Verify
Check a number.
A Tacit Tessera number goes in the box — the machine form, ten characters, like CH3001MN1Q, or the human form with its spaces. The check runs here, in this page.
The result appears here.
A check is something done to a seal.
Every edition of every entry is sealed when it is issued. A check takes the number you typed, finds the entry the register issued under it, and works the seal out again from the record as it stands. If the two agree, the copy in front of the register is the copy the register sealed.
Nothing is stored as a verdict. Every check is recomputed from the sealed Card, every time. There is no stored answer to go stale, no certificate to be reissued, and no result kept about anybody. A printed card cannot be recalled, so its authority is this page and never the plastic.
A check shows that this number, this edition and this seal are the ones the register issued, and that the copy checked is untouched. It is a statement about a record. It is not a statement about the skill set the record describes, and it is not a rank a skill set holds.
The check answers four things and nothing else
- Whether the check character is valid — whether the number was typed correctly. A nine-character number with no sector letter in front is an old-form number, and the page says so rather than calling it a typo. A well-formed number whose sector letter is X is a test number — reserved for building against the register — and the page says that it never issues and never resolves, rather than looking for it.
- Whether the register knows the number.
- Its status.
- Whether this edition is the current one.
Why those four, and why the set does not grow. Each of the four is a fact the register itself created and is therefore the right party to state. It issued the number, so it can say whether the number is one of its own. It sealed the edition, so it can say whether this edition is the current one. It publishes one status word, so it can state it. And the check character is arithmetic on the number, so it can be worked out by anyone.
Every question that gets asked next — is it any good, who owns it, has anyone else got it, is it safe to use here — is a question about the world rather than about the register's own act. The register has no facts of its own to answer those with, and an answer given anyway would be read as a finding. So the set stays at four. A fifth answer would not be a better service; it would be the register deciding something.
Every entry the check can find reads Specified.
Before a use, a licensee may ask whether its licence covers this number and this edition.
Before a use, a licensee may ask whether its licence covers this number and this edition. The register answers from the licence, not about the work. That answer is called cover, and it is the one answer that is not public: it is given to an authenticated licensee, about that licensee's own licence, and about nothing else.
What cover is. The register recorded a licence: which numbers, which editions, which kind, with a term, a field of use and a territory. Cover is the register reading that record back. It is a lookup in a document the licensee itself signed, and its whole content is this is what you recorded.
What cover is not. It is not permission to run, and it is not a finding that running would be right. A licence permits a use; it never requires one. The machine's own safety logic refuses whenever it refuses. The register makes no judgement about the task, the jurisdiction, the operator or the moment, and it issues no verdict of any kind. The register records; it does not decide.
Beside cover, an authenticated licensee is answered about the licence kind, the meter class, the context envelope, and whether the number is frozen under a challenge. It is refused everything else, on the same terms as anybody.
Every refusal, and the reason for it
A check does not say who holds a licence, what a skill set is worth, how it was tested, or anything about the person behind it. Each refusal has a reason, and they are not the same reason.
Who owns it. The register records what was asserted, who asserted it, on what date, and what evidence was produced with it. It records that it has not tested the assertion. It does not decide who owns anything, so it cannot answer a question about title.
Who the person is, beyond the licence name. A person's name on their own Card is their address. Anything further belongs to them and to Even Steven, and the register holds a company's name without publishing it.
Whether other copies exist. A check shows that the copy in front of the register is the one the register sealed. It says nothing about anywhere else, and nobody can honestly say that no copy exists somewhere.
Whether the skill is any good. Registration records provenance. It does not establish that a skill set is safe, accurate or fit for any particular purpose. A check is done to a seal, not to the work.
Any figure, and any evaluation result. No count, rate, share or price is in an answer, and no result of any test. An evaluation's result belongs to the licensee that ran it, about its own machine.
The register whole. It is not a corpus API. There is no list, browse, bulk or export endpoint. A check answers about a number somebody already has. A search over the public side of the Book and an enumeration of the register are two different things, and only the first exists — it is on the Exchange.
A served passage names where it came from
Every served passage and every work product names the number and edition it came from. That naming is the provenance receipt, and it is what makes a number checkable here long after the serve — it is the thing that puts a number in somebody's hand in the first place. It says what a passage came from; it does not say that the passage is right. It is set out on For AI, along with the evidence package, which is what was filed with an assertion at the intake, held licensee-side and produced on a dispute.