US Brand Evidence Citation Table

Turn a small, buyer-owned evidence packet into a stable citation table for humans and machine-to-machine workflows. Submit normalized evidence rows and receive one deterministic JSON report, bounded Markdown citations, per-host and per-source counts, explicit limitations, and SHA-256 digests.

This Actor formats the evidence you provide. It does not browse, fetch, verify, rank, enrich, summarize, or infer facts. The facts, excerpts, and URLs are preserved in the JSON citation rows exactly after validation.

What you submit and receive

You submit 1–100 rows. Every row has:

• a unique opaque ASCII evidenceId;
• brandName, eventType, sourceName, and a bounded factual excerpt;
• observedAt in strict UTC format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ;
• an HTTPS sourceUrl without credentials, fragments, unsafe schemes, or a port other than 443.

You receive exactly one useful report row in the Dataset containing:

• citations, sorted by observed UTC, brand, event, source, URL, and evidence ID;
• the original facts and URLs, with no external lookup;
• citationMarkdown, a bounded Markdown table;
• hostCounts and sourceCounts;
• fixed warnings that sources were not fetched or verified and excerpts were not interpreted;
• input, citation, count, Markdown, and result SHA-256 digests.

The terminal OUTPUT receipt is written only after the named result-found Dataset push is confirmed. A delivery uncertainty is reported truthfully and the Actor never retries a possibly paid Dataset push.

Input

{
  "schemaVersion": "1.0",
  "rows": [
    {
      "evidenceId": "evidence-001",
      "brandName": "Northstar Coffee",
      "eventType": "price_change",
      "observedAt": "2026-07-31T09:30:00Z",
      "sourceName": "Buyer newsroom note",
      "sourceUrl": "https://example.com/northstar-price-note",
      "excerpt": "The buyer-supplied note says the seasonal blend price changed on July 31."
    }
  ]
}

Closed limits

The input is inline JSON only. The complete input is limited to 128 KiB UTF-8 and 100 rows. evidenceId is 1–64 ASCII characters. brandName and sourceName are 1–128 normalized characters. eventType is a 1–64 ASCII token. sourceUrl is 12–2,048 characters. excerpt is 1–2,000 normalized characters and at most 8 KiB UTF-8. Empty strings, leading/trailing whitespace, control characters, line breaks, duplicate IDs, invalid Gregorian dates, credentials, fragments, non-HTTPS schemes, and non-443 ports are rejected.

The report is limited to 64 KiB UTF-8 and its Markdown section to 48 KiB. A valid packet that cannot fit these output limits fails closed instead of returning a partial citation table.

Output and Dataset

The Dataset has one named result row. citations retains all seven input fields. hostCounts groups by the lower-case parsed URL hostname; sourceCounts groups by the exact source URL and includes that hostname. Counts are reconciled with totalRows, and all arrays are deterministically sorted.

No URL is opened. A valid URL means only that the submitted string passed the closed HTTPS syntax and safety rules; it is not evidence that the URL exists or supports the excerpt.

Pricing

Pay per event: one start charge plus one result-found charge only after one confirmed report Dataset write. The default Dataset event is not charged by this Actor. The run preflight requires a budget for both events and rejects an already-used result counter.

Tier	Discount	Start	Delivered result
FREE	0%	$0.00500	$0.01000
BRONZE	5%	$0.00475	$0.00950
SILVER	10%	$0.00450	$0.00900
GOLD	15%	$0.00425	$0.00850
PLATINUM	18%	$0.00410	$0.00820
DIAMOND	20%	$0.00400	$0.00800

Machine-to-machine use

The Actor is stateless, keyless, and suitable for an agent calling the Apify API or an Apify MCP server. A machine can validate the closed input schema, send the same public-task-shaped JSON, read the single Dataset row, and verify resultDigest without a browser or a human login. The Actor never calls another Actor and never requires a proxy or BYOK key.

Related public Actors

These public Actors can supply adjacent buyer-owned evidence workflows. Links are recommendations only; this Actor does not call them.

Actor	Use it for
US Brand Signal Metrics Aggregator	Aggregate normalized signal rows before creating a citation packet.
US Brand Signal Brief Composer	Compose a bounded brief after the citation table has been checked by the buyer.
US Brand Action Queue	Turn selected, buyer-approved evidence into next-action rows.
US Brand Evidence Snapshot Diff	Compare two buyer-supplied evidence snapshots.
US Brand Offer Evidence Normalizer	Normalize offer evidence before citing it.

FAQ

Does it verify the source? No. It does not fetch URLs or make a claim that a source is real, current, or accurate.

Does it infer a brand or event? No. brandName, eventType, and the excerpt are buyer-provided and preserved.

Why must timestamps be UTC? A closed UTC form keeps sorting and digests reproducible across machines and time zones. Dates must also be valid in the Gregorian calendar, including leap years.

Can I use it from an AI agent? Yes. It is designed for schema-first API/MCP calls and returns a bounded single-row report with machine-verifiable digests.

Why did a valid-looking packet fail? It may exceed the input or output byte limits, contain a duplicate ID, an invalid date, unsafe URL syntax, or a field that is not normalized. The Actor does not truncate or return partial facts.

Built by Zinin for bounded, auditable evidence workflows.