Verification levels

Manafide never reduces a person’s qualifications to “verified” or “not verified”. Every claim carries one of six levels, and every level states its own limits.

  1. Incomplete, proof level 0 of 5.Still the record holder's own assertion

    A draft. There is not enough information here yet to assess this claim.

    What this does not mean: This does not mean the claim is false. It means nobody has assessed it.

  2. Self-reported, proof level 1 of 5.Still the record holder's own assertion

    The record holder entered this themselves. Nothing here has been independently checked.

    What this does not mean: This is not evidence, and it is not a verification of any kind.

  3. Document-backed, proof level 2 of 5.Still the record holder's own assertion

    A document, card, certificate, transcript, order, or letter has been attached and accepted as supporting this claim.

    What this does not mean: The issuer has NOT confirmed this. A document being present does not mean it is genuine, current, or unaltered.

  4. Attested, proof level 3 of 5.Confirmed by someone other than the record holder

    An identified, authorized person - a supervisor, instructor, preceptor, evaluator, or commanding officer - confirmed they observed this.

    What this does not mean: This is not a licensing board check. An employer or instructor confirming what they saw is not the same as the issuing authority confirming the credential.

  5. Primary-source verified, proof level 4 of 5.Confirmed by someone other than the record holder

    Confirmed with the official issuer, board, registry, school, agency, or employer of record.

    What this does not mean: This describes the credential as the source held it on the verification date. It is not a statement about the person's current fitness for any specific duty.

  6. Digitally issued, proof level 5 of 5.Confirmed by someone other than the record holder

    Issued as a signed digital credential. The issuer, the integrity of the record, its expiration, and its revocation status can each be checked.

    What this does not mean: Cryptography proves this record came from the identified signer unaltered. It does NOT prove the quality of the original assessment.

No record in Manafide can reach level 5 yet, because signed digital credentials are not supported yet.

Integrity is not the same as quality

A cryptographic signature proves that a record came from the signer named on it and was not altered afterwards. It proves nothing about whether the original assessment was rigorous, whether the instructor was competent, or whether the person can do the job today.

We keep those two ideas separate everywhere in this product, because collapsing them is how a credential system starts lying.

When we cannot confirm something

Some official sources have no lawful way to check a record automatically. Some are temporarily unreachable. In those cases Manafide says “source unavailable” or “not confirmed”.

That is deliberately different from “could not confirm”, which means we checked and the source did not confirm it. Treating an outage as a disqualification would harm the worker for our problem, so we keep the two apart.