Verified work payments: claim, evidence, verification, decision
Four distinct steps that most platforms collapse into one vague status — which is exactly where disputes come from.
"Verified" is a word that gets used loosely. A green tick next to a task is not verification; it is a claim someone typed. Real verification requires a written condition, evidence about the world, and a stated conclusion about whether the evidence satisfies that condition.
The four steps, kept separate
Each step is displayed on its own so nobody has to infer the difference.
- Claim
- The provider states that a milestone's conditions are met, and against which conditions.
- Evidence
- What was found, as fact: repository and commit, merge status, issue transition, timestamps, attached files.
- Verification
- A per-condition outcome — satisfied, not satisfied, or inconclusive — with the reasoning attached.
- Decision
- What follows for the transaction: conditions satisfied, more evidence required, or under review.
Evidence is never a verdict
Covalt Work will show you that a named pull request was merged at a given time by a given author. It will not tell you that GitHub says the work is complete, because GitHub has no opinion about your agreement. The conclusion about your conditions is produced by the transaction's verification, and it is the only conclusion shown as one.
What "paid" means
Settlement language is deliberately narrow. A transaction is only described as paid out when the settlement record says so. Nothing in the interface estimates payout timing or implies money has moved before the record confirms it.
Common questions
What evidence can be collected automatically?
Development and delivery activity from named sources: repository, commit and author details, pull or merge request state, issue status transitions, project activity and the associated timestamps.
What if evidence exists but does not match the condition?
The outcome is not satisfied or inconclusive, and it says why. Evidence that shows real work but not the agreed work is a scope conversation, not a payment trigger.
Who decides the final outcome?
The transaction's verification layer. Covalt Work presents that result; it does not run a second, competing assessment of its own.
See verification on a live transaction
Set up a milestone with conditions and evidence sources, and watch each step reported separately.
Related reading
- Cross-border workDistance does not break international work. Undefined completion does. This is how to define it, order it and settle it.
- Software development pactsEngineering is the rare kind of work that already emits verifiable evidence. Conditions should be written to use it.
- Milestone paymentsSplitting a payment into stages only helps if each stage has a completion test someone else could apply.
- Payment protection for contractorsNobody can promise you will be paid. Structure can make non-payment hard to justify and impossible to obscure.