Audit proof contract
The properties a result must satisfy before it can support a production finding or remediation claim.
Proof is narrower than confidence
A polished report is not evidence. The product must be able to identify what was acquired, which protocol ran, what it observed, how the finding followed, and what a later scan would need to observe to clear that finding. That trail is the deliverable: verification proof — whatever the outcome — a client or finance team can audit line by line.
The proof properties
- 01
Content-addressed evidence
Every authoritative bundle has a canonical SHA-256 identity. Artifact hashes declare whether they cover a full body or a bounded prefix.
- 02
Immutable persistence
A completed scan stores one evidence bundle per schema version. A conflicting retry is rejected instead of silently replacing audit history.
- 03
Typed execution state
Required work is recorded as SUCCEEDED, FAILED, ABSTAINED, or NOT APPLICABLE. Missing protocol evidence cannot silently become zero, false, stable, or pass.
- 04
Evidence-linked findings
A production finding must reference known protocol executions and observations. Experimental evidence cannot create a production blocker.
- 05
Finding-specific verification
A rescan compares the same target, compatible profile, protocol set, and the original remediation outcome. The result is VERIFIED, NOT VERIFIED, or INDETERMINATE.
- 06
Public-safe result projection
The customer surface exposes bounded diagnostics, remediation, limitations, and hashes without returning captured page bodies or secret-bearing headers.
What does not count as proof
- A unit test passing without the corresponding runtime and persistence path.
- A synthetic fixture standing in for representative real URLs.
- A marker, log line, or score that is not backed by a completed evidence record.
- Two similar totals without finding-specific protocol comparison.
- A successful browser render treated as proof of every crawler or provider path.
How to inspect one result
- 1Confirm the audit profile, protocol-set version, target URL, timestamp, and execution state.
- 2Check that every required protocol succeeded or that the verdict remains INCOMPLETE.
- 3Open each production finding and read its linked limitation and remediation.
- 4After a change, inspect the remediation verification—not an aggregate score delta.
- 5Use the bundle identifiers and hashes to distinguish the baseline from the candidate evidence.
The proof contract does not establish indexing, ranking, citation, model training, semantic understanding, or provider compliance. Those outcomes require different evidence.