Statistical assessment at time of scan — not proof of authorship. Every certification says so, on its face. We publish our error rates; some certifications will be wrong. That honesty is the point — and it is what makes the ones you share worth something.
Scan a text now — free Join the hosted-badge waitlist
Why bother
Readers are wary — meet them with evidence. An AI-flooded feed makes every byline suspect. A Cobalynx certification doesn't ask readers to trust you or us: it shows them what was checked, when, with what detector version, and how often that detector is wrong.
Bound to your exact text. The certification carries a cryptographic fingerprint (SHA-256) of the certified text, computed with a documented, reproducible recipe that is printed on the report itself. Anyone can recompute the fingerprint and compare. Edit the text, and the certification honestly stops covering the new version — no silent drift. The fingerprint is tamper-evidence, not a signature: it proves the report still describes the text you scanned, not that we cryptographically signed it or independently verified who wrote it. The certificate id is derived from that same fingerprint, so it is reproducible, not a secret.
Issued by a specialized, neutral platform. Cobalynx does one thing: honest AI-text assessment with published error rates. No humanizer, no paraphraser, no content farm — nothing that profits from fooling detectors, including ours.
About Google — context, not a promise
Google's published guidance is that its ranking systems aim at “rewarding high-quality content, however it is produced”, and that “using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies” (Google Search Central, Feb 2023). A Cobalynx certification does not change your rankings — Google does not reward humanness per se. What it changes is what your readers, editors, or clients can verify about the text you publish.
How it works, today
- Scan. Paste your final text (150–10,000 words) into the free detector. No signup. Ordinary scans are zero-retention — processed in memory, discarded.
- Certify — free, live now. If the verdict is likely human, one click turns the result into a certification: a self-contained report with the certificate id, the score, the scan date, the detector version, and the text's SHA-256 fingerprint — plus a downloadable PDF and a watermarked badge preview with a copyable embed snippet. The free tier allows 10 certification requests per day per IP, and stores nothing. Any other verdict gets an honest explanation and the PDF scan report — we never issue a badge on uncertain evidence.
- Host it (waitlist). Hosted certificates will add what a free, stateless certification cannot: a public verification page showing the certified text in full, a clean badge served live from our domain, and re-verify after edits. Creating one will store — at your explicit request, and only then — your exact text, its fingerprint, the verdict, and the date, so the verification page can exist.
The badge
One badge, one meaning. A small SVG mark — the Cobalynx lynx, the verdict “Likely human”, the score, and the scan date. The alt text carries the score, the date, and the never-proof line for screen readers and text-only contexts. No badge exists for inconclusive or likely-AI results. The score it shows is a calibrated human-likelihood figure out of 100 — never a bare “percent-human” authorship label, and never a claim of proof. The verdict, the score, the date: that is all it says, because that is all we know. Free-tier previews are watermarked “PREVIEW”; hosted badges will be served clean, from our domain, so a revoked or superseded certificate's badge visibly changes everywhere it is embedded.
The embed snippet is one image and one link — no scripts (illustrative):
<a href="https://cobalynx.com/badge" rel="nofollow"><img
src="https://cobalynx.com/badge/preview.svg?score=97&date=2026-08-25"
width="200" height="44"
alt="Checked by Cobalynx — likely human (score 97/100, 2026-08-25)"></a>
rel="nofollow" ships by default — Google asks for widget
links to be nofollowed, and an honesty brand doesn't sell links. The badge
is for your readers; it is not a link-building device, and we will never
present it as one.
Pricing
Free today, with no payment taken: scanning, certifications, PDF reports, and the watermarked badge preview. Hosted certificates are the paid thing — they are what we must keep online, verifiable, and revocable for years.
| Free | Creator — $9/mo or $90/yr | Publisher — $29/mo or $290/yr | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scans (no signup) | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free certifications + one-time PDF reports | 10/day per IP | Included | Included |
| Badge preview (watermarked) | Yes | — | — |
| Hosted certificates (clean badge + verification page) | — | 30/mo, 1 site | 200/mo, 5 sites |
| Re-verify after edits (new version, old marked superseded) | — | Yes | Priority |
| Team seats | — | 1 | 3 |
| API | — | — | When it ships |
Annual = two months free. Hosted certificates are in a waitlisted beta while we finish the operational side — revocation, disputes, abuse handling — properly. Waitlist members get first access and the launch price locked for a year. No payment is taken today.
Integrity, in plain terms
- Hash-bound. A certification covers exactly one text: the one whose SHA-256 fingerprint it carries. The report prints the canonicalization recipe, so anyone can recompute the fingerprint and check the binding — no trust in us required.
- Dated and versioned. Every certification shows its scan date and detector version. A 2026 assessment stays a 2026 assessment; when the detector changes materially, old certifications say which version assessed them rather than being quietly rewritten.
- Edits end coverage — honestly. The certification never covers a URL, only the exact text. If the published article differs, the certification does not apply to the changed version. Hosted plans will add one-click re-verify: a new scan, a new certificate version, the old one kept and marked superseded.
- Revocable, once hosted. Hosted badges will be served by us, so a certificate used deceptively — a badge placed next to non-matching text — can be revoked, and every embedded copy of its badge will visibly change state.
- Always visible on every artifact: the score, the date, the detector version, and the line “Statistical assessment at time of scan — not proof of authorship.” — with our published error rates one link away.
What certification stores
Ordinary scans are zero-retention, and so are free certifications: the certification report is self-contained — it carries the text's SHA-256 fingerprint, score, date, and detector version — and nothing about it is stored on our servers. Hosted certificates, when they open from the waitlist, will be the one deliberate exception: creating one will mean asking us to store that exact text, its fingerprint, and its verdict so a public verification page can exist — and deleting the certificate will delete the stored text with it. That exception ships only after this policy states it in the same release.
The standing zero-retention promise, and how we prove it on every release, is on the privacy page.
Get hosted badges first
Scanning, certifications, and PDF reports are free today. Hosted certificates — the clean live badge, the public verification page, re-verify — open in waves. There is no signup form and no stored mailing list: the waitlist is a plain email from your mail app to ours, kept in our inbox and used for exactly one announcement.
Email contact@cobalynx.com to join the waitlist
We'll reply once when your wave opens, and you can ignore it forever. Launch pricing above is locked for a year for waitlist members.
Common questions
What does a certification actually claim?
That on its scan date, this exact text received a likely-human verdict from the Cobalynx detector, with the shown score. It is a statistical assessment with published error rates — not proof of authorship, and we never present it as proof. Every artifact says so on its face.
Can a wrong certification happen?
Yes, and we publish how often. On our deliberately difficult frozen evaluation set, 26.9% of the texts we called likely human were actually AI (223 of 829). In a real-world stream where most submissions are genuinely human-written, wrong certifications are far rarer — but the honest answer is that some will exist. That is why every certification carries its score, date, and detector version, links these numbers, and claims nothing more than the detector can back.
What if my certified text is edited later?
The certification covers the exact text it was issued for — never a URL. Fix a typo or rewrite a paragraph and the published version no longer matches the certified fingerprint; anyone who recomputes the hash can see that. The certification isn't invalidated — it just doesn't cover the new version. Hosted plans will add one-click re-verify: a new scan, a new certificate version, the old one kept and marked superseded.
Do you store my article when I certify it?
No. Free certifications are zero-retention like ordinary scans: the report is self-contained and nothing is kept on our servers. Hosted certificates (waitlist) will be different — storing your exact text, at your explicit request, is what makes a public verification page possible. The full storage story is on the privacy page.
Will the badge change my Google rankings?
No — and be suspicious of anyone who promises that. Google says it rewards helpful content however it is produced and penalizes scaled content abuse. The badge is for your readers, not for ranking systems — and the embed link carries rel="nofollow" by design.
What if my text comes back inconclusive or likely AI?
No badge — on any result except likely human. You can still download the PDF scan report. On our evaluation set we return inconclusive on 16.5% of documents rather than force a verdict; a badge that could mean “we weren't sure” would make every badge mean less.