Claim Language Standard
This is the standard that governs every answer we draft — for buyers reading our customers' disclosures as much as for the customers themselves. No statement carries more certainty than its label.
STD-001 — Claim Language Standard
The seven claim types (the only customer-facing claim vocabulary)
| Type | Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Directly Observed | OBS | Collected from primary systems by our tooling; rendered with method and date |
| Customer Declared | DEC | The customer states it; we did not observe it; declarant named |
| Document Supported | DOC | Backed by a document we hold hashed (contract, policy, certificate) |
| Inferred | INF | Concluded by analysis from other claims; reasoning attached |
| Human Reviewed | REV | A claim judged by a qualified reviewer; reviewer recorded |
| Third-Party Attested | ATT | An external accountable party attests; attestation held |
| Unsupported / Unknown | UNK | We cannot support the claim. A complete, valid, deliverable answer |
Type is provenance, not a quality grade. Types are never silently upgraded. Staleness decays visibly toward Unknown.
Prohibited verdict language (product, marketing, sales, support — identically)
- Verified — not used in any form (AMD-2026-002).
- Validated — not used.
- Certified — never about anything we produce. Permitted only to describe a third-party certificate a customer holds, with issuer, number, and expiry.
- Compliant — never as a verdict. Replacement: "consistent with [specific requirement] based on [evidence] as of [date]," with gaps listed.
- Safe / secure / trustworthy — never as verdict claims about customers or ourselves; describe controls and evidence instead.
- Audit-ready — not used. Replacement: "evidence coverage: N of M claims supported; oldest evidence: [date]."
- Approved — only with a named approver role and date.
- Numeric trust scores of organizations — never (CON-001 P2).
Permitted descriptive form
"Observed in [specific source] on [date] within [scope]" — always with limitations. "Independently observed" may be used only as a full descriptive sentence carrying exact scope, method, source, date, and limitations.
Standard honest-answer language
- Unknown: "We do not currently have evidence sufficient to answer this for [scope]. This gap is recorded with the evidence that would close it."
- Partial: "For [Products A, B]: [answer]. [Product C] was not assessed in this engagement."
- Staleness: "Observed [date]; not since revalidated. Treat as historical unless reconfirmed."
- Declaration: "The customer states: [statement] (declared by [name, role], [date]). Not independently observed."
Enforcement
This standard is the build-time lint wordlist for site copy, the string-review checklist for artifacts (SOP-001, Day 3), and the review standard for all outbound communication. Violations are trust incidents (CON-001 §14).