Six decisions that are not revisited.
They cost more than any piece of functionality, because the right to call something evidence rests entirely on them. Each one forbids something convenient.
Captured, never reconstructed
A record exists from the moment of capture or it does not exist. Nothing is backfilled from memory, assembled for a filing, or rebuilt from logs written later, even when that would be convenient for everyone involved.
Terms are pinned, not remembered
Every record carries the exact robots.txt and license state that was in force at that moment, by digest. Where the terms are silent, the reading is conservative rather than convenient.
Verification without us
The verifier is open, the format is published, the keys are the issuer's own. Trust that requires permission to verify is not trust.
No interference, no circumvention
The capture alters nothing about the traffic it observes, and protections are never defeated. A staged visit is not a record, and a closed target is a closed target.
Attributable
Every record names who captured it and under which key. Anonymity is incompatible with evidence, on every side of it.
Everyone's hands are tied, including ours
Nobody can backdate a record, including whoever runs the node, and including us. Chained digests and countersigned time make the past expensive to forge, starting with our own.
Capture-or-nothing forbids the convenient reconstructions: exhibits assembled after the dispute began. That is precisely why it is hard to copy: every incumbent in this traffic is a party to it, and a party will not tie its own hands.
Nine words.
If, after everything else, these read as obvious, the writing worked.
A signed record of a machine event: six field groups and one signature.
Recording at the moment it happens. The only time at which evidence can be made.
The profile that records machine traffic arriving at your content.
The profile that records what a model was asked and what it answered.
The claimed agent kept next to the network reality, side by side.
The robots.txt and license state as served at the moment of the visit, pinned by digest.
Each record commits to the digest of the one before it. An edit detaches the future.
The open tool that checks a record. Works without us, offline, for anyone.
What is sold: the tool and the format. The witness stays you. That is the point.