Certified

ci

Give your agent something it cannot talk its way past.

An MCP server exposing certificate verification, equivalence proving, and pre-registration sealing as tools. An agent that edits a design, a proof, or a benchmark config has no way to check its own work — so it reports success. These tools return a verdict re-derived from the artifact, not asserted about it.

Install

Status: pre-release. Not yet on PyPI. Until then, install from a checkout:

pip install ./lcert-verify ./equiv-receipt ./prereg-seal ./cert-atlas ./certified-mcp

pip install certified-mcp

30-second quickstart

Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP host):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "certified": { "command": "certified-mcp" }
  }
}

Then ask your agent something it would otherwise have to guess at:

"I refactored this adder. Prove it's still equivalent to the original."

prove_equivalence(inputs=["a","b"], circuit_a=[...], circuit_b=[...])
-> {"verdict": "EQUIVALENT", "receipt_verifies": true}

Or, when it isn't:

-> {"verdict": "COUNTEREXAMPLE", "counterexample": {"1": true, "2": false}}

The agent gets a concrete failing input, not "this appears correct."

Tools

Tool	What it does
verify_certificate	Re-derives a manufacturing admission verdict from the certificate's own numbers; checks integrity; refuses a bundle that certifies nothing
verify_receipt	Re-runs a DRAT proof (or re-simulates a counterexample) over the committed formula
prove_equivalence	Proves two small combinational circuits equivalent, or returns a differing input
check_drat	Checks a DRAT refutation from any solver; names the first lemma that doesn't follow
seal_criteria	Seals acceptance criteria before measuring, without revealing them
check_seal	Detects criteria changed after sealing
score_verifier	Scores a verifier against the failure atlas
explain_defect	Explains a defect class: why the forgery looks valid, and what catches it

Why an agent benefits specifically

Three failure modes this addresses directly:

1. Confident wrongness. An agent that refactors logic will say it preserved behaviour. prove_equivalence returns a counterexample input when it didn't.
2. Moving the goalposts. An agent tuning against a benchmark will quietly relax the threshold. seal_criteria before the run makes that detectable — including by the agent itself.
3. Trusting a proof it was handed. check_drat accepts proofs from any solver and re-checks every lemma, so a fabricated proof is caught rather than cited.

Everything here is local and read-only

No network. Nothing uploaded. No telemetry. Every tool either reads a file you name or computes over arguments you pass.

None of these tools can produce a manufacturing certificate — only check one. That asymmetry is deliberate and is enforced by a test. Checking is cheap and should be everywhere; producing a certificate worth checking requires the certification engine, which is a separate closed product.

Implementation

Standard library only, MCP stdio protocol, ~300 lines. You can read the whole server before deciding to run it — which, for something you are wiring into an agent with filesystem access, you should.

Licence

Apache-2.0.

Honest scope — what these tools prove, and what they do not

Question	Answer
Can an agent check a certificate, proof or seal with these?	Yes, all locally and read-only.
Does verify_certificate returning UNVERIFIED mean the certificate is bad?	No. It means the tool abstained for want of a trust anchor. An agent must not report it as either pass or fail.
Can any tool here produce a certificate?	No — enforced by a test. These are checkers.
Does anything here validate physics?	Never.

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The rest of the toolkit

A recorded verdict is a claim to be checked, never an input to be trusted. Nine repositories are built on it.

The whole story, and the objections answered, live at certified-oss — start there if this is the first one you have opened.

lcert-verify	Re-derive a manufacturing certificate's verdict. Stdlib only.
equiv-receipt	Prove two circuits equivalent, with a receipt anyone can re-check.
prereg-seal	Seal acceptance criteria before you measure.
cert-atlas	21 labelled forgeries and a metric no degenerate verifier can win.
certified-mcp	The above, as tools your AI agent can call.
lcert-verify-web	The verifier in a browser. Nothing uploaded.

Try it now, no install: 🔏 the verifier Space · Browse the forgeries: 📊 the atlas dataset

Where the free edition stops

Everything here checks. None of it produces a certificate that is physically meaningful — that needs sound enclosures over real process models, which is a separate commercial product. If you need certificates rather than a way to check them, that is the conversation to have.

Documentation

• PERFORMANCE.md — measured, including what was not optimised
• CONTRIBUTING.md — Contributing

Portfolio-wide: Tutorial · Concepts · FAQ · Architecture · API reference

Licence, citation, contributing

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE. If you use this, please cite it: CITATION.cff.

The most valuable contribution is a forgery this project fails to catch — see CONTRIBUTING.md and the portfolio-wide guide.

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A recorded verdict is a claim to be checked, never an input to be trusted.

certified-mcp is one of nine repositories built on that. The whole story, and the objections answered, live at certified-oss — start there if this is the first one you have opened.