The standard
The standard.
Every record on this register was read against the seven clauses below, and every record prints which of them it cleared and when.
Standard v1.0 · effective 14 August 2026 · CC BY 4.0
§1
A real, individual freelancer
A real, individual freelancer. Not an agency with a face on it, not a team sharing one account, not somebody else's profile re-listed.
Decided by the reading.
§2
Consistent about who the person is
Consistent about who the person is: one name, one story, no contradiction between the description, the skills and the samples.
Decided by two things. Before publication, a government-issued document is checked — by Stripe Identity, or by a person here when a document check is not possible. Mainstay never receives the images and cannot retrieve them. It keeps the outcome, the country that issued the document, the type, and the name on it. The consistency above is decided by the reading.
§3
Skills that match the work shown
Skills that match the work shown. A tool that is claimed should be visible in something the person made; forty tools against three samples is a list of forty tools.
Decided by the reading.
§4
Contact details in the contact fields
Contact details in the contact fields, not written into the description. This is the clause that is broken most often and in good faith — hold it, name it, and say to move the address and send again.
Decided by the reading.
§5
Enough for a client to judge
Enough for a client to judge: a photograph on file, at least 1 work sample on file, a rate, and a description that says what the person actually does — in their own words rather than a brochure's.
Decided by the reading.
§6
Nothing left unclear
Nothing unclear. Anything you cannot defend publishing to a client who paid to be here is held rather than published.
Decided by the reading.
§7
Confirmed active in the last seven days
Confirmed active in the last seven days, every week, for as long as the record stands.
Decided by the weekly check, and it is not a reading: every listed freelancer answers a check every week, and a record that misses one leaves every list.
What §2 is not
Not a criminal record check. Not a right-to-work check. Not a check that anyone is good at the work. Not a claim that this person is the only person with this name.
What this standard does not claim
It does not say the person is good at the work, that they will reply, or that they are free next week. We see no money and no correspondence between a client and a freelancer, so we publish no rate we verified and no reply time.
The whole list, with the mechanism behind each one, is on what a directory cannot verify; the checks that close the one gap a document check leaves open are on how to check a freelancer profile is real.
What we ask, and what decides nothing
We ask which country you are tax-resident in and we keep it as a tax record. It decides nothing about whether anyone is listed. Stripe’s own terms mean some people are checked by a person here rather than by the automated check; nobody is refused for where they live.
How to check this
Every record on the register prints six numbered rows, six dates, and the method beside §2 — each date the day that clause was last read, not the day the record was published. Six rows against seven clauses, because §7 is the one no reading can decide: it is the weekly check, and a record carries it as its run of twelve weekly checks rather than as a dated row. Open the register and hold any record on it against this page.
Changes
Every version is kept and none is rewritten. The changelog says what changed and when. This version’s full text stays permanently at /standard/v1.
Reuse
CC BY 4.0. Quote it, cite it, hold us to it.
The bar is on this page · the method is on that one · every record prints its own dates