A Witness Transcript™ is in your file. Here is how to read it in five minutes.

It arrived with an application, a job form, or a scholarship file: a transcript from a homeschool, a microschool, or a learning center you have never heard of, with a link at the bottom of the form. You have a stack to get through and no time to phone anyone. This page is for the admissions officer, the HR reader, and the scholarship reviewer with that transcript in front of them. It says what each chip means, what a signature does and does not prove, how to verify the link free with no login, how to check it offline if you would rather not trust our page, and what “Declared by” means when a school’s name appears on a row.

Verify a record

Checked against the verify page, chapter 06 of the specification, and the published verifier. Requirements on this page last reviewed September 14, 2026. The specification is always the source of truth.

What you are holding

A Witness Transcript is issued by the family. The learner’s household is the records office of record, and at the moment of issuance the whole transcript is sealed with a SHA-256 hash, a fingerprint of every byte. Each course row may carry the signatures of adults who were there, and some rows may have been declared by a school the learner attended. The receipt id looks like tr_09a14ac5e538, and the link looks like eformogi.com/verify/tr_09a14ac5e538. That one is a fictional sample you can open now.

“Verified” on that page means what the page’s own disclosure says: the listed receipt exists in Eformogi, it was issued at the listed time, and the family-recorded fingerprint (SHA-256) has not changed since. It confirms the record’s integrity and provenance. It does not mean Eformogi has audited the coursework, and it does not mean the claims were evaluated by a third party. Whether the receipt is also in the public, signed receipt log is a separate check: the proof download and the offline verifier below, and only once the daily tree head covers the leaf. The signatures say who besides the parent put their name on a row. Where you need more, the family holds the evidence behind each row and can share it directly.

The four signer kinds, and what each row shows

Every course row is one of four signer kinds. On the printed transcript the kind is a chip on the row. On the verify page the kinds appear as tallies for the whole transcript, and each row in the per-course breakdown shows how many outside co-signers it has (“co-signed by 2”, or “no co-signers yet”), a marker where a signer’s grade differs from the family’s, and one identity mark per co-signature. The kind is the issuing family’s own description of the row’s source, not a mark Eformogi awards.

Family-stated. The family wrote the course and grade down. The seal protects it against later edits. No outside signature.
Family-graded. The family graded the course against a written scale they kept.
Co-signed. A named outside adult who was there (a co-op teacher, a tutor, a coach, a supervisor) put their name on the row. The signer’s name, role, and statement render on the verify page, and each co-signature is its own verifiable receipt.
Source-verified. The family states the claim came directly from the issuing source, such as a dual-enrollment registrar or an exam board.

Two of the tallies can appear muted with the suffix “issuer-declared”, and the rule is worth knowing. The Co-signed tally renders normally only when at least one course on the transcript has a co-signature actually on file. The Source-verified tally renders normally only when a signature on file came from a matched institutional domain, and because that match is not granted today, every Source-verified tally you see today renders as issuer-declared. Muted means the family described those rows that way and the ledger does not yet corroborate it.

The identity mark on each signature

Next to each co-signature, a small mark says how far the signer’s identity was checked. It describes the check. It does not vouch for the person’s role or their judgment, and it never compares one signer to another.

Identity · email. Email address only. No further identity check on file.
Identity · verified domain or license. Invited at a school or organization address and signed through the link sent there, or a professional license or registry lookup was recorded by Eformogi staff.
Identity · verified identity. Identity checked against an identity document by Eformogi staff. Only the record of the check is kept, never the document.
Identity · established history. A count of prior co-signatures on file over time.

A mark followed by ×2 means two signers on that course were checked to the same point. Most signatures you will see carry the first mark, and a first mark still means a named person signed a specific row on a specific date.

When signers disagree, and when a row is withdrawn

Where a co-signer’s signed grade differs from the family’s stated grade, the verify page shows both, side by side, with a small marker. It never picks a winner and it never hides either claim.

A withdrawn row or transcript does not disappear. The page reads “Withdrawn by the issuing family”, or “Withdrawn by” followed by the school’s name for a row a school declared, and keeps the id, the kind, the dates, and the hash visible so that a reader holding an old link learns the truth rather than hitting a dead end.

Verify the link, free, with no login

Open the link. There is no account to create and nothing to install. Verifying one link is free, and the sentence we hold ourselves to is this one: receivers verify a single link free, forever; an office that wants a hosted verification service at volume can ask us.

On the page, read from the verdict down: the verdict itself, the student name and program as the family printed them, the issue date, the hash, then the per-course breakdown, where each row shows how many outside co-signers it has, a marker where a signer’s grade differs, and one identity mark per co-signature. Below the breakdown are two paragraphs the page always carries, one saying what this verification means and one saying what it does not. If the page says “Not a valid Eformogi receipt”, the usual cause is a typo in the id or an old receipt; ask the family for a fresh link. A re-issued transcript gets a new id and a new hash, and the old link keeps resolving to what was sealed unless it was withdrawn, in which case it says so.

Verify a record

Run the offline verifier

If you would rather not trust our page, you do not have to. Under the verdict is a link, Download proof (JSON). Save that file. The published verifier at eformogi.com/spec/verifier is one Node file with no dependencies, no configuration, and no network access, licensed Apache-2.0. Given the proof file, it checks that the receipt really is in the signed, publicly anchored receipt log and that the bytes the family sealed are the bytes you hold, without asking Eformogi anything.

# the whole check, offline, on the file you downloaded
node verify-offline.js tr_09a14ac5e538-proof.json

# the same, with the hash of the document you are actually holding
node verify-offline.js tr_09a14ac5e538-proof.json --sha256 <64 hex characters>

# pin the organization key yourself instead of trusting the copy in the script
curl -s https://eformogi.com/.well-known/did.json > did.json
node verify-offline.js tr_09a14ac5e538-proof.json --jwk did.json

Exit code 0 means every step passed. Exit code 1 means a step failed, or the receipt is newer than the latest signed tree head and reports pending, in which case try again after the next daily head. Exit code 2 is bad usage or an unreadable file. It needs Node 18 or newer. Two things it does not check: whether the family later withdrew the receipt, which is only visible online today, and whether the signed tree head you hold is the one the rest of the world sees, which you can compare against the public anchor repository yourself. The conformance vectors are published with it, so you can see the verifier refuse a tampered proof before you rely on it.

What “Declared by” means

A row that reads “Declared by” followed by a school’s name was not typed by the family. The school enrolled as an issuer, imported its roster, declared the course with its title, term, grade, and credits, and asked the teacher who taught it to co-sign from a link. The family then claimed the learner and folded the school’s rows into the transcript they issued. The grade on such a row is the school’s, and the page labels it that way so that you never read a school’s claim as the family’s.

What it is not: a declaration is a claim by a named organization, alongside the teacher’s co-signature and its identity mark. It is not accreditation, and nothing on the page will describe it as such. Whether the row satisfies your own policy is your decision, and we do not speak for it. Open one declared course from Sample Microschool (Demo), a fictional sample, to see the label in place.

If something looks wrong

If you suspect a transcript or any part of this flow is being misused, write to hello@eformogi.com. We investigate, and when it is warranted we revoke the issuer’s ability to use the platform. The longer explainer for receivers, including what verification does not prove, is on the receiver page.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account to verify a Witness Transcript?

No. Open the link, read the page, decide. There is no account, no login, and no fee for verifying one link. That is the design, and it is written into the contract on the sovereignty page.

Does "verified" mean the courses were taught?

No. It means what the verify page's own disclosure says: the listed receipt exists in Eformogi, it was issued at the listed time, and the family-recorded fingerprint has not changed since. Whether it is also in the public, signed receipt log is the offline verifier's check, once the daily tree head covers it. Whether a course was taught is what the co-signatures speak to: a named adult who was there put their name on that row, and the identity mark says how far that adult's identity was checked. Where you need more, ask the family for the evidence behind the row; they hold it.

What does the ×2 after an identity mark mean?

Two co-signers on that course were checked to the same point. It is a count, not a grade.

Can the family change the transcript after I received it?

Not the one you hold. Any change means a new issuance with a new id and a new hash. The link you were given keeps resolving to exactly what was sealed, unless the family withdraws it, and then the page says so and keeps the id, dates, and hash visible.

Is there a charge for verifying at volume?

Receivers verify a single link free, forever; an office that wants a hosted verification service at volume can ask us at hello@eformogi.com. No such price is published.

How do I know the signer is who they say they are?

You do not, from the signature alone, and the page says so. The identity mark tells you what was checked: an email address, a school or organization address or a professional license, an identity document, or a history of earlier signatures. It does not confirm the role the signer claims or the quality of their judgment. Treat it the way you would treat a letter on letterhead: as a claim by a named person, with a stated basis.

Who holds the record

You are reading a document its subject owns. The learner holds the record, the adults who were there signed it, and the seal exists so that you never have to take our word for any of it. That is why the verifier is published, why the log is anchored outside our database, and why the page says what it cannot prove as loudly as what it can. The rest of the promise is written down in the sovereignty contract.