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Akan Vault

How it works

From upload to verified, citable record

Preservation, provenance, rights, verification, cultural governance, and citation integrity are first-class capabilities. This is the path every item follows.

  1. 01

    Contribution

    A contributor chooses a context (self, family or community, or institution), uploads files directly to quarantined storage, and records title, description, creator, date, place, language, people, topics, and source history. Uncertain dates such as "circa 1920" or "before 1865" are kept as entered.

  2. 02

    Rights, consent, and cultural context

    Each item records who holds rights, what consent was given, whether the material may be displayed, downloaded, transcribed, used in AI retrieval, or sent to an external AI provider, and whether any cultural protocol or embargo applies. Nothing is permitted by default.

  3. 03

    Safe processing

    Files are checksummed, scanned for malware, and analyzed for technical metadata. The approved original is moved to immutable preservation storage. Access copies, thumbnails, and (where policy permits) OCR or transcription are produced as separate derivatives labeled with the tool and date that produced them.

  4. 04

    Human review

    Rights reviewers, metadata reviewers, and historical reviewers examine the original, the derivatives, the provenance, and any machine suggestions. They can comment on individual fields, request changes, approve within their authority, escalate disputes, and disclose conflicts of interest. Every transition is recorded with who, when, and why.

  5. 05

    Publication and discovery

    Only records with all policy-mandated approvals are published. Public record pages show the object first, then its transcript, date with uncertainty, places with historical names, related people and events, provenance, rights and reuse terms, verification status, and citation information.

  6. 06

    Akan AI

    Akan AI answers questions only from approved, retrieval-eligible evidence. Each factual claim carries citations to a specific record, page, paragraph, or transcript segment that the reader is authorized to open. When the Vault does not hold enough verified evidence, it says so.

What is built so far

The platform foundation is in place: the data store with geographic and vector search extensions, the immutable audit log, the job system, the design system, and the AI service boundary. Contributor upload, review, public search, and Akan AI are being delivered in phases and will appear here only once they work end to end.