TikTok API posting: your app must not add a watermark or promo text

TikTok's Content Sharing Guidelines say that apps and integrations should not superimpose or otherwise include any brand name, logo, watermark, other promotional branding, link or promotional text on content posted through the API. So a tool that stamps its own mark on every export is outside the stated rule, even if the video is the creator's.

What the rule covers

The wording is aimed at the application that posts, not at the creator's own choices in the clip. The page, as fetched, does not discuss a creator who deliberately puts their own logo in the footage, so treat that case as unconfirmed and ask TikTok's developer support or check the full page before relying on it.

Where AI video tools can trip

If your pipeline adds an end card with your product's name, a corner watermark, or a link overlay to every export, check it against that sentence before you connect it to the API. Two separate things are easy to confuse here.

• A brand mark added by your tool: the guideline says not to.
• An AI disclosure the creator chooses to add as a caption or sticker: TikTok's own ad policy lists a clear disclaimer, caption, watermark or sticker as an option (read 2026-10-02 on its Ads Help page), and that is a creator decision. See the disclosure options post.

A pre-upload check

Add one step to your pipeline: before upload, pull the first frame, a middle frame and the last frame of each export and look for anything your tool added. If you find a mark you did not intend, remove it at the source rather than cropping. Keep a record of what the pipeline adds by default so a change in a tool's settings does not slip in unnoticed.

What Sume does and does not add

I checked Sume's docs for video captions and Timeline 1.0. Captions burn the words you supply or the speech it transcribes, with style options, and Timeline assembles the clips you give it. Neither doc describes adding a Sume logo or watermark. Sume also does not post to TikTok, so the API-side rule applies to whatever tool you use to publish.

Check your own exports before upload: pull a still from a finished file and look at the corners and the last second.