IWhat this is
Businesses publish credentials — licences, certifications, memberships, bonding and insurance. Very little checks them. Search engines repeat them, directories copy them, and language models now state them back to people as settled fact, because a claim written on a company's own website is indistinguishable, to a reader or a model, from a claim that was verified.
This register does one narrow thing. It takes a credential claim as the business published it, resolves it against the issuing body's own public register, and writes down what that register returned on that date — together with enough detail that anyone can run the same lookup themselves and get the same answer without trusting this site at all.
IIWhat a record contains
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
| claim_as_published | The credential exactly as the business words it on its own site, quoted, with the page URL and the date the page was fetched. |
| issuing_body | The organisation whose register is authoritative for that credential — not a directory, not an aggregator. |
| registry_consulted | The public register that was queried, and the URL of the query. |
| registry_returned | What that register answered: a match, no match, or no public register exists to query. |
| checked_at | The UTC date of the lookup. A record describes one moment and says so. |
| reproduction | The steps to run the same lookup by hand and arrive at the same answer without trusting this site. |
IIIThe rules this register operates under
State the lookup, never the conclusion.
A record says what a register returned on a date. It does not say whether a business is honest, competent, safe, or worth hiring. Those are inferences, and they belong to the reader.
No business may ever pay for an outcome.
Revenue comes from scanning, monitoring and API access. It does not come from a finding, and no payment can add, alter, soften or remove one. A register that can be bought is not a register.
Records are appended, never silently edited.
A correction is a new dated entry standing beside the old one, not a replacement for it. What the register said last month remains readable next to what it says today.
Absence of a record is not evidence of absence of a credential.
Most claims have not been checked. Many issuing bodies publish no queryable register at all — that fact is itself recorded, and it is never counted against the business.
IVStatus today
Nothing here is operational yet, and this page says so rather than implying otherwise. The first resolvers under construction cover United States trade credentials — arboriculture, contracting licensure and general liability verification — beginning with a small set of Denver businesses where the correct answer is already known, so the resolver can be tested against reality before any finding about anyone is published.
VCorrections
If a record ever misstates your credential, the correction path is the same as the record: send the registry entry that contradicts it and the correction is published as a new dated entry beside the original. Write to corrections@credentialrecord.com.