Rigor, Vouch, Stages
A disclosure convention for source code in the AI era. A repository states three separate things a reader wants to know, in one machine-checkable file at its root: how much rigor went into the code, whether the author vouches for depending on it, and who did which stage of the work.
The three axes are orthogonal. Code can be fully AI-written and fully rigorous, lightly AI-assisted and completely unreviewed, or actively maintained and not vouched for.
Validation checks form and consistency, never truth. A stamp cannot claim more than the details it surfaces, and the prose a human reads cannot drift from the data a machine reads.
The stamp
spec: "0.3"
rigor: engineered
checks:
comprehended: human
quality_reviewed: human
security_reviewed: human
tested: yes
vouch: {claim: yes, why: "I use it myself, in production"}
assessed: 2026-09-01
Two fields are required, rigor and vouch. Everything else is optional. The
specification defines the file layout, the vocabulary, the validation
rules, and the sentences a tool generates from a stamp.
The tool
rigor-md authors, validates, and formats a stamp. It is plain JavaScript,
Node 18 or newer, with no build step.
npx rigor-md init
npx rigor-md validate RIGOR.md --strict --readme README.md
The JSON Schema covers structure and vocabulary. Semantic rules — a headline level may not exceed the checks it surfaces — are enforced by the tool, and specified in section 3.2 of the spec.