Orphograph

Docs · Quickstart

Five minutes, start to settled argument.

A walkthrough for a first-time visitor. No account, no installation, no payment is required to complete the five steps below. The receipt produced at the end is the instrument used six months or six years from now, when the question is whether a particular file existed by a particular date.

If something is unclear at any step, the long form is at folder anchoring by Merkle root and why a Bitcoin-anchored hash matters. Neither page is required reading to finish the quickstart.

Step 1

Drop a file onto the office.

Visit orphograph.com. Drag any file from your desktop onto the dotted region in the middle of the page. Then press the anchor button. The browser computes the file's fingerprint locally; the file bytes themselves do not leave your machine.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                              │
│         · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·          │
│         ·                         ·          │
│         ·   drop a file here      ·          │
│         ·                         ·          │
│         · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·          │
│                                              │
│              [  anchor  ]                    │
│                                              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Step 2

Wait about thirty seconds for the receipt.

The office aggregates submissions on a short cycle and commits them to the Bitcoin chain through OpenTimestamps. Once the cycle closes, a receipt with a sixteen-character identifier is returned. The page advances on its own; no refresh is required.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│   Receipt:  ChvTMbYLIACHEHJT                 │
│   Anchored: 2026-05-20  21:14:07 UTC         │
│   Bitcoin commitment: pending (~1 hour)      │
│                                              │
│   [ download receipt ]   [ copy URL ]        │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Step 3

Save the receipt URL.

Copy the URL of the receipt page. Email it to yourself, paste it into a note application, drop it into a project log, or print the page. The URL is what is needed later; the file itself stays where it has always lived. The office does not depend on the URL being secret.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│   To:      [email protected]              │
│   Subject: Orphograph receipt — 2026-05-20   │
│                                              │
│   https://orphograph.com/r/ChvTMbYLIACHEHJT  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Step 4

Six months from now, someone disputes the file.

A counterparty asks whether the file is recent or whether it was assembled after the fact. Hand them the URL saved in step three. They open it; the receipt page shows the file's fingerprint, the recorded time, and the Bitcoin block the fingerprint was committed to.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│   Receipt:  ChvTMbYLIACHEHJT                 │
│   SHA-256:  a975f135f3bb1d7f…                │
│   Block:    #859,432  (2026-05-20 21:18 UTC) │
│   Calendars: 5 of 5 confirmed                │
│                                              │
│   [ verify in browser ]   [ download proof ] │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Step 5

The chain confirms what the receipt records.

The counterparty opens the verifier in their own browser, or runs the offline command-line verifier locally. Either tool re-derives the fingerprint from the file they hold, walks the OpenTimestamps proof to a Bitcoin block, and reports whether the recorded block confirms the recorded time. No call to the office is required; the chain is the trust anchor.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│   Verifier output                            │
│                                              │
│   file SHA-256       OK                      │
│   Merkle path        OK                      │
│   Bitcoin commitment OK   block #859,432     │
│                                              │
│   Result: receipt is valid.                  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The full verification paths — browser, offline command line, raw Bitcoin chain — are documented at /docs/verify.html.

Next steps

Disclaimer. The office anchors the existence of a byte sequence at a recorded time. The office does not certify authorship, truth, originality, or compliance with any external standard, and does not give legal advice. A receipt is a description of what was anchored, not a judgment about what the anchored thing means. A customer with an actual dispute should consult counsel admitted in the relevant jurisdiction.