For readers · independent reviewer panel
Standards confirmation · Private identities · Aggregate panel counts

What a steward does.

General reviews pay $2 and Specialist reviews pay $8. Payment is for completed review work, never for the verdict.

General reviews pay $2 and Specialist reviews pay $8. Payment is for completed review work, never for the verdict.

A Steward provides independent evidence review, follows the published standards, confirms conflicts, and records a decision in the audit history. General Stewards approve or reject; Specialists provide subject-matter expertise and may request revisions when the Specialist route applies. This page explains the role, recusal, compensation, and permanent audit history.

Become a StewardOpen /governance

What a steward does

Read evidence independently. Recuse on a conflict. Leave a recorded verdict.

Independent Stewards read the evidence on a claim on its own signal — the skill statement, the artifacts, any expert affidavit, and any prior reviewer notes from a revision round. The review is asynchronous; the panel's notes are appended to the audit log; the panel's consensus decision is what becomes public.

No claim belongs to the steward. The claim stays with the claimant; the artifacts stay under the platform's holding; the verdict is recorded under the panel, not under a single reviewer's name. The steward's job is to weigh, not to own.

The steward's independence comes from a single rule: the panel does not work for the claimant, the employer, or any downstream verifier. That rule is operationalised by recusal — at intake, on the panel, and after the verdict — and the recusal is itself an entry in the audit log.

The two tracks the panel evaluates

Trades and Oddities. The same audit bar, two different evidence shapes.

A claim is named for the gate it cleared — Trades (PoT-) or Oddities (PoO-). The panel reads both: the same audit standard, different artifacts under it. See /how-it-works#tracks for the full track-by-track walk-through.

Trades — PoT-

Structured, conventional evidence. Work orders, employer statements, recorded test runs, certifications from independent schools, expert affidavits. The panel reads named-document artifacts against a structured skill statement.

What the panel reads on this track

Recorded test coupons, employer letters on letterhead, an expert affidavit from a credentialed practitioner. The panel reads the artifacts on their own signal — there is no Trade-specific checklist that pre-decides what weight any single artifact carries.

Oddities — PoO-

Signal-led evidence. Uncut footage with timestamps, field recordings, spectrograms, process shots that exhibit the capability on their own. The panel reads practice with no fixed curriculum against the same audit bar.

What the panel reads on this track

An unedited video with timestamps, an expert affidavit describing the capability in plain terms, recorded test-rig runs of the relevant drill. The panel reads the artifacts on their own signal — the Oddities gate keeps the same commitment to the same audit bar.

What the steward panel reads

What the panel weighs on a claim.

The panel reads a packet — the claim, the artifacts, the conflict declarations, and any prior notes from a revision round. The public surface shows a curated subset; the reviewer-only surface shows the entire packet. Below is what the panel reads when a claim arrives in the queue.

Skill statement

The named capability the panel is being asked to weigh.

One sentence, at least twenty characters, naming the capability and what it does. The panel reads the skill statement to anchor every artifact that follows.

Artifact list

The full list of evidence under the claim.

Every file in the packet. Images, video, work orders, employer statements, recorded test runs, expert affidavits. The panel reads the artifacts on their own signal — there is no per-track rubric that prejudges what weight an artifact carries.

Affidavit (when present)

Sworn statements from a credentialed practitioner or domain expert.

When a claimant attaches an affidavit, the panel reads it as one signal in the packet — not as a substitute for the artifacts. Affidavits do not override the panel's own reading.

Conflict declaration

The signed conflict-of-interest statement from each panelist.

Every panelist declares conflicts at intake — financial, professional, or personal ties to the claimant, the employer, or any downstream verifier. The signed declaration is part of the audit record; conflicts trigger recusal before review begins.

Prior reviewer notes

General Stewards approve or reject; Specialists may request revisions when the Specialist route is used. Every decision is recorded in the audit history.

General Stewards approve or reject; Specialists may request revisions when the Specialist route is used. Every decision is recorded in the audit history.

Verdict field

The single outcome the panel is recording on this claim.

The independent panel reaches a consensus/verdict for each claim and records the verdict, date, and reason in one audit record. The panel does not publish its internal deliberation; the panel's recorded outcome becomes public.

Decision categories

Four outcomes the panel can record.

Every claim ends in one of four verdicts. The verdict is what becomes public on the credential's record; every verdict is recorded with date and reason. Unsuccessful claims do not produce a credential — only an approval leads to minting. /how-it-works#step-03 walks through the four outcomes from the platform side.

General Stewards approve or reject; Specialists may request revisions when the Specialist route is used. Every decision is recorded in the audit history.

Specialist revision requests

General Stewards approve or reject; Specialists may request revisions when the Specialist route is used. Every decision is recorded in the audit history.

APPROVE

mint a Degree of Proof.

The claim becomes a numbered, time-stamped credential minted into the public ledger. The verdict line on the credential reads APPROVED; the audit log records the panel's composition, the date, and the basis leaned on.

DECLINE

audit-log only. No Degree minted.

The panel records the decline with date and reason. No Degree is minted — unsuccessful claims do not receive a credential; the audit log retains the decision so the same claim cannot be silently filed again. The credential never enters the public ledger; the trail is the durable record.

RECUSE

step off the panel for this claim.

A direct conflict surfaces mid-review. The recusal is recorded in the audit trail against this claim; the panelist is replaced on the panel; no verdict is recorded under the recused panelist's name. Recusal is the operational guard at every panel stage.

The audit trail

What is recorded — and what every revocation must say.

Every state change is recorded with date and reason — panel convened, revisions requested, approved, declined, minted, contested, revoked. The trail is what makes the credential independently verifiable and tamper-evident on the public ledger while protected evidence stays private. Reviewer notes are part of the trail; the panel's verdict is what becomes public.

The audit log is the durable record. A reviewer note can be paraphrased in the public record; the underlying note stays under platform holding for any subsequent challenge. Once a Degree is on the ledger, any party with standing may contest it — and the trail is what the contest panel reads first. The platform's role in the audit is described in detail on /governance.

Revocation — a mandatory reason on every event

A revocation event requires a recorded reason.

Every revocation writes the change, the date, and the reason into the audit log — as a required field, not a courtesy. The reason is what a contest panel reads if the revocation is later challenged. A revocation without a reason is a revocation that did not happen.

The four-step lifecycle

Stewarding happens at step 03.

The steward's job sits inside the canonical four-step model — claim → review → mint → public-portable — published on /how-it-works. Step 03 is the independent panel review: the panel reaches and records a consensus/verdict, which feeds step 04, where the credential is minted into the public ledger as a numbered, time-stamped record.

Step 03 · Independent steward review

Read /how-it-works

What stewarding is NOT

Three lines to mark the boundary.

Stewarding is described here as it stands on the operating record — not as it might be remade. Three lines mark the boundary, and they are the same lines the governance record keeps open:

  1. Not legal expertise

    Stewarding is not legal expertise.

    The panel reads evidence against the same audit bar; it does not offer legal advice, it does not stand as counsel, and it does not certify legal standing. The credential's verdict is an audit-recorded call, not a legal opinion.

  2. Not a paid full-time role

    Stewarding is not a paid full-time role.

    Stewarding is per-claim and on a cadence the governance record calls out — not a salaried position, not a continuous assignment, and not a guaranteed volume of claims. The compensation cadence is in /governance; the term length and panel-composition rules are defined there as well.

  3. Private identities, aggregate panel record

    Steward identities stay private.

    Individual reviewer identities stay private. Public verification shows aggregate panel metadata, such as the panel count and recorded recusal events, not a named list.

How Steward access is gated

Genesis eligibility is clear. The review standards stay consistent.

The normal rule is an issued Degree of Proof. The narrow exception is an approved Founding Steward whose application carries the Genesis Cohort exemption: after onboarding, published standards and agreements, and conflict confirmation, that Steward can become Ready to review without a Degree. The exemption remains for already-approved Genesis Stewards after enrollment closes; once 100 approved Genesis Stewards are reached, later applicants do not receive it. General Stewards provide independent evidence review, while Specialists still require matching subject-matter qualification.

  1. 01

    Subject-matter standing

    The Specialist route uses matching subject-matter expertise when available; General Stewards review evidence independently on the General route.

  2. 02

    Independence from the parties

    No current tie to the claimant, the employer, or any downstream verifier. The panel is independent; intake filters conflicts of interest at the panel level.

  3. 03

    Conflicts declared at intake

    Every panelist signs a conflict declaration for every claim. A conflict rotates that panelist off the panel; the recusal is logged alongside the panel for the claim.

  4. 04

    Async review within the working norm

    The panel convenes asynchronously — claims present over days, not on a single synchronous call. A panelist returns notes within the panel's working norm without taking the panel offline.

  5. 05

    Audit-record integrity

    Every panelist signs a single audit record per claim — the verdict, the date, and the reason. The panel does not record an internal deliberation; only the panel's outcome becomes public.

Signals the panel recuses on

What recuses a panelist on a claim.

These are the signals that pull a panelist off the panel for a specific claim — they are recusal signals, not application criteria, and not a list of who's currently on the panel. They are listed here so the signals stay in plain English rather than living only inside the governance record.

  • 01 · off-route

    Current standing inside the claimant's organisation — staff, contractor, or commissioned agent.

  • 02 · off-route

    A downstream verifier relationship — recruiter, school, or board that would later read the credential.

  • 03 · off-route

    Representing either side as counsel in any matching contest — current or within the last twelve months.

Read the operational rules

Independence, recusal, compensation — in plain English.

The governance record is the document the panel works against — reviewer qualifications, panel composition, recusal, compensation cadence, decision thresholds, contest standing, evidentiary bars, and the public-versus-private surface split. The compensation cadence, term length, and panel-composition rules are still being settled; the running record is at /governance.

Open /governance

Direct line

Ask about the steward role.

There is a formal intake. The normal Steward Path requires an issued Degree of Proof; an approved Genesis Founding Steward with the persisted exemption can satisfy that Degree gate without a Degree after completing onboarding, the published standards and agreements, and conflict confirmation. The exemption persists after enrollment closes; later applicants follow the normal rule.

Write to the Proofworks contact inboxThe Proofworks contact inbox

Steward onboarding

Earn a Degree or join Genesis, then confirm.

General reviews pay $2 and Specialist reviews pay $8. Payment is for completed review work, never for the verdict.

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