Heratio Help Center article. Category: Public Access.

Content Credentials Explainer

Overview

Content Credentials Explainer is the public trust page at /content-credentials that tells visitors, in plain terms, what content credentials are and how to check them. Content credentials are a tamper-evident record of where a record or file came from and what has happened to it. The page explains the idea and points to the ways you can verify something for yourself: by record, by file, and by trace. It is a public surface, so anyone can read it without signing in. Open it at /content-credentials.

What it does

This page demystifies content credentials and shows the public how to verify them:

• It serves as a public trust explainer at /content-credentials, describing what content credentials are and why they matter.
• It explains that content credentials are a tamper-evident provenance trail - a checkable record of an item's origin and history.
• It guides visitors through the ways to verify: checking a record, checking a file, and reading a trace of how a description was formed.
• It connects the public to the verification surfaces so they can confirm authenticity themselves rather than taking it on trust.
• It frames authenticity and provenance in accessible language for a non-technical audience.

The aim is confidence: helping anyone understand and check that what they are looking at is genuine and traceable.

How to use it

1. Open /content-credentials (for example https://your-site.example/content-credentials) to read the explainer.
2. Verify a record: follow the page's guidance to check a catalogue record and see its authenticity status and provenance.
3. Verify a file: use the file route to confirm that a downloaded or shared file matches its recorded credentials.
4. Read a trace: open the provenance trace to see how a description was assembled, including contributing sources or processing steps.
5. Use what you learn here whenever you need to cite or rely on the authenticity of an item.

Good to know

• This page is the explainer; the actual checking happens on the verification surfaces it links to.
• Verifying by record, by file, and by trace answer slightly different questions - is this catalogue entry authentic, is this file unchanged, and how was this description built - so use the one that matches what you need to confirm.
• A clean verification confirms the recorded provenance is intact; it does not assert anything beyond what has been documented.
• The page is public and needs no account, but verification still respects access rules and will not reveal content you are not permitted to see.
• Content credentials are designed to travel with files, so an item can often be checked even away from this platform.