How Observes works

Two clocks

Every fact carries two timestamps: when it became true in the world (valid_at) and when we learned it (observed_at). A charge registered on the 3rd and noticed on the 11th has two different dates, and a system that keeps only one can never answer "what did we believe on the 5th?" — ours can.

Nothing is overwritten

The store is append-only. Corrections supersede; they never edit. That means the history of what we believed, and when, survives forever — including our mistakes, labelled as such.

Confidence is a scale, not a vibe

Register data is recorded at high confidence; a verified match on a company's own website a band below; heuristics below that; and anything inferred from absence is marked so weak it can never masquerade as a fact on its own. Two sources writing the same number mean the same thing by definition.

A block is an answer

Where we fetch the public web, refusals are findings, not obstacles — the crawler's standing policy is published and enforced in code.