CIONAOD Inc. · Kanata, Ontario

Someone is describing your work where you cannot hear them.

If you make things by hand, a buyer is deciding whether to believe you — and cannot check. If you run a business, a machine is answering questions about you to customers you never meet. Both are claims made in your absence. Both are fixed the same way: not by detection, which does not work, but by a record specific enough to be checked.

I make things by hand I run a business

Two problems, one shape

The maker's problem

You spent forty hours on a piece. The listing beside yours says “handmade” too, and took forty seconds. Your buyer cannot tell the difference by looking, knows they cannot, and hesitates.

The record: every material and its supplier, the decisions you took and the ones you refused, the hours, and what went wrong. Signed. From $180.

Craft provenance records

The owner's problem

A customer asks an assistant who to hire. It names two or three businesses. If you are not one, nothing tells you — no lost bid, no bounced email. The enquiry simply never arrives.

The record: fifteen buying-intent questions, four assistants, three competitors, verbatim and dated, with every error classified and every fix ranked. From $450.

Answer-engine audits

Why documentation and not detection

Detection asks a machine to judge something after the fact, and it fails in both directions — falsely accusing honest work and clearing dishonest work routinely. Documentation asks the person who was there to record what happened, in specifics that are inconvenient to fabricate. That is how provenance has always worked, long before any of this.

01

Specific beats impressive

A named tannery and a dated session. A verbatim answer with the engine and conditions recorded. Unfalsifiable claims are worthless as evidence.

02

Record what went wrong

The lining that cockled. The error the machine invented. Nobody fabricating a record includes the parts that make the subject look worse — which is why those parts carry the weight.

03

Disclose the machine

Tools that execute are named. Systems that made decisions must be disclosed. An undisclosed machine voids the record, in either standard.

04

State the limits first

Neither standard detects, authenticates or guarantees. Both say so before anyone has paid anything, which is the reason to trust either.

The short version — two kinds of record, why detection does not work, and what each one costs.

Common questions

What is OPUSCRIPT?
OPUSCRIPT publishes open standards for documenting things that cannot otherwise be verified, and provides the services that run against them. There are two: the Craft Provenance Standard, which documents how a handmade object came to exist, and the Answer-Engine Audit Method, which documents what AI assistants tell prospective customers about a business.
Why do both of these exist in one place?
Because they are the same product twice. In both cases something important about you is being asserted where you cannot verify it — the maker's claim a buyer cannot check, the machine's answer an owner never hears. In both cases detection fails and documentation works. The subjects differ; the discipline is identical.
What does it cost?
A craft provenance record is $180 to $600 CAD depending on depth of evidence. An answer-engine audit is $450 for a snapshot, $900 for the full audit including three competitors, or $1,400 with a 90-day re-run. Both standards themselves are free to read, adopt and copy.
Do these standards authenticate or guarantee anything?
No. Neither authenticates, detects machine involvement, nor guarantees any outcome. A provenance record documents an account given by a named maker who signed it. An audit documents what a set of engines said on one date under recorded conditions. Both are evidence, not proof — and both say so before anyone has paid anything.
Who is behind OPUSCRIPT?
OPUSCRIPT is a brand of CIONAOD Inc. in Kanata, Ontario. The standards are written and maintained by Kenneth M.F. McGrath, a publisher and bookbinder whose background is in investigative research and instructional design — which is to say, in making records that hold up when somebody checks them.
What neither of these does

Neither standard authenticates anything. Both are evidence, not proof, and anyone selling proof in either category is selling something that does not exist. Conformance tiers are self-assessed: there is no assay office, no inspector, no registry, and nobody audits the auditor. What backs a record is the name of the person who signed it.

These limits are not fine print. They are the reason to use either standard rather than a competitor that promises more.