How this site is made
Colophon
A site about un-concealment should be honest about itself first. Here is everything about how these pages are built, who maintains them, and what was involved in making them.
The construction
- Plain HTML and CSS, plus exactly one JavaScript file: js/reveal.js, about sixty lines that fade sections in as you scroll and put a copy button beside the key's fingerprint. No framework and no build system. With JavaScript off, the site simply shows everything at once and you copy the fingerprint by hand. Nothing here is hidden behind a script.
- No trackers, no cookies, no analytics and no ads! We cannot see you, and we do not want to.
- Type is set in your computer's own fonts and nothing is downloaded, so nobody learns you visited by watching a font request. Georgia for headings, your system sans for reading, a monospace face for anything a machine produced.
- The colours come from the mark. Its green (
#22b04c) is spent only where something was witnessed or checked, on a deep green-black ink (#0e1c15) and bone paper (#ece9e0). Gold (#b08a3e) appears in exactly one place: the signing key! If your system prefers dark, the paper becomes ink and the panels sit a shade above it. Nothing else changes. - The mark, a person with both arms raised and a check painted across them by hand, was drawn in GIMP. Every size of it on this site is cut from that one file by a short script, so they cannot drift apart.
- The layout copies Aletheia Desk, the small desktop program used to sign every certificate: a fixed left rail, white panels for anything a machine produced, paper for a person talking. The program still wears its older blue, the site took its colour from the mark first. They are the same instrument seen from two sides.
- Hosted as static files. Every page is a file a person can read, view-source and all.
Where AI was involved and where it never is
We used an AI coding assistant to help build the HTML, CSS and the desktop signing program, the way one might use a template or hire help with carpentry. We directed it, reviewed the result, and we maintain all of it by hand. It also helped put our own words about why we do this into better English, the reasons are ours.
Where AI is not involved: the decision and the signature. Every verification is a live session between one of us and a person. The pledge, the witness statements, and the signatures are ours. The work is theirs.
One boundary has moved, and it is written here first: we now use AI to check a file's code for possible AI involvement in the making of it. This helps us make more informed decisions before we sign. The decision and the signature are still ours.
The people
Aletheia is two people for now. Tihomir started it in August 2026. Chris Joubert joined in September 2026 as the second witness. Either of us may sit in on a live session, and every certificate names which of us did. The signing key is shared between us. Who we are, with our faces and our reasons, is on the front page. You can write to us at aletheiahominis@proton.me.
The signing key
Every certificate is signed with one key, published at /publickey.asc. When you verify a certificate, your software will name it Aletheia — the Greek for truth as un-concealment. That is the name of the signing identity and not a third person. We both hold the key, Tihomir and Chris. Whichever of us witnessed a session, the certificate is signed with that one key and names the witness in its text.
Its fingerprint — the only thing that proves a key is really this one — is:
434F 64B7 9E9A 22F0 087E 2FFE AD37 9A30 2A05 EC52Anyone can generate a key and put this name on it. Nobody can generate a different key with that fingerprint. Before trusting any certificate, check the fingerprint against this line and, if you can, against a copy of it somewhere other than this website.
Key created 15 October 2026 · ed25519 · expires 14 October 2029 and will be renewed before then. If the key is ever compromised we will publish a revocation certificate, and your software will report it as revoked from then on.
Withdrawn verifications
If we ever withdraw a verification, it is listed on the withdrawn page and, in signed form, at /revocations.asc — signed with the same key, so the list itself cannot be quietly edited by anyone, including by us.
That list is published even when it is empty, and that is deliberate: an empty signed list says "nothing has been withdrawn" in a way you can check. A missing list says nothing at all, and a missing file is the easiest thing in the world to explain away.
Changes
Every meaningful change to this site is logged by hand in the site notes on the front page. If the pledge ever changes, the old version stays published alongside the new one. It has changed once, on 9 September 2026, when Aletheia became two people the first version is still here, unedited.