How we verify

Every value on the map comes from one place: the vendor’s own public pages. Here is how a fact gets in, and what “verified” means when we say it.

1. We read only the vendor.

Documentation, pricing, integration pages, machine-readable files the vendor publishes (an OpenAPI spec, an llms.txt, an MCP server card). Never third-party listings, never reviews, never what another site says about them. Third-party pages may tell us where to look; they are never the source of a value.

2. Every value carries its line.

Each field on a record stores the page it came from, the exact span of text that states it, and the date we captured it. If you ask the map why it believes something, it shows you the sentence.

3. Nothing is inferred.

If the vendor does not state a fact, the field stays empty and says why. We do not read “probably” into a page, fill a gap from a similar vendor, or carry a value from one product to another because they share a name. An empty field is an honest answer; a guessed one is not.

4. Verified means checked at the source, not tested by us.

Before a record is published, every value is checked against the page it cites: the quoted span must be present in the captured page, and the field must match what the span says. We do not run the vendor’s software or audit their claims; we record what they publish, exactly, and prove where it came from.

5. Anything that cannot be grounded is held.

When the agent that builds a record cannot tie a value to a vendor line - two pages disagree, a page has moved, a statement is ambiguous - the value is held for human review rather than written. Held values never reach the map.

6. Pages change, so records keep their sources.

Each record keeps a baseline of the pages its values came from. That baseline is what the record is re-checked against when a page changes.

What we do not do.

No editorial scores. No rankings. No pay-to-list or pay-to-rank. No affiliate links. No data taken from behind a login, and no page fetched where the vendor’s robots rules or a machine-readable opt-out say not to. We identify ourselves on every request.

Found an error?

Write to hello@stackology.io with the record and the value. A verified correction is published; the original is kept in the record’s history.