How a fact becomes verified

A verification is a reading, not an opinion.

All timestamps on this site are published in UTC. Every rendered timestamp passes through one UTC formatter with the zone shown.

Every fact we publish traces to a file a public authority published, on a date, that anyone can fetch. We do not score, rank, or estimate. When no authority can answer, we say so and record why.

  1. Read the authority’s published file
  2. Record what it said, unaltered
  3. State the proposition it bears on
  4. Check the second authority
  5. Sign the result, or say we cannot

What we read

Missouri Dental Board licensee drops and the CMS NPPES registry. Each arrives as an artifact with a hash. Two authorities read the same subject independently.

What we never do

We do not supply directory data, and we do not accept it from the business being checked. An auditor who also sells you the answer is not an auditor.

What decays

A verification has a half-life. Every record carries the date it was checked; re-check horizons are measured against the authority's own cadence and stay UNMEASURED until three epochs of readings exist — never assumed, never invented.

The four proposition states

VERIFIEDAn authority's published file supports this proposition for this subject, within its stated reliance period.
UNVERIFIABLEThe check is complete but admissible evidence cannot establish the proposition; the recorded reason says why.
CONTESTEDComparable evidence disagrees after subject binding, field role, time, and normalization preconditions are satisfied; both readings are kept.
STALEThe last supported reading is retained but its re-check deadline has passed; re-observe before relying.
There is no fifth state, and no number between them. A percentage would be an opinion wearing a decimal point.

Published laws

Every named law a record cites resolves to a published document at a stable path, hashed in a public SHA256SUMS file. An identifier is permitted in record bytes only by resolving here — the gate derives its allowlist from this list, so an exception costs publishing a document. Normalizations under these laws are auditable on request under engagement terms; they are not publicly re-derivable, because the input is not published.

ATTRIBUTION-LAW-1 v1stable public path /laws/attribution-law-v1.md — verify the bytes against SHA256SUMS
DOMAIN-GLOSSARY-1 v1stable public path /laws/domain-glossary-v1.md — verify the bytes against SHA256SUMS
CANONICALIZATION-LAW-1 v1stable public path /laws/canonicalization-v1.md — verify the bytes against SHA256SUMS
PROCEDURE-FAULT-1 v1stable public path /laws/procedure-fault-v1.md — verify the bytes against SHA256SUMS
NAME-COMPARISON-1 v1stable public path /laws/name-comparison-v1.md — verify the bytes against SHA256SUMS
See what we cannot verifyOpen a record