Terms of Service

Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Version: v1

1. What RepoVerifier is

RepoVerifier ("we," "us") publishes independent, evidence-based reviews of open-source repositories. Some reviews are written by the site's founder ("Founder-tested"). Others are submitted by community members who tested a repository themselves ("Community-tested"). Every review, whoever wrote it, is checked and approved by an editor before publication. No review is published automatically.

2. Submitting a review

By submitting a review through RepoVerifier, you agree to the following:

• You tested it yourself. Your submission must reflect testing you personally performed. You should provide evidence a reviewer can check (a fork, branch, or linked recording or screenshot); a fork or branch link is expected for Overhyped and Dangerous verdicts.
• Free to submit, always. Submitting a review costs nothing. Payment, sponsorship, or any other consideration can never influence whether a submission is approved or what verdict it receives.
• Disclose your affiliation. If you are the author or maintainer of the repository, work for or are paid by the project or its company, or have any other connection to it, you must disclose that connection at submission. An undisclosed affiliation, if discovered, can result in the review being removed.
• Negative findings are welcome. You do not need to find something positive to submit. Verdicts describing serious problems (Overhyped, Dangerous) are held to a higher evidence bar — see Section 4 — but are not discouraged.
• Evidence is human-reviewed, not independently execution-verified. An editor reviews the evidence you provide. RepoVerifier does not independently re-run, execute, or forensically verify every claim in every submission before publication.

3. Your public identity

• Your reviewer identity (display name and handle) is randomly generated for you; it is not created from your Google account. Nothing about your identity is made public until you explicitly consent, and only if a review of yours is approved.
• Handles and display names are randomly generated and are not independently identity-verified. RepoVerifier does not confirm that a display name belongs to the person or entity it appears to.
• A profile page under your handle exists publicly only once you have at least one approved, published review. Before that, and after a review is removed (if it was your only one), the page does not exist publicly.
• A profile photo is never shown unless you opt in.

4. Verdicts about real projects

Some reviews conclude that a repository's claims do not hold up (Overhyped) or that using it poses real risk (Dangerous). Because these verdicts make public statements about a real, named project:

• Submissions with these verdicts require stronger evidence and independent review by an editor before publication, including an editor's own attempt to reproduce the finding.
• We are not a testing laboratory and do not guarantee that a published verdict is correct. Verdicts reflect the tester's and editor's good-faith assessment based on the evidence available at the time.
• If you are the maintainer or representative of a project discussed in a review and believe it is inaccurate, use the reporting process in Section 7. We take factual disputes about published content seriously.

5. Editorial decisions

• All publication decisions are made by RepoVerifier's editor(s), who may approve, reject, or request changes to any submission for any reason related to evidence quality, policy compliance, or editorial judgment.
• Editorial decisions are final unless a factual error in the decision itself is shown. Requesting changes to a submission is not a right to unlimited resubmission; revision limits may apply.
• Editorial review can take time. Any estimate we give you about review timing is an estimate, not a promise.

6. Recognition and certificates

• An approved review may come with a certificate and public profile recognition (including a limited "founding tester" designation for an early cohort of approved reviewers). These are recognition of a published contribution, not a certification, endorsement, or warranty of the reviewed project, and not an accreditation of you as a professional reviewer.
• We do not claim a repository is "verified" in any formal sense. Published material describes what was tested and what an editor reviewed — see the Editorial Policy for the exact language used.

7. Reporting and takedown

• Anyone — including a project's maintainer — may report a published review using the contact process described in the Editorial Policy.
• We aim to respond to reports within a week and will act on substantiated reports by removing (unpublishing) the review and revoking its certificate. A removed review is not automatically restored.
• We keep a private record of reports and removal decisions. We do not disclose a reporter's identity to the person whose review was reported.

8. Data we keep

• We keep your randomly generated display name and handle, your submission content, and your consent and policy-acceptance records for as long as your account and reviews exist.
• Report and contact messages are kept for a limited period (currently 90 days), extended for as long as a dispute about them remains open.
• We do not store your IP address in connection with a submission, report, or contact message. A temporary, in-memory rate-limiting mechanism may use your IP address briefly to prevent abuse; this is never written to a database or associated with your submitted content.

9. Accounts and access

• Signing in requires a Google account. We are not responsible for the security of your Google account.
• You must be 16 or older to submit a review.
• We may suspend or restrict submission access for abuse, repeated policy violations, or suspected fraudulent activity, including through automated limits on how many submissions can be pending or submitted in a given period.
• Submission may be temporarily unavailable, including because our review capacity is limited. This is not a denial of your specific submission.

10. Liability and disclaimers

• Reviews are opinions. A published review is the good-faith opinion of the tester and the editor, based on the evidence available at the time. It is not a guarantee, a certification or professional advice.
• No warranty. RepoVerifier and everything on it are provided "as is" and "as available." We do not promise that any review is accurate, complete or up to date, or that the site will always be available.
• Limit of liability. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss or damage that results from relying on a review, or from the site being unavailable or not working as expected.
• Your submissions. You are responsible for what you submit.

Governing law and where disputes are heard will be added when the operator is registered.

11. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The version you accepted at the time of your submission is what governs that submission; continued use after a change means later submissions are governed by the current version.

12. Contact

Questions about these Terms: use the contact process on the Editorial Policy page.

This is a plain-language policy for an early-stage project and has not been reviewed by a lawyer.