Docs · Credentials
Earned by coverage, signed by math
GenBodha credentials are issued automatically from what you actually do: graded labs across your discipline’s skill graph. They are AI-assisted and lab-graded — completion credentials carry no proctored exam or live defense. Each credential is cryptographically signed and verifiable in seconds, and states its own method, so a reviewer always knows exactly what it certifies.
What it is
Evidence that you completed graded, hands-on labs covering a measured share of a discipline’s skills, with AI assistance available throughout.
What it is not
A proctored exam, a timed test, or a substitute for an interview. It certifies coverage and applied practice — not unassisted recall.
Verified (held-out) — beta
Everything above is a completion credential: lab-graded, AI-assisted. Verified is a separate, harder tier — now in early beta. You earn it by passing one held-out checkpoint: a problem the course didn’t walk you through, graded automatically on hidden tests you never see — with the AI pair-programmer switched off in today’s checkpoint workspace (the assistance setting is recorded in the credential). Each Verified credential states exactly what its checkpoint tested — the scope is printed on the credential itself, so it never claims more than the problem you actually passed.
Verified is in early beta: a first checkpoint is gradable today, but no credential is issued and no profile shows a Verified badge yet. When issuance turns on, a badge appears only after a held-out checkpoint passes — signed and verifiable exactly like the credentials above, but certifying that one checkpoint instead of overall coursework coverage.
The ladder
Foundational
Shareable nowPassed graded labs covering at least 25% of the discipline's skill graph.
Associate
Shareable now~45% of the skill graph, with at least one passed lab in every skill area.
Advanced (Lab Proficiency)
Held — verification pending80%+ of the skill graph, every area ≥50% — AI-assisted lab work, not a proctored exam.
Distinguished
Rare — cross-disciplineProfessional or higher across two or more disciplines, with sustained activity.
Tiers are per-discipline (except Distinguished, which is cross-discipline). You can hold different tiers in different disciplines at the same time. “Coverage” is the share of a discipline’s skill graph you’ve reached with passed, distinct graded labs.
Foundational
A graded on-ramp. You’ve passed enough graded labs to cover at least a quarter of the discipline’s skill graph — not yet broad coverage, but a real, signed start.
Associate
Demonstrated breadth, not just depth in one corner of the discipline.
Professional
Trained across the discipline, no weak pillars — “broadly trained on the curriculum.” That is exactly, and only, what the signed credential claims: it verifies as Authentic · lab-graded (completion), not as a held-out proof of unaided skill. The artifact never says more than the work behind it.
Advanced (Lab Proficiency)
The top skill-graph tier: near-complete coverage with real breadth in every area. Earned over AI-assisted, lab-graded work — deliberately not called “Expert,” because there is no proctored exam behind it. (The separate Frontier-earned Expert tier — see “Credentials are live” above — is its own path, not this tier.)
Distinguished
Breadth across fields. Rare by design.
How your credential is signed
Every graded lab you pass becomes a signed entry in your evidence record. When your coverage of a discipline’s skill graph crosses a tier threshold, our promotion service automatically issues a W3C Verifiable Credential — which also records its own method (AI-assisted, lab-graded, no live defense) so the claim is never ambiguous.
The credential is signed with an Ed25519 key held in Google Cloud KMS, and the matching public key is published at genbodha.ai/.well-known/did.json. Each credential names the key version that signed it, so the key can rotate without invalidating earlier credentials. Tiers are awarded by an automated rule engine from your evidence — no one hand-assigns a tier. And because every credential carries a public, signed revocation status, a credential we pull (or re-issue) fails verification against our published revocation status from the moment we revoke it — revocability is the feature that keeps the signal trustworthy, not a loophole.
How verifiers check it
A recruiter, ATS, or LinkedIn integration pastes your credential URL into our verifier widget. The check doesn’t ask anyone to take our word for it: the credential JSON, our public signing keys, and the signed revocation status are all public endpoints, and the signature check runs in your browser — not on a server we control. One honest caveat: that check runs through our verifier today, not a generic W3C VC library; standard-library interop is on the roadmap.
- They fetch our public key once from
/.well-known/did.json. - They verify the Ed25519 signature in the browser against that key.
- They check revocation against a public, signed status list, or hit
/api/credentials/{id}/verifyfor a one-shot active/expired/revoked answer. - They get a yes/no in seconds — the only calls to us are the public key and the status list, both public, signed endpoints.
If a credential is altered after signing — by you, by us, by anyone in between — the check fails. That’s the point.
Why credentials expire in place
Coverage credentials (Foundational through Advanced) are valid for 24 months. The Frontier-earned Expert and the cross-discipline Distinguished tier are re-checked sooner — 18 months — so the highest claims stay the most current. GenAI skills move fast, so coverage is re-checked rather than assumed permanent — a credential reflects what you can do now, not five years ago.
Where to next
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