Step 7 of 8 · The register is the authority

Certificate and live status

A signed PDF proves that a document has not been altered. It does not prove that what the document says is still true. For a fact with a short half-life — this animal is alive, this animal is unencumbered — a document that travels on its own becomes a bearer instrument for a claim that expired days ago. So the certificate is a snapshot, and the endpoint it points at is the authority.

Certificate CERT-DEMO-0000000002 CERT-DEMO-0000000001 CERT-DEMO-0000000003

Certificate of registration

Certificate identifierCERT-DEMO-0000000002

Animal referenceANM-A0000000 opaque by design — the public endpoint reveals no owner, holding or location

Animal record ZAF 00101096 resolved by this console, which is authenticated — a member of the public cannot do this

SpeciesCattle (B. taurus)

BreedBonsmara

Issued—

Reliance window— how long the snapshot may be relied on before it must be re-read

This certificate carries no personal information about the owner.

Live status, read just now

GET /v1/certificates/{cert_id}/status — public, unauthenticated, no personal information. Anyone holding the certificate can check it; nobody needs an account, and nobody learns who the farmer is.

Valid

The register currently asserts this certificate's statement. Read again in an hour and it may not.

checked at 2026-09-08 13:55 UTC · reason reliance_window_elapsed

Now change the underlying fact

Record a death against the animal. Nothing about the certificate document changes — no new PDF is issued, no signature is invalidated. Only the register changes, and the status endpoint tells the truth on the next read.

Then refresh: the status flips to animal_deceased, driven by the event stream rather than by anyone editing the certificate.

Scan to verify

https://herdmark.co.za/v1/certificates/CERT-DEMO-0000000002/status

The QR resolves to the live endpoint, not to a copy of the document. A phone at an auction gate gets today's answer, not the answer that was true when the paper was printed.

This URL is browser-facing and is pinned by PUBLIC_API_URL. It is never the console's own server-to-server API_URL, which inside Docker is a hostname no phone can resolve. Behind herdmark.co.za, set PUBLIC_API_URL to the public API origin.

What the PDF is for

The signed PDF is still worth issuing — it is a labelled snapshot with an "as at" timestamp and a stated reliance window, and it works when there is no signal. It just is not the authority. The register is, and the certificate says so on its face.

Raw status response

Body

{
  "animal_ref": "ANM-A0000000",
  "as_at": "2026-09-03T00:00:00+00:00",
  "cert_id": "CERT-DEMO-0000000002",
  "checked_at": "2026-09-08T13:55:57.508131+00:00",
  "reason_code": "reliance_window_elapsed",
  "status": "valid"
}