How Earned Trust works
The idea, the mark, the toolkit, the founder’s own shelf, and the full specification — everything that used to sit on the front page, in one place.
The idea in one paragraph
Institutional credentials work as pre-paid trust: a reader extends the benefit of the doubt because an institution already vouched for the author. People without credentials have had no comparable way to earn a hearing. Earned Trust proposes the alternative: make exactly how a work was produced open to inspection — what the AI did, what the human directed and checked, and the records to prove it. It offers a hearing, not a verdict; checkability, not a warm reception. The work still has to survive scrutiny. The point is that it finally gets some.
The mark, up close
Earned Trust is a disclosure standard for AI-assisted work. Its instrument is the AIast mark — a compact, checkable record of which AI services were used, what each did, and how the work was checked — backed by an evidence commitment: the working records are retained and capable of production. Anyone with a valid reason may petition to review them; access stays under the author’s control. Whether to open the working record for any particular person is, and stays, the author’s choice — the standard assigns no cost to declining. Four honest answers are recommended practice, not a requirement: the scoped evidence, a redacted excerpt, a reasoned refusal, or an honest “unavailable.” Retention is a commitment; production is a choice (v1.14).
AI-use disclosure: AIast — 3 entries · Earned Trust Record enclosed
AIast3 — Claude (i/d/c) · ChatGPT (c) · Perplexity (s)
The name signs the work; the mark signs the disclosure. Five role letters — i ideation · d drafting · c critique · v verification · s source retrieval — and a count of the services used. Not a score. Not a confession. A credit roll: every record and every film ships with credits naming who did what. This is that, for thinking work. Authors working outside the credentialing system of their field may add the optional LI- prefix (LI-AIast3) — self-applied, descriptive, and claiming nothing about the worth of the work.
New to AI — or not sure what yours can do?
The Founder’s Field Notes
Step one is knowing which AI you have and what it can really do — that decides which road you take, and it sets honest expectations for your project across free and paid tiers. Opinion from use, dated and signed, with the day-one check you can paste into any AI before you begin.
Read the Field NotesWant the full toolkit? — the Field Kit
Earned Trust Field Kit
The same protocol plus its accessories: the folder builder, the session logger, the link maker, and the sealer that makes your records tamper-evident with published fingerprints — plus templates and an offline Reader. Free, offline, no accounts. It shines on a computer — and on a phone you can hand the whole zip to a code-running AI and it works the tools for you.
Tap here to get startedSee it in practice — the founder's own shelf
Lost Innovators — works produced under this standard
This method isn’t theory: every paper the founder has deposited was produced under it — drafted, attacked, verified, and published with the AIast mark on the disclosure, an Earned Trust Record traveling with the work, and the full working archive sealed in the Record Vault. One early essay, Who Gets to Think?, predates the record-keeping practice and is labeled exactly that in the vault — the honest label is part of the standard. Read the works, scan their records, check the fingerprints. The catalog is the standard’s first proof.
Visit Lost Innovators →Read the standard — the full specification
Earned Trust: Verifiable Disclosure as a Credential-Substitute for AI-Assisted Work
The full specification — the mark, the threshold, the evidence package, conformance, failure modes, and its limits. Openly licensed, permanently archived, version-controlled.
Read on Zenodo →The words, in plain English — a small glossary
- Earned Trust
- The disclosure standard and its free toolset, together.
- AIast
- The AI-use disclosure mark: AI-assisted, with the receipts.
- AIast3
- Three disclosed entries — a count of services, never a score or quality level.
- LI-
- Optional, self-applied Lost Innovator prefix: working outside the field’s credentialing system. Not a qualification.
- Earned Trust Record (ETR)
- The readable account of the work’s sessions — dates, services, roles, what was checked.
- Field Kit
- Tools and templates for building, logging, and sealing a record.
- Reader
- The browser tool that reads record cards and checks file fingerprints — locally, no account.
- Seal / fingerprint
- A cryptographic hash: proves a file is byte-for-byte the published one. Proves identity, not quality.
- Locked box
- Your private working files (drafts, notes, AI chat logs) bundled into one file and locked with a password, using a free program called 7-Zip. Nobody can open it without that password — not another person, not an AI, not Earned Trust itself. Only you have it.
- Record Vault
- Not something every writer gets automatically — it’s the founder’s own personal page of his published works, each shown with its own locked box, as real proof the process works.
This site is itself disclosed under the standard: built in working sessions with Claude (Anthropic) as drafting instrument, directed and approved by the author, records retained — sealed manifests: 2026-07-30 · 2026-07-31. Seals chain; published manifests are never withdrawn. The site’s working record continues in the work record; seals are periodic, not real-time — the latest site seal runs through 2026-08-05, and the next follows the author’s ritual. Current versions: Standard v1.13 (2026-08-14, the consolidation edition) · protocol revised 2026-09-08 · Field Kit v0.9.19 · what’s new · version.json. The complete working files live in the Record Vault — public record, held receipts, both checkable.
About · FAQ · Disclaimer · Correspondence with the Author: William@earnedtrust.org