VeriPath

A human-supervised verification service for local businesses. We prevent silent customer loss by ensuring customers can find, trust, and engage a business, and that search engines and AI systems can find, understand, and accurately represent it.

This repository defines the audit methodology, evidence standards, canonical business record schema, client records, and operational workflow for VeriPath.

Current Focus (read this first)

Horizon	What it is	Status
NOW — Operating mode	Manual audits: evidence capture, AI representation testing, Silent Customer Loss Maps, canonical business records, owner review	Active
LATER — Deferred	GeoLocal integration, MCP/agent infrastructure, payment flows, automated multi-tenant platforms	Deferred

Operating truth: this README, evidence standards, canonical record schema, audit methodology, and client records.

If a deferred item conflicts with current operating docs, the operating docs win until explicitly promoted with a dated decision.

Working Definition

We continuously prevent silent customer loss for local businesses by making sure customers can find, trust, and engage the business, and that search engines and AI systems can find, understand, and accurately represent it, often before the business would notice something was wrong.

Core Concepts

Silent Customer Loss

Silent Customer Loss is the umbrella term for customer acquisition problems that occur without the business owner clearly seeing the loss.

It includes:

Customer Path Leakage — a customer has interest or intent, but digital friction prevents contact, booking, visiting, or engagement.
Discovery Failure — a potential customer never meaningfully encounters the business because customers, search engines, or AI systems do not find, understand, surface, or accurately represent it.

Service Domains

Customer Path Integrity — customers can find, trust, contact, book, visit, or otherwise engage without preventable digital friction.
AI Visibility Integrity / AEO — search engines and AI systems can find, understand, and accurately represent the business.
Local Competitive Awareness — local market context via competitor visibility, positioning, review movement, and AI-answer comparison.

Evidence Model

Tier 1: Verified — concrete, timestamped, observable, or instrument-backed findings, confirmed by owner or independent sources.
Tier 2: Corroborated — confirmed by independent sources.
Tier 3: Indicative — single source, probabilistic, or directional.

Field states:

observed — captured from a source but not independently confirmed
verified — confirmed by independent sources or owner approval
stale — previously accurate but freshness has expired
disputed — conflicting evidence exists; resolution pending

Operating Rule

Agents may detect and draft. Humans approve before publish.

Audit Workflow

Intake
→ evidence capture (website, GBP, NAP, schema, listings)
→ AI representation test (buyer-intent queries across models)
→ Silent Customer Loss Map
→ evidence classification (tier + source independence)
→ draft canonical business record
→ owner review and confirmation
→ correction plan
→ before/after measurement

Canonical Business Record

Schema: docs/architecture/canonical-business-record-v0.1.1.md Policy: docs/architecture/evidence-freshness-policy-v0.1.md

VeriPath is the system of record. Downstream consumers (GeoLocal, APIs, MCP tools) treat the canonical record as read-only.

Decision Records

Core philosophy and architectural decisions are recorded in docs/decisions/. See the roadmap for the current execution plan.

Decision	Path
Scope narrowed: VeriPath first, GeoLocal deferred	`docs/decisions/2026-08-13-narrowing-scope-veripath-first.md`
VeriPath owns canonical truth	`docs/decisions/2026-08-12-veripath-system-of-record-boundary.md`
Execution roadmap v0.1	`docs/roadmap/execution-roadmap-v0.1.md`

Active Client Instances

Client	Status	Path
Phoenix Salon + Spa	Active — audit and canonical record	`docs/clients/phoenix-salons/` — data: `client-data-pss`
Overcome Fitness	Draft benchmark	`docs/clients/overcome-fitness/`

Repository Structure

docs/
  decisions/           # dated decision records
  roadmap/             # execution plan and phases
  architecture/        # schema, evidence policy, agent boundaries
  clients/             # per-client audit records and reports
  operations/          # operational manuals and ledgers
research/              # competitive and market research
specifications/        # JSON schemas and data contracts
implementation/        # automation scripts and tools
tools/                 # operational forms (GBP snapshot, etc.)

Philosophy

Users → Problems → Requirements → Evidence → Records → Automation

No automation runs until the manual workflow is proven. No infrastructure is built until the audit produces paid value.

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