Check a sealed record.

Why this page exists

The whole point of a sealed record is that you don't have to take our word for it. The check runs on your own machine — right here in your browser. You can read the code that does the checking, and it uses public keys we publish openly. If we said a record was genuine but gave you no way to confirm it, the whole idea would fall apart.

This page is the step-by-step. The audit-chain page covers why it matters; here we cover how to do it.

Check it in your browser — best for most people

Nothing to install. Drop the record file onto the page and the answer appears in seconds. The whole check happens right in your browser.

1. Open the check page: verify.athenanorthstar.com.
2. Drag the record file onto the page. It's a small file — the person who sent you the record will have given it to you (an appraiser, lender, AMC, attorney, or regulator). The file stays in your browser; it is NOT sent to any server.
3. The page confirms the record was signed by us. It checks the record against the trusted Athena Systems signing keys. We publish those keys openly at appraisal.athenanorthstar.com/v1/audit/public-keys, so you can open the registry yourself and compare.
4. The answer appears in your browser: "✓ Verified" with the seal date and the rules that were checked — or "× Verification failed" telling you what didn't match (the record was changed, signed by an unknown key, and so on) and what usually causes it.

Why you can trust a webpage to do this

The check runs entirely in your browser, on your own machine. There's no step on our servers that we could tamper with. The code that does the checking is open — anyone can read it.

What a passing check means

A "Verified" result is solid proof of the following:

• The workfile in the record is exactly the file that was checked at the time. (To tie it to a specific file you'd need the original on hand; on its own, the record proves that a file with these exact contents was checked.)
• The rules in the record are exactly the rules that were in force when the check ran. The record pins down which version was used.
• The time on the record is the moment it was sealed — recorded in the record and locked into the hash chain, so it can't be quietly re-dated.
• The record was sealed by North Star and hasn't been changed since.

What a passing check does NOT mean: that the workfile is accurate, that the valuation is correct, or that the appraisal meets any standard beyond the rules that were checked. The record proves what was checked, when, and against which rules — not that the underlying work is right. See the audit-chain page for the full picture.

Our signing keys, published openly

Every key North Star uses to seal records is published as an open JSON registry at appraisal.athenanorthstar.com/v1/audit/public-keys. Each entry lists a key's identifier — a steady label found in every record it signs — and the public key itself. An auditor can fetch the registry and check any record's key against it, independently of the browser check.

Records sealed while a key was in use stay checkable with that key. If a key were ever exposed, we'd publish the date; records sealed before that date stay trustworthy.

The browser check and the open key registry above give an independent, no-account way to confirm any record.

The check doesn't depend on us — in two ways

First: the checking runs on your machine. The code that checks a record runs in your browser, not on our servers, and your record is never uploaded. The way a record gets checked should never be a mystery.

Second: the methods behind it are public standards. The sealing and checking techniques are well-documented, widely used industry standards, not anything we invented. An auditor who doesn't trust our tool can build their own from the published format, using the same standards, and get the same answer for the same file. Two separate roads to the same result.

The format details — how a record is laid out and how records link together — are available on request to regulators, auditors, and customers.

One note on scope: this independence covers checking a record. The part of North Star that runs your check, the rule library, and the rest of the app stay our own. Being able to check a record without us is what lets us say “you don't have to trust us” and mean it; the rest is our product.