Public Reseals & Redacted Verification

How public reseals and redacted verification work: what a reseal attests, which fields may be redacted and how verifiers treat redacted CER documents.

Reseal in one sentence

A reseal is a new, independently signed CER covering a redacted view of an original execution. It has its own certificateHash, its own node signature, and a provenance pointer back to the original. The original record remains valid for any holder.

Why reseals exist

Original CERs often contain content the publisher cannot expose publicly: raw prompts, customer data, internal tool calls. The public verifier cannot show that content. Instead, it returns a redacted reseal: a new bundle that covers only what is safe to publish, signed by the node.

This preserves three properties at once: the original record stays intact and locally verifiable, the public artifact is independently verifiable, and sensitive content never appears in the public surface.

Reseal artifact shape

{
  "bundleType": "signed-redacted-reseal",
  "certificateHash": "sha256:<NEW_RESEALED_HASH>",
  "provenance": {
    "originalCertificateHash": "sha256:<ORIGINAL_HASH>",
    "reason": "public-redaction"
  },
  "receipt": {
    "alg": "Ed25519",
    "kid": "node-key-2026-01",
    "sig": "base64..."
  }
}

Requested hash vs returned public hash

Requested hash: the hash you put in the URL or query (often the original certificateHash).
Returned public hash: the certificateHash of the artifact the verifier actually displays. For redacted resources, this is the resealed hash, not the original.
These two hashes MAY differ. The verifier surfaces both, with their roles labelled. A difference is expected behavior, not a failure.

What is being verified in the public verifier

The public artifact's integrity: the resealed bundle's certificateHash, signature, and node receipt are cryptographically validated.
The original certificateHash is preserved as a provenance pointer. The verifier does not re-verify the original bundle, because the original content is not present.
Anyone who holds the original (unredacted) bundle can still verify it locally with verifyCer().

What provenance preserves

The original certificateHash, so the reseal is traceable to its source.
The reason for redaction (e.g. "public-redaction").
A clear bundleType (signed-redacted-reseal) so verifiers do not confuse it with an original.

Supplemental signals

A reseal MAY carry supplemental context.signals that are not bound by the new certificateHash. This is reported as VERIFIED (supplemental) and is not a failure. See Verification Semantics.

What this is NOT

Not a failure of the original artifact. The original is still valid for any holder.
Not a hash collision or re-signing of the original. It is a new artifact.
Not a way to alter execution history. Reseals can only redact, not modify.