Guides
How to file well
01
Write a claim somebody could go and check
Title and statement do different jobs. Both are required.
The title is the label in the ledger — what this is, in a breath. The statement is the claim proper, and it should contain the specifics: where, when, how much, how many, and for how long.
Not a claim
“I help people.”
Nothing here can be true or false, so nothing here can be checked, corroborated or disputed. It will sit at self-asserted forever, and deservedly.
A claim
03 — Volunteered at the food bank
I volunteered at the Brighton Community Food Bank for approximately six months, helping with sorting and distribution, roughly one evening a week between March and September 2025.
Named, dated, bounded. Somebody could ring the food bank. That is the test.
Where you are unsure of a detail, say so in the claim rather than rounding it in your favour. “Approximately” and “I think” are allowed and cost you nothing. An amendment later costs you a visible amendment.
02
Categories
Nine, fixed. They make the corpus searchable and give a reader shape at a glance.
- communityCommunity
- workWork
- familyFamily
- friendshipFriendship
- responsibilityResponsibility
- honestyHonesty
- environmentEnvironment
- personal-growthPersonal growth
- otherOther
03
What the six statuses mean
You do not choose these. They are derived from what is attached to the claim.
- self-asserted
- The filer says it happened. Nothing else is attached.
- attested
- Another filed person confirms it, under their own name and on their own record.
- documented
- Supporting documentation exists and was sighted against the claim by someone other than the filer. Attaching your own document does not reach this state.
- independently verified
- An organisation or public record outside this office confirms it.
- disputed
- A filed person has signed a challenge to this claim. Both statements are preserved.
- withdrawn
- The filer has withdrawn this assertion. The text remains on the record.
The first four are a ladder of corroboration, not of virtue. The last two sit outside it: a disputed claim is not worse than a self-asserted one, and a withdrawn claim is a filer being honest twice.
04
How evidence is classified
Descriptive, never scored. 'Unsubstantiated' is a perfectly ordinary place for a true thing to live.
- [primary]
- Original document, organisation record, or firsthand record.
- [secondary]
- Someone else's account of it.
- [public]
- A publicly accessible external source.
- [unsubstantiated]
- No supporting evidence is attached to this claim.
05
Answering the disclosure prompts
Four questions, because 'write something bad about yourself' produces either nothing or a humblebrag.
- Mistake
- Something I got wrong, and what I learned from it.
- A specific thing you did, not a category of thing you sometimes do.
- Conflict
- A disagreement or difficult situation I handled badly.
- The half that was yours. The other person's half is not yours to file.
- Limitation
- Something I cannot honestly claim to be good at.
- Useful to a reader deciding what to rely on you for. Not a weakness-as-strength.
- Ongoing
- Something I am still working on.
- Unresolved is allowed. Most things are.
Disclosures are never counted against you — there is no arithmetic anywhere in this system, so admitting something serious cannot make you score worse than someone who admitted nothing. The reverse is closer to true: the disclosures are the section that makes the claims above them credible.
06
Writing a pre-commitment worth signing
A pledge you cannot fail is not a pledge.
A good pre-commitment names a specific future action or abstention, and it should be possible for a reader to tell whether you broke it. “I will try to be kinder” is unfalsifiable. “I will answer the criminal-record question honestly on every application from here, and lose the jobs I lose” is not.
Each pledge is hashed at signing with SHA-256 over ${pledgeText}|${dateSigned}, so the wording cannot be quietly softened later. Outcomes can be recorded afterwards — kept, broken, or lapsed — and a broken pledge stays on the record beside the reason.