlueOak-1.0.0",
+]
+confidence-threshold = 0.9
+
+# Our own crates declare `LicenseRef-Proprietary`, which is deliberately not
+# an SPDX identifier and must never appear in the allow list above - a
+# third-party crate claiming it would be a real finding. They are recognised
+# as first-party by `publish = false` in their manifests.
+private = { ignore = true }
+
+[bans]
+deny = []
+
+[advisories]
+yanked = "deny"
+
+# NOT VISIBLE TO THIS FILE: the ONNX model weights loaded at runtime carry
+# their own licence, independent of the `ort` crate (MIT). Ultralytics YOLO
+# and Obico's print-failure models are AGPL-3.0 and cannot ship in a
+# commercial product. See docs/LICENSES.md.