Hidden Trust

Findings where trust is implied by polish, reputation, or claims but not fully backed by public evidence.

THC-BOT reviewed revision does not match the inspected public commit.

medium

docs/thc local artifact status

Regenerate local THC artifacts against the current public revision before using them as handoff evidence.

AI analysis note

What this means

hidden-trust examines where public evidence implicitly relies on undisclosed, privileged, or operator-held assumptions rather than independently auditable truth. This slice surfaces the trust surface that is visually present in documentation but not demonstrated in the public artifact package.

What is wrong

• Transaction-backed autonomous execution: README and capability table explicitly mark this as unproven; no transaction hash, receipt, or on-chain event appears in bounded evidence. The system documents what it cannot yet prove.
• Real wallet-rendered signing: EIP-712 and ERC-7730 surfaces are described as 'local fixture' only. No wallet prompt screenshot, signed payload export, or hardware wallet attestation is in the bounded evidence. The signing UI claim is untethered from live rendering.
• Live provider evidence replay boundary: ENS live binding, 0G write/read, and KeeperHub workflow proof all depend on operator-held credentials and live provider availability. Bounded evidence contains no stored replay proof or timestamped provider response. A public reviewer cannot independently re-run these checks without operator credentials.
• First-party self-assessment without independent verification: All THC-BOT artifacts are generated by the same project team. No peer review, Vel Labs endorsement, third-party audit, or public leaderboard acceptance is present in the bounded evidence. LOCAL_CHECK.md explicitly flags this.
• Discord webhook as 'simulation-only' event: The provider table and README both acknowledge Discord forwarding is demo-only and not execution or approval evidence. This is correctly scoped, but the dashboard and wizard still render it as a configured provider, which could mislead a reader into treating it as an authority signal.
• No public npm release: package.json is publish-ready and the bin is wired, but the package is not on npm. Public consumers cannot independently install and reproduce behavior without cloning the repo. This is a bounded evidence gap, not a failure.

The hidden-trust surface is well-documented by the project itself: LOCAL_CHECK.md and README both accurately flag the execution gap, the signing evidence gap, the first-party-only review posture, and the operator-credential dependency. The project's self-reporting discipline is strong and honest about its boundaries. The actual gap is not deception but incomplete public proof. A public reviewer cannot independently verify live ENS bindings, 0G write/read, or KeeperHub submissions without credentials the project correctly keeps private. The next trust upgrade path is clear: capture one transaction-backed receipt and one wallet-rendered prompt export into the bounded evidence package, and seek one independent peer or third-party review. Until then, the score reflects what is proven locally, not what is proven publicly.

AI review providers can draft section notes, but deterministic THC scoring and caps remain authoritative.