As AI becomes part of writing, one question follows every finished page: did a person write this? Rawtake's answer isn't a promise — it's a record. A sealed, verifiable chain that ties every clean paragraph back to the words the writer actually spoke or typed.
Every paragraph a writer creates in Rawtake passes through the same three stages — and all three are preserved forever.
The writer's raw words — typed with typos flying or dictated wherever the thought finds them. Messy, unedited, exactly as it came out. The archive is the permanent record of where the writing began. Nothing is ever deleted from it.
Rawtake reads everything in the archive and produces one clean, readable paragraph — mechanics fixed, meaning intact. Every word in the paragraph traces back to something the writer said in the archive. Rawtake coaches and suggests; it never writes.
A plain-English report of every mechanical fix — which spelling, which punctuation, which sentence break. What Rawtake said in coaching is noted and excluded from the paragraph. A blank report means the paragraph came out clean on its own.
When a writer exports their record, all three columns — archive, paragraph, report — are combined and run through a SHA-256 hash function. The resulting fingerprint is unique to that exact content. Change a single character after sealing and the fingerprint no longer matches.
This is six paragraphs from Matthew Hawkes' science fiction novel, exactly as Rawtake preserved them — the raw archive, the clean paragraph, and the report for each one.
Paragraphs 001, 002, and 005 have blank reports — Rawtake never touched them. Three of six paragraphs came out clean on their own.
The seal is a SHA-256 cryptographic hash — the same class of algorithm used to verify software downloads, sign legal documents, and secure financial transactions. Here is exactly how it works in Rawtake.
When the writer exports their Proof of Authorship, Rawtake assembles the archive, the clean paragraph, and the report for every entry into a single text block. This is the complete record — everything that happened, in order.
SHA-256 runs across every character of that combined record and produces a 64-character hexadecimal fingerprint. This fingerprint is mathematically unique — there is no known way to produce the same fingerprint from different content.
The fingerprint and a timestamp are stored alongside the record. The record and the fingerprint travel together — in the export file, in any certificate Rawtake generates, and in the author's own copies.
To verify, anyone can re-run SHA-256 on the record and compare the result to the stored fingerprint. If they match: the record is unchanged since sealing. If they differ: something was altered. No login, no Rawtake account, no trust required — just the math.
Changing even one comma in a sealed record produces a completely different fingerprint. The original fingerprint, stored at the time of sealing, no longer matches. The record has been altered. It cannot be presented as the original without detection. This is why a sealed Rawtake record cannot be quietly edited after the fact — the math makes it impossible to do so without leaving evidence.
Every Proof of Authorship export includes a breakdown of how each paragraph was handled. These numbers are computed from the record itself — not claimed by the writer or by Rawtake.
The paragraph came out of the archive and went directly to the clean column with no changes at all. The report is blank. These are the paragraphs that needed nothing.
Rawtake fixed technical issues — a misspelling, a missing comma, a run-on sentence split at the right joint. Every fix is named. No words were added or removed. The writer's meaning, voice, and phrasing are unchanged.
When something was ambiguous, Rawtake asked. The writer chose. That choice is labeled in the report. Every author-approved entry shows what was offered and what the writer selected — the decision belongs to the writer, recorded at the moment it was made.
Rawtake does not write. It coaches, suggests, and organizes — but every word in the clean paragraph traces back to something the writer said or typed. The count of AI-generated words added to the manuscript is always zero. The record proves it.
The Authors Guild's Human Authored certification lets an author declare — and warrant — that a book was written by a human, with at most a trifling amount of generative AI such as spelling and grammar tools. It is a promise readers can look up.
Proof of Authorship is a different kind of document: not a promise about the book, but the record of how it was made. They are not the same product — and they are better together.
The author registers the title, warrants it meets the definition, and the book carries the mark. Identity, a signed promise, and a logo readers will learn to look for. What it does not contain: a draft trail, a hash, or any record of what a tool touched.
Every raw word, every clean paragraph, every change named, sealed under a SHA-256 fingerprint anyone can recompute. A skeptic can dismiss a promise. A skeptic cannot argue with blank reports — the paragraphs no tool ever touched.
"Human Authored" is a certification mark of the Authors Guild. Rawtake is independent — not affiliated with, licensed by, or endorsed by the Authors Guild. Whether a given book qualifies for any certification is determined by the certifying organization's own definition and process; Proof of Authorship documents your writing record so you can make that call — and back it up.
Proof of Authorship documents the creation and editing history recorded by Rawtake. It is not copyright registration or a legal determination of ownership.