Commitment before assessment
Criteria, weights and pass thresholds are published and hash-committed before any subject is assessed. Nothing moves once the data arrives.
Assurance model
Two kinds of claim, never mixed
Most of this market sells one blurred assurance. We separate the two claims that can honestly be made, and we are explicit that only one of them admits proof.
Claim tiers
| Axis | What is claimed | How | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process integrity | This evaluation was conducted in accordance with its own pre-registration, and its record is unaltered | Machine-checked, on every evaluation | Proved |
| Subject performance | The system measured at a stated value, within a stated interval, under a stated configuration | Pre-registered statistics, or pre-registered scoring | Bounded Registered Never proved |
Set out in full on the method page. No evaluation we run will assert that a system is proved safe, proved correct, certified or compliant. That restraint is not modesty. It is the only position that survives a technical assessor reading the method closely, and it is what makes the first claim worth anything.
Construction
Cryptographic, and deliberately not a blockchain
Every record is hash-linked, signed and timestamped by an authority we do not control, and the chain roots are published to independent locations so that we cannot quietly rewrite our own history. That is a hash chain in a database with independent republication: the boring, auditable construction. A distributed ledger would add nothing to the guarantee and a great deal to the doubt, so our specification prohibits one.
Mechanisms
What that changes
01
02
Held-back inputs
Subjects receive the requirement specification. They do not receive the scoring inputs in advance, and they are barred from retaining them.
03
Rerunnable by anyone
The scoring harness is published. A third party can obtain it, rerun the evaluation and check every hash without contacting us.
04
A record that resists rewriting
Append-only, hash-chained, independently timestamped, with roots republished where we do not control them.
05
A route to contest
Every participant may obtain the harness and rerun its own submission. A challenge is a defined record with a deadline and an outcome, and it enters the ledger whichever way it is decided.
06
Deviations on the record
Evaluations depart from plan. When ours do, the departure is recorded and published, including where the results themselves stay confidential.
Audience
Who this is for
Certification and notified bodies that need a defensible technical method for conformity assessment and have no intention of building one. Corporate procurement functions whose supplier selections have to survive challenge from the vendors that lost. Anyone whose signature ends up on a decision they cannot currently show the working for.
Antefacts is not an accredited certification body and is not a notified body. We do not issue certificates and we hold no accreditation. We produce the technical evidence an accredited body’s assessment can rest on, and we say so on every page and in every evidence package we produce.
Release
What we publish, and when
The protocol specification, the scoring harness and the machine-checked development are given away. They are released as one bundle together with the first conforming evaluation, because a specification published alone is a document, and the four published together are a demonstration.
Already here: how the method works, what it does not buy, and the rules we hold ourselves to.
Etymology
The name
From the Latin ante factum, before the fact. An antefact is a thing fixed before the event it governs: the criteria, the weights and the thresholds, sealed before any data exists. That is the whole method in one word.