The honest part
What a seal proves — and what it does not.
Most tools oversell. A verifyhash seal makes exactly two guarantees, and we lead with the four it doesn't, so nobody builds on a promise we never made.
✓ It proves
- →Tamper-evidence. Every byte re-derives to the same root, or the check fails and names the file that drifted.
- →Signer-pin. The packet was signed by the exact key whose address you pinned — a forged or swapped signature is rejected, never silently passed.
- →Build integrity. The published verifier is faithfully built from the source you can read.
✗ It does NOT prove
- →A trusted timestamp. "Sealed at time T" needs an external anchor — a seal alone can't date itself.
- →That the logic is correct. Reproducibility proves the build, not that the source does what you want. Read it; run the conformance corpus.
- →Real-world identity. A pinned address is a key, not a legal person.
- →Anything about the producer's intent. It attests bytes, not honesty of the URI they attached.