Verified vs Asserted

ClariLayer is a trust product. The entire point is that your AI's context about your data is grounded against reality, not just asserted. That only works if ClariLayer is precise about what it can stand behind — so it labels every saved context entry with a status, and it is careful never to claim more than it can back. This page explains exactly what each status means.

The three statuses

The status model defines three labels. Two are live today; the stronger one is gated and not part of the public result contract.

asserted (live)

asserted is the neutral baseline — the honest "we are taking your word for it." It is not a claim that an entry is right, and it is not a claim that an entry is wrong. It simply means the entry has not been contradicted.

An entry is asserted in any of three cases:

1. it was never reconciled, so nothing has been checked;
2. it was reconciled, but the stored definition and supplied evidence yielded no applicable conclusive checks; or
3. it was reconciled, every applicable check passed, but the strong verified mark is gated off in v1 — so a would-be verified match is recorded as asserted.

Because of case 3, asserted does not mean "never checked." A clean reconcile pass still reads asserted today. The important thing asserted tells you is: not flagged, not stamped.

caveat (live)

caveat is the status reconcile assigns when a definition's declared signals and supplied source evidence mismatch. Today that evidence is either warehouse actual_sample for stored SQL or row-free HubSpot crm_evidence for a CRM contract. It is a flagged "treat this with care."

A caveat is the valuable signal, not an error. It means ClariLayer caught a definition whose stored shape no longer matches the data it claims to produce — exactly the drift that makes two reports disagree. When your agent recalls an entry with a caveat, it should carry that caveat into its answer.

verified (gated, not live)

verified is the strong trust mark for an entry whose declared signals conclusively matched supported source evidence. It is not shipped today. The mark is gated off in v1, and a would-be verified outcome is deliberately downgraded to asserted.

You will not see a verified status on a ClariLayer entry today, and ClariLayer's marketing does not show a live "Verified" badge. The stronger status is gated and not part of the current public contract; public reconcile results remain asserted or caveat.

Why verified is gated off

It would be easy to stamp entries verified and look more impressive. ClariLayer deliberately does not, and the reason is the core of the product's honesty.

For SQL definitions, the thing that would back a verified mark is extracting the declared signals from an entry's query — reasoning about what it says it should produce. Today that extraction is a deliberately conservative heuristic over SQL text. A heuristic cannot be made sound against the long tail of SQL dialect edge cases, and a single false verified is the one failure mode a trust product cannot ship: it would tell you a wrong definition is correct, which is worse than saying nothing. HubSpot evidence has similarly bounded completeness and count semantics; it can establish a conflict or leave a check inconclusive without creating a stronger trust stamp.

So ClariLayer makes the safe trade. Over-flagging is harmless — a caveat just tells you to look. A false all-clear is not. ClariLayer therefore caps every public reconcile result at caveat or asserted; this documentation makes no delivery-condition or timeline promise for a stronger status.

What this means for your agent

When your agent recalls context, it should read the status and act on it:

• asserted — usable context that has not been contradicted. It may be unreconciled, inconclusive, or cleanly reconciled; do not present it as proven.
• caveat — a known mismatch. Carry the caveat into the answer so the reader knows what to distrust.
• verified — gated and not part of the live public result contract. Do not expect or infer it from a clean reconcile response.

The honest framing for users is: ClariLayer reconciles supported SQL context against warehouse evidence and HubSpot CRM context against row-free CRM evidence, then flags caveats — it is evidence-backed and caveat-aware, not blindly asserted. No stronger status is part of the current public result contract.

See also

• reconcile — the verb that assigns caveat or leaves an entry asserted.
• remember — why a saved entry starts asserted.
• The Context Layer — how reconciled, caveat-aware context beats a hand-typed CLAUDE.md.