How often are supplier commitments re-checked?

Weekly. Every source document recorded against a score is re-fetched and hashed with volatile page furniture removed, so cosmetic changes such as a rotating build identifier do not register as a changed commitment.

What is kept when a commitment changes?

The date, the document, and the wording both before and after the change. The record is append-only and a build gate fails if it ever loses entries, because a discarded delta cannot be reconstructed by any later run.

Does a change automatically alter a supplier’s score?

No. A changed document is a prompt for a human to re-read and rule, never an automatic adjustment. If a score moves it moves with a dated changelog entry, and the verified date becomes the day a person read the new page.

Can this record be reproduced by another publication?

Not retrospectively. A dated record of what a supplier published in the past can only be accumulated by having been watching at the time. A publication starting later can match the method but never the history, and the gap widens every week.

Is the changes record free to use?

Yes. It is published as an open dataset alongside every other dataset on this site, free to use with attribution under the standing citation terms.

The Index Desk

When suppliers change what they promise

By Rachel Julian, Editor-in-Chief · August 5, 2026 · 3 min read

Every commitment document behind a score on this site is re-read weekly. When one changes, the date and the wording are kept — permanently, and from a start date that cannot be back-dated.

Direct answer: The Sales Traveler re-reads every published commitment document its scores depend on, on a weekly schedule, and keeps a permanent dated record of when one changes and what the wording was before and after. It has been watching 54 documents across 24 suppliers since 2026-08-05. A change is reported, never interpreted: whether a revision improves or weakens a commitment is a human ruling that arrives as a dated re-score, because deciding what a document means is not something a machine may do here.

This desk has been re-reading every commitment document behind its scores since 2026-08-05. Nothing has changed yet.

That is the honest state of a record on the day it opens, and it is worth publishing rather than waiting for something to happen. The value of this page is not today's contents — it is the date at the top of it. Everything reported here from now on is measured from a timestamp that already exists, and no publication that starts watching later can produce it retrospectively.

Supplier	Changed	What it now says
No changes recorded yet.

What exactly is being watched?

Every source document recorded against a score on this site — the vendor's own pricing page, product documentation, published terms or brand standard. Currently 54 documents across 24 suppliers and 3 instruments.

Each is re-fetched weekly and hashed with volatile page furniture stripped out, so a rotating build identifier or a changing session token does not read as a changed commitment. When the hash moves, both the previous and the current text are kept. The record is append-only, and a build gate fails if it ever shrinks — a deleted delta cannot be recovered by a later run.

Does a change mean a supplier got better or worse?

This page does not say, and will not. A supplier may have clarified wording, corrected an error, reorganised a page, or genuinely added or withdrawn a commitment. Deciding which is a ruling, it rests on reading the document, and a human makes it — it arrives as a re-score with a dated changelog, not as an automatic adjustment.

What is asserted here is narrow and checkable: this document was one thing on this date and is another now, and here are the passages that differ.

Why does a record like this get harder to copy over time?

Because it can only be accumulated. A competing publication can produce a better-looking ranking next quarter, but it cannot state what a supplier's commitment page said before it started watching. That gap never closes — it widens by exactly one week, every week.

It is also why this page ships while it is empty. The date it starts is the asset.

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Every figure on this page is computed at build time from the desk's own append-only evidence record, which is audited by a gate that fails if it shrinks. Changes are quoted verbatim from retained text and are never paraphrased. The Sales Traveler is independent and reader-funded — a partnership buys reach, never a rating.

When suppliers change what they promise

What exactly is being watched?

Does a change mean a supplier got better or worse?

Why does a record like this get harder to copy over time?

Related in the canon

Don't just read the discipline.Run it.

Don't just read the discipline.
Run it.