METHODOLOGY
This page explains where evidence comes from, what counts, how duplicates are removed, how scores are calculated and how dossier status changes. You do not need to trust Timory. You need to be able to audit it.
§ 01
Sources are not treated as interchangeable. A concrete feature request in a software issue and a founder's promotional launch post carry different evidentiary weight.
| Source | Primary role | What can count |
|---|---|---|
| First-hand pain and spending | Specific experiences, constraints and stated payments | |
| Hacker News | Technical and operating context | Concrete problems and constraints, not broad opinions |
| GitHub Issues | Feature gaps | Missing workflows; routine bugs are excluded |
| YouTube | Practitioner comments under videos | Signals only; original text is not quoted publicly |
| Stack Exchange (Software Recommendations) | Explicit search demand | Requests with clear requirements |
| Indie Hackers | Founder context | Attributable customer evidence; launch copy is excluded |
| MicroConf | Long-form context | Attributable customer statements, not general advice |
| Shopify Community | Seller operations and platform problems | Signals only; original text is not quoted publicly |
Eight communities, nine feeds: the extra feed is MicroConf, whose talk channel and blog are collected separately. Stack Exchange currently means the Software Recommendations site only, and that is the row the source policy table below refers to.
SOURCE POLICY
Every public evidence card keeps a direct source link, while excerpt limits vary by source. This applies to the public site so traceability does not become republication.
| Tier | Sources | Public treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Short quotes | Hacker News / Stack Exchange / GitHub Issues | Short excerpts, attribution and source links under each source policy. |
| Amber | Indie Hackers / MicroConf | Conservative observation; excerpts default to 100 characters with a source link. |
| Red | Post title, evidence metadata, source link and at most a 50-character excerpt. | |
| Metadata only | YouTube / Shopify Community | Signals and source counts may be used; original text is not quoted publicly. |
Source content and platform rules remain with their respective rights holders. Public availability is not treated as ownership, and no platform endorsement is implied.
§ 02
Every excerpt is classified by where the claim comes from. First-hand pain, current spend, explicit willingness to pay and concrete feature requests can affect confidence. Second-hand reports, expert opinion and promotional content remain contextual but do not raise the score.
§ 03
Several excerpts from one post still count as one content item. Repeated posts by one author are discounted. Closely related signals are merged only when they describe the same underlying problem for the same kind of user. This prevents one loud voice from looking like a market.
The brand mark diagrams this rule: three matching cards overlap with increasing opacity, showing that the same thing must be stated independently more than once before it becomes evidence.
§ 04
Each factor is calculated from stored evidence. The same evidence produces the same score. The number is a confidence measure for the underlying problem, not a forecast of revenue, market size or founder fit.
§ 05
Evidence level says how far a need has been corroborated. Signal records an early pattern from a small number of independent items. Corroborated requires independent recurrence: ≥3 distinct content items across ≥2 source families or ≥3 distinct authors. Payment-backed additionally requires first-hand payment evidence — someone stating their own current spend or a specific amount they would pay.
Fading is not a fourth level. It is a recency tag shown alongside any level when no new evidence has appeared for ≥21 days; the evidence already gathered does not become weaker, it just stops being restated. Archived (≥45 days) preserves history and is not listed publicly. Routine active-tier recalculation is upgrade-only; a human audit correction can lower a level when supporting evidence is withdrawn. Payment-backed means payment evidence exists in the record — not that the business is worth building.
§ 06
The system first extracts short evidence excerpts, evidence type and source context. Code then deduplicates counts, calculates factors and applies status thresholds. The extraction layer does not decide which business is worth building, and the scoring layer does not invent evidence.
§ 07
IMPORTANT LIMIT
Payment-backed does not mean worth building
The dossier can support claims that a problem is real, recurring and connected to spending. It cannot establish total market size, customer accessibility, acquisition cost, implementation difficulty or your personal fit. Those decisions remain yours.
PRIVATE INPUTS
The Public Evidence Lab applies the source, quotation and recurrence rules above to public material. A Positioning Evidence Sprint starts from a small set of customer-owned, authorized and redacted excerpts. Private material does not enter the public corpus, does not appear in public dossiers and is not used for another client.
The same analytical discipline still applies: one account does not become a pattern; customer words stay separate from sales retellings; old evidence is not presented as current; fact, interpretation and recommendation are labeled separately; unsupported inference is marked; and every central conclusion maps back to an evidence ID.
See the input template and refusal list. Do not send customer material through the public website or a first-contact email.
PRIVACY
We collect an email address only when you subscribe to a brief, unlock full evidence chains or create a market watch. Page views are counted on our own server — no analytics or advertising cookies — and the site keeps short-lived access logs that include the raw IP address, so we do not describe this site as anonymous. Retention periods, the one functional cookie, and how to have your data deleted are all set out in full on the privacy policy. You can unsubscribe through the link in every email.
TERMS
Timory provides research evidence and monitoring, not investment, legal or business advice. Source content remains the property of its authors and platforms. Public excerpts are intentionally short and linked back to their source. Availability, scoring rules and early-access plans may change as the product develops.