What Ukweli checks — and how it stays neutral.
A certificate is only worth what the standard behind it is worth. This page sets out what Ukweli assesses, what a verdict and an Integrity Certificate do and don’t attest, and the principles that keep the screen even-handed. It is the standard — not the method.
What Ukweli checks
Ukweli reads a document and assesses it across a fixed set of integrity checks. The deeper tiers add checks; none is skipped to flatter a result. What each check looks for:
Editorial integrity
Whether the writing holds together — structure, internal logic, and clarity — to the degree that affects whether its claims can be relied on.
Claim precision
Whether each assertion is specific and supported, rather than vague, overstated, or left hanging without a basis.
Fact-pattern check
Whether the facts in the document are consistent with one another and don't quietly contradict each other.
Statistical audit
Whether figures, percentages, and totals are internally consistent and actually reconcile.
Research methodologyVerify +
Whether the sources and method are sound enough to carry the weight the document puts on them.
Citation verificationVerify +
Checks citations and factual claims against real sources, live, to see whether the source exists and supports what the document says.
SensitivityCertify
A market-specific review of legal and reputational exposure in the content for the country it is written for.
ConsistencyCertify
Checks the document against your own earlier cleared documents, to surface contradictions with positions you have already published.
Verdict
The single decision — Cleared, Review required, or Hold — drawn from all of the checks that ran, with the evidence attached.
What a verdict means
Every result is one of three verdicts. Cleared — no blocking issues against the checks that ran. Review required — fixable issues to resolve before publishing. Hold — at least one serious problem makes it unsafe to release as written. The verdict is the decision; the number beside it is a resolution meter, not a grade. A short guide covers how to read a report in practice.
Near the end of every report is a coverage statement — what was and wasn’t checked. A “Cleared” only ever covers the checks that actually ran, and the report says so plainly.
What the Integrity Certificate attests
An Integrity Certificate is issued only when a Certify analysis ran the full set of checks — including live citation verification — and returned a Cleared verdict, with the evidence attached. That is what the seal stands behind: the checks that matter were run, and nothing failed.
It certifies integrity, not omniscience. Ukweli holds a document to the truth standard; it does not declare a document beyond question. It can only test what is checkable against available sources, so the seal does not stand in for matters of opinion, predictions, or facts no source can confirm — and it is not an endorsement of the author, a warranty of legal compliance, or a form of regulatory approval. If live citation verification could not run, no seal is issued: the document downloads as a plain report instead. The binding terms are in the Terms of Service.
How Ukweli stays neutral
When a certificate is something others rely on, the screen behind it has to be even-handed — and be seen to be. Four things hold that line:
One standard, applied the same to everyone
The checks and thresholds do not change by who is paying or who submitted the document. There is no premium pass and no soft option.
A rule-driven verdict
The verdict is determined by the findings against fixed rules, not by discretion. No one can place a thumb on the scale for a particular customer.
It judges the document, not the author
Ukweli assesses the content in front of it. It does not score, rank, or form a view on the reputation of the person or organisation behind it, and it works only from what you supply — never an outside judgement about you.
The evidence is shown
Every finding shows the passage and the source behind it, so you can check the reasoning rather than take a score on trust. Transparency about the result is the proof of neutrality.
Independent verification of a certificate’s authenticity — a public way to confirm a seal without taking our word for it — is on our roadmap, and is the next step in making the standard something anyone can rely on.
What stays private
This page publishes the standard — what is assessed and how to read a result. The method behind each check is proprietary and stays that way. The two are not in tension: you can see the standard a document is held to, and the evidence behind every finding, without us exposing how the engine reaches it. The standard is what you can trust; the method is what makes it hard to copy.
What Ukweli is not
It is not a plagiarism or AI-content detector — those ask who or what wrote a document; Ukweli asks whether what it says is true, precise, and defensible. It is not a grammar tool. It does not guarantee that cleared content is factually perfect — it assesses integrity, not omniscience. And it is decision-support: it catches what a fast human read misses, but it is not a substitute for legal, financial, or regulatory sign-off.