VSTD

Portable, bounded, refutable evidence for computational claims.

A PASS is not enough. Show what passed, under which meaning, against which evidence, inside which bounds, and how somebody else can prove it wrong.

Run the demo · Read the quickstart · Inspect the standard · Challenge a claim · See the roadmap

See it fail correctly

git clone https://github.com/TimeLordRaps/verifier.git
cd verifier
python -m pip install .
vstd demo

The side-effect-free flagship demo runs four adversarial specimens. Abridged output:

VSTD flagship adversarial demo
4/4 scenarios behaved as required.
[DEMO OK] Valid-looking proof, wrong artifact          → REJECTED
[DEMO OK] Bound exhausted without a false answer       → ACCEPTED/UNKNOWN
[DEMO OK] Inflated verification-cost claim             → REJECTED
[DEMO OK] Revoked ancestor behind valid descendants    → GRAPH-LEVEL-0

These are bounded checks over included specimens—not evidence of empirical truth, complete provenance, external adoption, or general AI safety. Run vstd demo --json for the complete machine-readable results or vstd demo --emit-specimens PATH to emit each specimen.

What VSTD adds

Ordinary computational results often omit machine-readable answers to four questions:

1. What exactly was claimed? The subject, predicate, parameters, and limits.
2. Which exact evidence supports it? Digests, mechanisms, provenance, and trust roots.
3. Where does the verdict stop? Explicit coordinates and resource bounds.
4. How can it change? Reproduction, counterexample, challenge, and degradation rules.

VSTD stores those answers in receipts and provenance hypergraphs. The reference implementation can validate stable receipt content, reproduce declared mechanisms, check grounded decision certificates, and compute collection-level ceilings from recorded ancestry and caller-supplied object and edge ratings.

Two axes; evidence never substitutes

Specification numbers identify verification depth, not revisions. Every row is a different question with its own evidence. A higher-layer result does not supply, imply, upgrade, or repair a lower-layer result.

An aggregate depth of N is valid only when distinct evidence passes every layer from 1 through N. Layers 1–4 are self-discernable; layer 5 requires another party to exist, act, and be independent. VSTD-5 and its witness protocol remain DRAFT.

Start with standard/LADDER.md. Wire identifiers are frozen separately in standard/WIRE_IDENTIFIERS.md.

Choose a path

Capture a generic computation

Security boundary: a manifest contains an executable command. vstd run does not sandbox it. Inspect the plan first; run only a trusted manifest inside an operating system or container boundary appropriate to that command. Declared-path checks expose capture scope, not everything the subprocess can access.

vstd plan examples/generic_run/manifest.json --json
vstd run examples/generic_run/manifest.json --output /tmp/vstd-receipt
vstd inspect /tmp/vstd-receipt
vstd validate /tmp/vstd-receipt
vstd reproduce /tmp/vstd-receipt --rerun

validate checks stable receipt content. reproduce --rerun executes the recorded command again when permitted and compares the declared outputs. Neither operation widens the receipt into a claim about the unobserved world.

The grounded certificate

VSTD4-GDC-1 binds a decision to the claim and evidence it is supposed to describe:

DecisionCertificate
├── header       verdict, tightest cost tier, counts, binding digest
├── formula      normalized finite clauses
├── grounding    variables → facts; clauses → named encoding rules
├── decision     model, proof, witness, or bounded UNKNOWN transcript
└── hints        untrusted, optional, and strippable

The checker rejects over-budget headers before proof work, rejects cost-tier inflation, checks grounding before the decision block, and preserves UNKNOWN when a declared bound is exhausted. VSTD4-GDC-1 is a VSTD project format; reference-kernel acceptance is not external validation.

Install and command names

The distribution name is verifier-standard; the base install has no required third-party runtime dependencies.

python -m pip install "verifier-standard==1.1.3"  # after v1.1.3 is listed on PyPI
python -m pip install .
python -m pip install ".[yaml]"        # YAML manifests
python -m pip install ".[jsonschema]"  # schema validation
python -m pip install ".[llguidance]"  # optional constraint adapter
python -m pip install ".[torch]"       # optional tensor adapter

vstd is the canonical cross-platform command. verifier remains an alias, but an unqualified verifier command on Windows commonly resolves to Windows Driver Verifier. verifiable remains a permanent compatibility alias because published project receipts may bind it in falsification instructions.

An unrelated PyPI distribution named verifier exports the same top-level Python import. Do not co-install it with verifier-standard: Python packaging does not prevent two distributions from overwriting one import package. Install this project by its full distribution name and use vstd as the command.

Verify a release

Release assets include an external manifest binding the exact public source ref, commit, archive digest, file set, and member bytes. The release builder produces a platform-independent canonical source ZIP, wheel, and source distribution from that source coordinate. CI independently builds the full set on Windows and Linux and fails unless every artifact is byte-identical. GitHub/Sigstore artifact attestations bind the ZIP, wheel, source distribution, and manifest to the release workflow:

gh attestation verify PATH_TO_DOWNLOADED_ASSET --repo TimeLordRaps/verifier

Release notes report the tag-signature status separately. An artifact attestation is not a tag signature. The signed v1.1.2 GitHub release was not uploaded to PyPI because its Windows and Linux builds differed. PyPI publication now requires the cross-platform equality gate plus approval in the protected pypi environment. See RELEASING.md for the complete gate.

Project status

VSTD is a founder-maintained alpha project specification. There is no demonstrated external adoption, independent implementation, interoperability deployment, or third-party security review. It is not an accredited, consensus, IETF, ISO, or W3C standard. A VERIFIED result is always relative to declared coordinates, evidence, mechanisms, bounds, and trust roots.

Current public-review priorities are counterexamples to normative statements, ambiguous wire rules, independent parser results, interoperability failures, and receipts that pass when they should fail. Use the issue forms. Send sensitive findings through SECURITY.md, not a public issue.

VSTD may improve auditability, reproducibility, incident analysis, and challenge propagation over observable records. It cannot prove general AI safety, reveal hidden model internals, establish physical-world completeness, or compensate for missing instrumentation.

Project process

• Specification order: LADDER → layer documents → schemas → independent checker → conformance tests.
• Public technical direction: ROADMAP.md.
• Contribution rules: CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Automated-contributor rules: AGENTS.md.
• Governance and release authority: GOVERNANCE.md.
• Security and disclosure: SECURITY.md.
• Release construction and attestations: RELEASING.md.

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE. VSTD is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Apache Software Foundation.