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Earned Trust Beta Trial · Draft 20 · 12 September 2026 · This is the version you are agreeing to.
The duty map. One page. Signed with your consent form, and published with the design deposit (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22547805) and linked from the study’s page. If it isn’t in the left column, we don’t do it. The words this page uses — your code, your window, DOI, deposit, the Reader, locked box, seal manifest, fingerprint, the ledger — are defined in the short list of words at the top of the consent form. (Draft 20, 2026-09-12. The changelog is at the foot of the page.)
Two sentences first: emails during the trial will not receive a response. If you do not complete the trial within your window, you will be logged as incomplete.
| The study’s complete undertaking to you | What that specifically does not include |
|---|---|
| 1. Enrollment and consent. You apply with one form from the study page — no code is needed to apply. We check the screened-out list first (a name on it is turned away only when the reason was about the person, not the project or the phase), screen your application against the published rubric, and send the enrollment confirmation or the screened-out note. The confirmation carries your code (it looks like ET-0906-03) and states your window as a number of days and a closing date; every form after that — intake, the exit form, Name and DOI correction, withdraw — asks for your code first. The check has two parts: the code must match one the study issued, and the form must come from the email address the code was sent to. A form that fails either is not filed, and answered with the notice: “NOTICE: your ETR code was not accepted. Please check your code and try again. The form must also come from the email address your code was sent to.” We record your intake answers. If you take part, your name and — when you make a deposit — your work’s DOI will be published in the report; when there is a deposit, the DOI is required and public. That is what makes the trial checkable by anyone. Enrollment stays open until the principal investigator (PI) closes it. The PI does not close it before six people are enrolled, except by an announced early close — its date, the count, and the reason go on the beta page. Enrollment closes no later than twelve months from the first enrollment (from opening day, if nobody has enrolled by then). There is no fixed cap. The decision to close may not use any exit answer, DOI check, result, wall, or interim finding; no interim result is published before enrollment closes; the date, the count, and the reason are recorded before any analysis. If demand outruns the phase, the answer is a second phase. The phase ends when the last tester’s window closes. | Any promise that you will be accepted, that your project is suitable, or that participating will benefit you. We do not assess whether your project is wise, safe, or good for you. That judgment is yours. There are no alternates and no waiting list. |
| 2. Withdrawal. At any time before publication, on your say-so, with no reason and no consequence, we remove what we hold. You file by clicking the published withdraw link — the message opens already written, and the only action left is Send. It is an administrative action, not a conversation: one checkbox, nothing asked; a filed withdrawal is confirmed by one scripted note. Withdrawn is only your own act. Four end states, each its own published count: completed — your exit form says “I completed the trial”; stopped — your exit form says “I’m stopping here — count what I filed,” and your name and answers stay in; incomplete — your window closed with no exit form, counted, never named; withdrawn — the Withdraw form, your own act, and your data comes out. If your window closes with no exit in, you are logged as incomplete — no choice recorded — and that is its own count, published separately from withdrawn. | We cannot un-publish your own deposit, cannot remove your record from the internet, and cannot undo a decision you made on your own account. Withdrawal removes what we hold — except three signed pages we keep: your consent form, the Terms, and this duty map, so we can show that you consented and then withdrew. That protects you as much as it protects us. One more thing it cannot pull back: an exit form you already sent is already the study’s raw data and still prints. A withdrawal filed after your exit cancels every letter not yet sent and keeps your filed exit line, which still prints. That is why we tell you before you send. |
| 3. The closed list of administrative messages to enrolled testers. Ten: enrollment confirmation; the intake message; the getting-started email, sent once your intake’s code and address check out; the one scripted reminder, two weeks before your window closes; only after your exit is in, the one courtesy message (the confirmation of your exit — one opening if you completed the trial, another if you stopped — and the two published parting prompts — row 10); your documented-participant letter (row 9); only if your DOI check fails — your DOI did not open · you gave the “all versions” DOI instead of the version DOI · the record does not hold your Earned Trust deposit · the author name on the record does not match the name on your exit line — one correction email saying which; the notice that a code was not accepted; only if the check still fails after the correction deadline, the note that your record is counted as “no deposit found”; and the withdrawal confirmation. Every submission you make is answered from this list — confirmed, or not accepted. Every one logged in the published ledger. | Any other unsolicited outbound message, any unscripted contact, any unasked guidance, and any reminder beyond the one listed. If it isn’t on this list, we don’t send it. |
| 4. The published question list, and the standing reply. No human answers you during your trial, and there is no path to write us a question. The study publishes the FAQ and the five forms; nothing invites prose. Anything composed anyway meets one standing automatic reply pointing at the FAQ, and is otherwise not read and not answered. If the FAQ didn’t answer something, you mark it on the exit form’s “where did you hit a wall?” table, and it becomes a study finding; no answer is composed, then or ever. Every contact is counted in the ledger. | Any composed answer at all — teaching, coaching, troubleshooting, reviewing, editing, advising. Being sent to the FAQ is not advice; the published page is the study’s only statement. Anything outside the protocol — Zenodo, accounts, tools, your own project — belongs to your own AI, which is the support line this study is built around and the thing it exists to measure. |
| 5. The forms, published and filed. We publish a form for every email you send the study — five: apply · intake · the exit form (your DOI goes on it) · Name and DOI correction · withdraw. Every form after apply asks for your code first. Each form writes the email’s fixed subject and body from what you filled in; the only action left is Send. The exit form has a box to tick if our materials lost your record. Every email a form writes is filed once its code and address check out, and answered by script from row 3 — confirmed, or not accepted; no reply is composed, and the contact is counted in the published log. | Answering, triage, or counseling of any kind. There is no channel for words. Recovering your materials remains yours; the published materials and your own AI hold the walkthroughs. |
| 6. The exit-time preview. Before you send your exit form, the page shows you back everything that will print about you — your name as it will be cited, your DOI, how your trial ended (completed, or stopped here), every printing answer, and — marked as private — the devices you used — under one fixed line: Check this before you send. This is how you will appear in the report. Please make sure your name and your DOI are correct. That recheck is the last word — there is no later change window. When you press Submit, the exit form makes two lines from your answers. Your public line holds everything that prints — it goes in the report’s appendix word for word, and it is the only thing in the QR image. Your private line holds the seven report-private answers; the study keeps it, counts it into totals, and never prints it. Both lines go in the same exit email. Your private line is held by the study and never printed; it is not encrypted, and email is a postcard. The name that prints is the author name on your Zenodo record — a pen name is fine, but it has to be the name on the DOI publication, because the DOI is the check. The name you enrolled with is held privately; your letter and citation come to you under it. | Any chance to change the findings, and any later change window. What you confirm here is how you appear, and it is final. |
| 7. The five outside checks. On the DOI on your exit form, after your exit is in, we run the five published public checks — your DOI opens to your record; your files download; your QR card scans and opens the index in the Reader; your seal manifest is there and complete; and every fingerprint matches — exactly as any stranger could. The DOI you give must be the version DOI — the one shown on the record page for that version, not the “all versions” DOI. Before the checks, the study confirms the record holds your Earned Trust deposit (your card and your manifest) and that the author name on the Zenodo record is the name on your exit line. If any of the four fails — your DOI did not open · you gave the “all versions” DOI instead of the version DOI · the record does not hold your Earned Trust deposit · the author name on the record does not match the name on your exit line — you get one email saying which, and the correction form takes your name and DOI together. A named second reader re-runs the checks on a quarter of the deposits. A correction is accepted until your window closes, or 14 days after that email, whichever is later. If the check still fails, or no answer comes, one note tells you the record is counted as “no deposit found” — its own count within completed or stopped, as your exit form said. If your exit form says you made no deposit and the DOI field is blank, your record is counted at once as “no deposit found” within completed or stopped, as your form says. You get the confirmation of your exit and nothing else — no correction email, no note, no documented-participant letter. Those are the only messages about a check. | Reading your work, opening your locked box, comparing your record against your publication, judging your project’s quality, verifying anything beyond those five public checks, or telling you the result of any of them. We read only what you chose to publish, and results publish for everyone at once. |
| 8. Study Records. We hold the short list in the consent form — your signed forms, intake and exit answers (both exit lines), any Name and DOI correction you sent — in the study’s email account and the PI’s own folders, for five years from publication, then delete it. We keep them with ordinary care for that period. The study’s records are seen by the PI and any named co-PI, and by no other person at the study; the providers we name handle what passes through them as any mail or AI service does. The study’s mail is hosted by Proton, and the study’s drafting uses AI tools under the standard, as the consent form says. That is a description of what we do with them, not a protection promise. If the study’s inbox or machine is ever compromised, that fact is published in the deviations log and every enrolled tester is told. | Custody or protection of anything else — your work, files, locked box, passphrase, devices, accounts, AI service, or deposit. We never have them, so we cannot lose them, secure them, or save them. Their protection is yours alone. Nothing in the method ever tells you to delete a file that holds your work. |
| 9. Your documented-participant letter. Once your exit is filed and your DOI opens to your record, holds your deposit, and carries your name, one scripted letter — a receipt showing your citation line exactly as you confirmed it on the exit form’s recheck screen, generated from the exit line you filed or corrected, never retyped, nothing substituted: your exit is in, your DOI is recorded, you are a documented participant, here is your citation exactly as it will print. This is how you confirmed it on your exit form’s recheck screen, and it is final. | A verdict. The letter says nothing about any check. A change window — there is none; the recheck was the last word. A veto over the study’s findings, counts, or interpretations. Failures publish at equal weight — including yours, under the name you confirmed. |
| 10. After your exit: the one courtesy message. Sent once, scripted, only after your exit is in, and logged in the ledger: the confirmation that your exit arrived — one opening if you completed the trial, another if you stopped, as your exit form says. After the completed opening, and only when your exit form carries a DOI, one sentence says the record is yours; after the stopped opening, and after a completed opening with no deposit, the letter goes straight to the two published parting prompts you paste into your own AI — one to see your work as a styled webpage, one to put it online free, step by step. Both prompts tell your AI to take it one step at a time. | Building, hosting, editing, reviewing, or ever receiving your page or your work — the prompts go to you; your AI takes you the rest of the way. This message never comes early. |
| 11. The published record of ourselves. The support log — counts — the contact ledger (every touchpoint, including every message on row 3), the DOI-retry count, the deviations, and the full report — failures first, at equal weight, the second reader’s results next to the PI’s. The ledger’s count of PI contact is expected to be zero during the run, and it prints whatever it actually is. | Any claim of zero PI contact. We count every contact; we never claim there were none. We own the mailbox, so we never claim that no human ever sees anything — that promise could not be kept. What we hold to is narrower and keepable: during your trial, no human answers you, and the PI writes you nothing. |
| 12. Honesty about what stands behind this. One person — the PI. The PI may add additional principal investigators as the trial needs them; each is named on the beta page and in the report the day they join, with the date, and is bound by every rule that binds the PI. No institution, no ethics board, no independent complaints route, no attorney review. The design is public and fingerprinted at its DOI, and nobody can quietly change it. | Any suggestion that someone other than the PI and any named co-PI stands behind the study, or that anyone outside it can be appealed to. What you confirm is how you appear (row 6; row 9 is its receipt); what anyone can check is the public record. |
Signed acknowledgment: I have read both columns. I understand that the left column is the study’s entire undertaking, and that nothing outside it is promised, implied, or available.
Tester — signature or typed name: ______________________ Date: ________ William Stafford, Principal Investigator: ______________________ Date: ________
The one published apply form writes the email carrying the typed name, date, and acknowledgments — the one email that signs the consent form, the Terms, and this duty map together. Keep a copy — that is yours; the study keeps its own and sends none back. These documents were not drafted or reviewed by an attorney.