# Verification — where the name comes from

TSL8 is short for *tessellate*, but that's the cover story. The real name comes from the verification step.

When a TSL8 arrives, the recipient needs to know one thing before they spend a minute on it: **this is safe, because it came from a person I know, who controls this LinkedIn.** Not a stranger, not a spoof, not a cold pitch laundered through an AI. A person whose identity is verifiable in the way identities are verifiable in 2025 — public profile, public work history, continuity of voice across a public record.

## What the verification block contains

Every TSL8 carries, at the top:

- **Sender.** Plain-text name.
- **Verified by.** A public identity the recipient can cross-reference in ten seconds. LinkedIn is the default. GitHub, a personal domain, or a public work history on an org site also work.
- **Source chain.** Where the raw material came from. An email the sender wrote on a specific date. A voice memo. A Google Doc. A Reddit post. The envoy does not invent content; it shapes what the sender already wrote.
- **Envoy permission.** A single line: "The envoy may read the sender's public LinkedIn with permission, to know who it is speaking to." This is opt-in per TSL8, not a global setting.

## Why LinkedIn

Not because LinkedIn is good. Because it is the thinnest available **shared public identity layer** that most professional recipients already trust at the level TSL8 needs — "is this person real, do they do roughly the kind of work they say they do, does their posting history look like a person and not a bot."

A sender can substitute a personal domain (`tom.example.com/about`), a verified GitHub profile, or an organization page. The contract is: *the recipient can confirm the sender is a continuous public person in under a minute, without clicking past a login wall.*

## Why the envoy reads it

Because when the recipient asks "who is this guy," the envoy needs to answer. And the answer should be accurate, bounded, and honest: *here is what the public LinkedIn says; here is what I don't know; here is where to check for yourself.*

The envoy does not claim information it doesn't have. If LinkedIn says five years at Company X, the envoy says five years at Company X. If LinkedIn is thin, the envoy says LinkedIn is thin.

## What the recipient can opt out of

Everything. The envoy can be declined. The verification block can be read and the recipient can close the tab. No tracking, no "Tom has read your reply." The TSL8 is a letter, not a pixel.

## The name, plainly

We named it after the verification step because the verification step is what makes the rest of it possible. Without it, the envoy is a stranger with a pitch. With it, the envoy is a crew member working on behalf of someone the recipient has already agreed to hear out for ninety seconds.

Tessellate is the shape. Verification is the foundation.