AffirmATWork you can check

Transparency

What a label proves, and what it does not.

Every claim AffirmAT makes rests on something a machine checked. This page says what that is in each case, and what it leaves open.

What each label on a photograph proves

Four labels, strongest first. Each one says what was checked, and each one leaves something open — so each card carries the move it does not stop.

Verified on site

Rests onA capture that signs itself: the AffirmAT app with the device attesting that it is a real phone running a real build, or a camera that signs its own files. The signature has to hold, the shutter has to fall inside the job's window, and the fix has to land within 150 metres of the address the job is filed against.
The move it does not stopA signed photograph of the right place is still only a photograph of the right place. Somebody could stand at the address and photograph a wall they never touched, or the wrong flat in the right building.
What stands against itThe job reaches the public record on the client's confirmation, never on the photograph. This is the strongest label in the product and it is still evidence about a file, not a finding about the work.

Location matched

Rests onThe file carried its own location, the fix was good to 50 metres or better, it was within 150 metres of the anchor, and the time fell inside the window. Nothing was signed, so the file is taken at its word.
The move it does not stopA photograph of a screen, or of a printed photograph, taken at the right address carries the right location. So does a photograph of a neighbour's work next door.
What stands against itEvery photograph is fingerprinted, and two frames within 6 bits of each other are treated as the same picture, so the same image cannot be filed twice. Beyond that, nothing: the client's confirmation is what carries the job.

Time matched

Rests onA capture time that came from the photograph itself, falling inside the job's window with 12 hours of slack at each end. No usable location came with the file, which is the ordinary case when a photograph is shared from an iPhone.
The move it does not stopIt places the shutter in time and says nothing at all about place. The photograph could have been taken in another county.
What stands against itNothing, and the label is worded so that it claims nothing. It is the rung below location matched because place is the half that is missing.

Photo added

Rests onA file arrived. AffirmAT recorded when it arrived and nothing else about it.
The move it does not stopAnything. A photograph off the internet is accepted and labelled this.
What stands against itIt earns nothing. A photograph with this label carries no stamp, adds no weight to where a business appears in results, and never moves up to another label later.

The labels themselves, and what each one does not say, are set out as a ladder on what the words mean.

Why a file’s date is never a capture time

A time matched label rests on when the shutter fell, and the date on a file is not that. Pick a photograph from last summer out of the camera roll and the file’s own modification date is frequently today, because that is when the phone prepared it for sending. Three things can say when a photograph was taken, and a file date is not one of them.

The camera’s own timestampWritten into the bytes by the camera at the moment of capture, in the field photographers know as EXIF date taken. Read out of the file before anything is done to it.
A content credentialA signed statement inside the file saying when it was captured, checked against the signature. A file whose signature does not hold proves nothing and is treated as carrying no time.
The AffirmAT app’s own shutterThe app took the photograph itself and recorded the instant, so no file ever had to be believed about it.

A file date is still kept and may be shown as when a photograph arrived. It never labels anything. Where no time can be read at all, the photograph is labelled Photo added.

Who may confirm a job, and who may not

A confirmation is the only thing that puts a job on the public record, so the rules about who may give one are the rules the whole ledger rests on. They are applied in this order.

A confirmation with nobody behind it counts for nothing.If the tap cannot be attributed to a contact, there is no third party to point at, so the job stays on the unverified rung. The rule fails closed: the case with the least evidence is the case that is refused.
A contact the business or anyone on its team controls cannot confirm its work.Every phone number and email on the business, its owner and its crew is compared against the one that answered. The comparison ignores the case of the stored value, so the same phone cannot slip through on a difference of spelling.
One contact can confirm 3 jobs for one business, and 6 in all, in 12 months.Past that, the confirmation is held and looked at rather than counted. A landlord or an agent with properties of their own is counted per property instead, because somebody with ten houses confirms ten jobs honestly.
The link is good for 30 days, and a confirmation counts only inside 30 days of the job being marked done.A confirmation months after the fact is a memory rather than an account of a visit. The window is the same length as the link’s own life, so there is one number to remember.
A dispute that goes against the job takes the rung away.An upheld dispute, or an open claim that the job did not happen, drops the job off the public rungs whatever the client said at the time. A word once questioned is not restored quietly.
The move this does not stop: a business can ask a friendly customer about real work, done well, and be confirmed for it. That is not fraud, and this product does not try to catch it.What stands against it is the arithmetic rather than a rule. The share of done jobs that a client confirmed is published beside the job count on every ledger, every confirmation is tied to one contact, and the limits above cap what any one contact can carry. A ledger whose confirmations all came from the same few people is a ledger that reads as exactly that.

What is held about a job, and what is not

Each of these is kept for a reason a reader can check against the page it appears on. The second card is everything the records do not contain at all.

What is held

The photograph, twice.The file is fingerprinted exactly as it was uploaded, before anything is done to it, and the original is kept privately and never published. What a page serves is a copy no wider than 2000 pixels, stamped by the server rather than by the browser, with its metadata removed — so no coordinate travels with a published image. A job carries at most 20 photographs.
The area, not the address.A job is filed against an address so that distance can be measured, and what any public page shows is the routing key of the area. The address itself is on the record for the business and the client who already have it, and it is never printed on a public page or in a search result.
Phone numbers and emails, encrypted and looked up by fingerprint.Every contact is stored encrypted, and every lookup — who confirmed, who may not confirm, who already has a logbook — is done against a one-way fingerprint of the number rather than the number. A contact given for a one-off job is deleted 30 days after the job closes, unless the client keeps a logbook of their own.
A log of every change, which only ever grows.Each change of state writes a row in the same breath as the change itself: who, what, when. Rows are added and never altered, so a record that was edited would show as an edit. There is no screen anywhere in this product for changing a figure, and none for an administrator either.
Four ratings, as four numbers.Quality, tidiness, communication and price, each out of five, from the client who confirmed. Shown as an average pulled toward the middle by a prior worth 5 confirmations, so one five is not a five.

What is not held

No payment, no deposit, no escrow and no card details. Money never moves through this product.

No invoice, no total and no income. A price shows as a band when a business chooses to show one, and the band is as fine as it ever gets.

No location beyond the area, on any public page. A coordinate is used to measure a distance and is then the business’s own record.

No background location. A phone is only ever asked where it is while somebody is holding it with the app open.

No identity document kept once it has been checked, and no copy of one on any page.

What AffirmAT will never do

This list is settled rather than planned. Each one of these would make the record about attention instead of about work, and a tradesperson who thinks that is where it is going does not file the job.

A feed

A record is read when somebody needs it, not scrolled.

Likes, comments and follower counts

They measure attention. The only number here is work a client confirmed.

Chat or messaging

The product sends one link to a client and takes one answer back. It is not a place to be reached.

Paid rank, promoted listings and boosts

There is no bid, no plan and no fee anywhere in the arithmetic that orders results.

Lead auctions

Nobody buys the right to be shown a customer, and a customer is never sold.

Review gating

A business cannot choose which clients are asked, see an answer before it posts, or take one down.

Curated testimonials

Every rating on a page hangs off a confirmed job, and there is no path for a quote with nothing behind it.

Holding or moving money

No payment, no guarantee and no cut of a job. The record stops at the work.

Where this is weaker than you might assume

A product like this misleads people in the gap between what it checked and what a reader takes that to mean. These are the assumptions worth correcting before you rely on a page.

You might assumeA verified job means somebody checked the work.It means a camera was in the right place at the right time and the client said the job happened. Nobody from AffirmAT visits a job, before or after, and no label is a judgement of workmanship.
You might assumeA photograph proves the job it is filed against.AffirmAT can check when a file was made and sometimes where. It cannot see what is in the frame, and it does not try to. A photograph of the right place on the right day is as far as the machine gets.
You might assumeThe confirmed rating is a consensus.It is the average of however many clients have answered, which on a new ledger is one or two people. The figure beside it — the share of done jobs that were confirmed — is the one that says how much of the record has been answered for.
You might assumeVerified is the usual label on a confirmed job.It is not, on the web. Verified needs a capture that signs itself, which means the app on an attested phone or a camera that signs its own files, so most confirmed work sits on the client confirmed rung. That is the ladder working, not a rung missing.
You might assumeA register number on a page means the trade body stands behind the job.It means a number was matched against that register on a stated date. It says nothing about this job, and a registration can lapse between the match and the day you read the page.
You might assumeA low price rating means a business overcharges.It means clients rated the price low out of five. It is their view of value for money, it is not a finding, and a careful job on a hard site is sometimes the expensive one.
You might assumeA business with no record here has nothing to show.Most good tradespeople keep no record of any kind. An empty ledger is an empty ledger, and it is not evidence about anybody’s work.

Every word on a job card is defined, with its limit, on what the words mean.

The whole position

A label is evidence about a file. A confirmation is evidence about a person.

Neither is a judgement of the work, and AffirmAT never makes one. Every figure on every page is counted from the records by the same code, and there is no screen in this product for editing one.

If anything on this site claims more than this page allows, write and say so: hello@affirmat.com.

Go deeper

I do the workI’m hiring