The Sondage Standard is the set of commitments, principles, and arguments that govern the work. It is not policy. It is not branding. It is the non-negotiable ground beneath every Season conducted, every practitioner credentialed, and every archive accessioned under the Sondage name. Four pages extend from this one, and readers serious about the project are encouraged to follow each in turn.

An Emerging Threat to Legacy Preservation

Synthetic biography is filling the archive of ordinary lives at scale, before any standard of provenance exists to constrain it. Sondage names this condition the Authentication Horizon, and the record it is producing the Commingled Archive. The argument, and its consequences for conscious legacy in the synthetic age, is laid out at The Threat.

The Three Foundational Commitments

Sondage holds three commitments as non-negotiable — the Human Standard, which refuses AI in the collection and interpretation of a primary source; Documented Provenance, which binds every recording to a certified chain of human custody; and the Non-Custodial Mandate, under which Sondage retains no ownership of the Fellow's archive. The  Foundational Commitments page articulates each in full.

The Founder

A platform that sets a standard owes the reader an account of who is making the argument, on what formation, and with what record of work. The founder's page traces that lineage, from Appalachian churches through administrative leadership at Berkeley and UCLA to the Pacific Crest Trail and the founding of Sondage.

Field Notes

The Sondage Standard is a working document, not a static one. Field Notes collects ongoing essays from the founder and the appointed Guild, organized around the questions the Standard keeps having to answer as the synthetic era develops.