Truth Onion

What's built

The engine runs today. This page states what exists, what is designed but not yet built, and the numbers behind both.

Built and running

The engine

  • The rules layerDecides where every claim sits. Enforced in application code, with database constraints and triggers as an independent second layer, so no request can set a tier directly
  • Source library with rippleKeeps every claim answerable to its sources. When a reviewer marks a source discredited, every claim resting on it is re-evaluated in the same transaction
  • Challenge and promotionHow claims move. Promotion runs a claim through a battery of challenges it must survive; demotion is immediate when evidence fails, with a correct-and-resubmit path
  • Import and exportLets topics travel between instances without trusting the file. Every imported item re-runs through the rules layer, and a tampered export is refused with the same plain reasons as a live violation
  • 2D and 3D viewsTwo ways of working the same map — flat concentric rings, or nested spherical shells you move through — sharing one dataset and one dial. Neither view can change a placement itself; every change goes through the rules layer, whichever view you work in
  • The depth dialControls how much uncertainty you see. Core-only by default, deeper layers by choice, and the count of what sits deeper is always shown
  • Private working spaceWhere half-formed notes live before they become claims. Outside the epistemics entirely — unlinkable, invisible to every view — until a note is ready to earn a placement

Verification

Checked by machine, not asserted by model

The engine retrieves sources itself and verifies quoted text server-side, against the page actually fetched. The verified state is computed, not authored — no model can declare a source checked.

Retrieval runs through a guarded proxy, with a headless browser only where a page will not render otherwise. Where a page cannot be read, that is recorded as unreadable rather than silently treated as a failed quote.

The companion

Built to argue with you

An optional AI companion, connected to a provider of your choosing with your own key. Nothing is proxied through this project and no keys are held server-side: OpenRouter, Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, billed directly by your provider. There is no inference markup.

Its win condition is your claims surviving scrutiny, not your claims being promoted. It argues against you, surfaces adverse sources unprompted, and never proposes a tier. Its tools are read-only, and the executor refuses any tool name it doesn't recognize.

  • Analysis passRuns with the character card structurally absent from the request — not instructed against, not stripped afterward, not included
  • Rendering passThe persona receives the findings and delivers them in voice, having taken no part in producing them
  • Fidelity checkConfirms the substance survived the rendering; a persona cannot make an unproven claim sound likely
  • Character cardsWritten by you, any persona you like — the guarantee comes from where the card sits in the pipeline, not from limits on what it may say
  • Write accessNone. It advises; the rules decide

The reason for the split is the same reason the rules live in the database. A promise that a model will ignore its own persona is enforced by good behavior. Removing the persona from the request is enforced by construction.

Tests

102 automated tests across seven suites

A permanent pressure-test suite attempts laundering, circular support, self-published stacking, cross-topic smuggling, and edit-after-placement on every run.

  • Definition of done14
  • Pressure tests10
  • Stage 28
  • Stage 2.511
  • Packaging5
  • Companion40
  • Fetch proxy14

Content

Three complete topics

MKUltra

12 claims about the CIA's mid-century behavioral research program, each placed by the documentary record behind it.

COINTELPRO

9 claims about the FBI's domestic counterintelligence program, each placed by the documentary record behind it.

The Replication Crisis

10 claims about replication and reproducibility in psychology research, each placed by the evidence behind it.

Designed, not built

What comes next

Stated as designs rather than features, because that is what they are.

  • Kernel links and lineagesTracing an overreaching claim back to the documented ground it grows from, with the gap between them stated. The design →
  • The time machineReplaying any topic as it stood at any past moment, from records the rules already force the system to keep. The design →
  • Taxonomy revisionThe category system was built against three topics. Before new genres enter, its vocabulary gets one deliberate revision, drawn from the recorded cases where the current terms misfit — rather than drifting patch by patch. Sequenced last before multiplayer, so the revision sees every mechanic it has to name
  • Multiplayer and adversarial reviewOpening the map to other people's challenges, under persistent pseudonymous identity. Reputation is earned as much by careful demotion as by confirmation, and dissent is preserved rather than overwritten
  • A shared worldA 3D space where user-built sections surround a common bedrock of established claims — the world's geometry is the epistemology