ValidDraft does not watch you. Verification uses no webcam, no video, and no biometric identity data — the proof comes from the writing itself. (The Author desktop app offers one optional, off-by-default presence check; it runs entirely on your device and never sends or stores video. More on it at the end.)
The obvious way to prove a person wrote something is to watch them do it. Point a camera at the desk, confirm a face is there, call it proof. It is the first idea everyone has, including us.
We did not build verification on it. A camera is an enormous intrusion that answers a surprisingly small question — it tells you a person sat near a keyboard, not that they composed the words. Meanwhile the evidence that actually matters is already in the writing.
A camera can be satisfied by a person sitting still while text arrives from somewhere else. The writing process cannot. Pasting a finished essay leaves no composition history at all — no hesitation before the hard paragraph, no sentence written three ways before the third one stuck. That absence is louder than any face on a screen.
It is also proof that survives. A video of you typing is a video of you typing; it needs a human to watch it and a company to store it. A behavioral record is compact, analysable, and can be bound to the exact text it produced — which is what your certificate does.
When the stakes are high — a graded essay, a paid commission, a byline — you get something you can point to: a humanity score, the signals behind it, and a public verification link anyone can open. Seal a full manuscript on the Author plan and the master certificate is signed with an Ed25519 signature over a Merkle root of every chapter, verifiable offline for good.
No camera. No video. Nothing about your face, ever collected, so nothing about your face can ever leak.
One honest caveat, because a claim this absolute deserves it. The Author desktop app offers an optional presence check: if you switch it on, it can confirm that someone is at the keyboard while you write. It is off by default and you are asked to confirm before it starts. Everything it looks at is analysed on your own machine — no video is transmitted to us, none is stored, and it never tries to work out who you are. Nothing above changes if you leave it off, which is where it sits unless you deliberately move it. Full detail lives in Section 2.6 of our Privacy Policy.
Write in ValidDraft and walk away with a certificate that stands on the evidence of the work itself. Free plan, 30 verified articles a month, no camera involved.
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ValidDraft
Published July 2026