You run the machine. It watches. It does not steer.
You sit where you always sit, you press start and you press stop, and you were asked before any of it. Nothing of ours is connected to the machine while you work, so nothing we make can move anything.
What a person can walk up to and check.
The page starts here because this is where you start. Before a move of yours is recorded you are owed an answer to one question: what is on my machine, and what can it do. The answer is short, and you can see all of it standing on the ground with the engine off.
If you want the whole day laid out in the plainest words we have, from the walk-around to the case going back in the truck, it is written out on its own page.
How it is capturedNothing gets wired in.
No harness cut, no controller touched, no power taken off the machine. Where a separate recorder is used it runs on its own battery and reads the dash the same way you do, by looking at it.
Your controls feel the same.
A control has to behave under your hand exactly as it did before. If it changes the feel it is not fit to record the feel, and that is checked before any kit is fitted.
It cannot move a machine, or stop one.
There is no actuator and no wire to one. It is not an interlock and it is not a guard, and no part of a safety case rests on it.
It cannot stay on the machine.
It comes off, photographed before and after, and leaves no mark.
The recorder, and the way a record is released to a machine and counted, are the subject of patent applications now pending. It is the reason this page says what is recorded and not how.
Wired to nothing, and photographed that way.
The recorder watches from outside the machine. It cannot move anything, stop anything, or stay.
A check a person on your crew can run before the first session, and again when the recorder comes off.
Every part of the boundary is something a person can see from the ground, so the check is written for the person on the ground. It is not the machine's own walk-around and it does not stand in for it. It is the check on the fitting, and anyone on the crew can run it.
- 01Nothing cutEvery harness on the machine is as it was before the recorder came near it. No loom opened, no plug pulled, no wire cut. If you find one, the check is over and the session cannot show its set-up.
- 02Nothing tappedNo controller touched, and nothing of ours plugged into the machine anywhere. If there is a lead from the recorder to the machine, something was connected that should not have been, and the session is refused.
- 03Nothing powered off the machineThe recorder runs on its own battery and takes no power off the machine. There is nothing of ours on the machine's electrical system to find.
- 04The controls feel the sameRun every stick, wheel and pedal through its travel before you start. If anything feels different from yesterday, stop there and say so.
- 05The photograph, beforeThe recorder where it sits, the controls it sits beside, and nothing connected, photographed before the first session. That photograph goes into the record, and a session without it cannot show its set-up.
- 06Off, and the photograph afterThe recorder comes off and leaves no mark. The machine is photographed again as it was found, and the two photographs and the check between them are kept with every session made under them that day.
A check that only we could run would be a claim we make about ourselves. This one is written so that the person who trusts us least can run it, and the photograph is there so that somebody who was not there can check it years later.
It goes on the controls the machine already has, and it comes back off.
This one says what it is, as a person standing at the machine sees it. It comes to you in a case, by courier, after you hire on, with a video for your phone. What is in the case goes on the sticks, the pedals or the wheel your machine already has, and when the recording is done it comes off, goes back in the case, and comes back to us prepaid.
It goes on the machine.
What comes out of the case sits at the controls that are already there, beside where you work, and nowhere near the working end of the machine.
It brings its own power.
Its own battery, and nothing else. Nothing cut, nothing tapped, nothing plugged into your machine, and no power drawn off it. When the day is over there is nothing of ours left on your electrical system to find.
It goes on after the walk-around.
The machine's own walk-around comes first, always, and the kit goes on after it. It is photographed where it sits with nothing connected, and photographed again once it is off, and both photographs go into the record.
The sticks feel the same.
You run every control through its travel before anything is recorded, and it behaves under your hand as it did yesterday. A stick that felt different would not be worth recording, because the feel is the thing being recorded.
You press start. You press stop.
Nothing is taken down before you press the one and nothing after you press the other. Nobody from us is in the cab while it runs, and nobody from us is standing at the track watching you.
It comes off and leaves no mark.
It goes back in its case. No hole, no scar, nothing left behind on a stick, and the machine goes back to work as you found it.
What the kit takes down between start and stop is set out in the next section, and it is the same three things every time, with the ground of that day alongside them. Out of enough of those, and only where you have said yes to each use, we build a way of working, which is the name here for how you run a machine once it has been recorded, admitted and built. What we build is a tool. It runs under your name, on your licence, pays you every hour, passes to your family, and you can end it. What is made of your skill is ours, for you, and the skill itself is never bought. You own your skill, always and forever.
Apart from each other they are not a technique.
Three things go down while you work. Take any one of them away and what is left is a person moving levers, which teaches nobody anything.
What your hands did
Every move you made on the sticks and the pedals, as you made it, down to the small ones you would never think to mention, and the moment a lever comes off its rest closest of all. Where every control sits and how fast it is moving. The force at the grip, sampled faster than anything else, because the moment a lever breaks away from its detent is short and it is where the technique shows.
What the machine did back
A boom that carries past the spot and comes back to it. A stick that hunts under you when the oil is cold. The machine answering you is half of the job. Not only what your hands did, but what the machine did in answer. Overshoot, settling, hunting. A record of hands without a record of the answer is a gesture.
What you were looking at
The screen in front of you, as it read at the moment you moved. What you were seeing is the reason you did what you did, so a record without it leaves out the reason. The display is what the machine told you at the moment you acted. The frame is kept tight on purpose: your screen and your hands, and as little else as we can manage.
Apart, the three are ordinary facts about a day. Together, on the same clock and to the same instant, they are the thing nobody has ever managed to write down: what you were seeing, what you did about it, and what the machine did in answer, in the order it happened.
One chain is a plain idea. Everything in a session is sealed together as one, so nobody can swap a picture out and leave it sitting there looking right beside readings nobody touched.
Timed against one clock, and held inside one chain, so an altered picture fails the same check as an altered reading.
Start and stop are yours, and nothing presses either for you.
Nothing is recorded before you press start, and nothing after you press stop.
The recorder has no automatic beginning and no automatic end. You press start, and from then until you press stop it watches the seat. No clock and no setting can press either for you. What was recorded between those two acts is the session, and nothing is added to it afterwards and nothing is taken out.
Stop and start again and you have two sessions, not one. Each carries its own name and its own seal, which this site calls its identifier and its signature, so each counts itself, and each is licensed, paid for and withdrawn on its own.
The recorder asks nothing of you between the two. It does not prompt you, and it does not want you to explain yourself while you work, because a person explaining their work while they work is doing a different job, and the record would be of that job. What is recorded is you working the way you work, on the job you did, and not a performance for the recorder. If you or somebody with you wants to mark a moment, you can, against the session's own clock, and a note marks a place in the record without changing it.
A box ticked in software is a claim software makes about itself.
A photograph of the disconnected state, carried inside the record where it cannot be swapped out quietly, is a claim a person made and can be held to. That is a different kind of evidence, and it is the kind that survives somebody asking hard questions years later.
Who makes the claim
A person, on the day, with their name on it: before the first session and again when the recorder comes off. Anyone on the crew can stand beside them and see the same thing.
Where it lives
Inside the session, under the same signature as everything else in it. Change it afterwards and the chain does not verify, and the refusal names the first span that failed.
Two days that look the same on paper are not the same day.
Frozen ground and ground that has been under water for a week are not the same day, and the record says which one it was.
What the ground did is recorded too.
The same pass on frozen ground is not the same pass.
The same pass on frozen ground and on ground that has been under water for a week is not the same pass, and a record that could not tell one day from the other would teach the wrong day. So the ground, the material and the weather are noted as the crew found them, alongside the three things on the one clock.
They are not fields the record needs. When they are missing they are noted as missing, and the session goes through. A session refused for the weather would be a session refused for something nobody in the seat could have changed, and nothing on the list of reasons is like that.
The record holds what happened, and it holds no opinion of you.
Everything a session carries is either something that happened or the name of the person who says it did. Nothing in it is a mark, a grade or a verdict, and there is no field for one.
Written
- What your hands did, what the machine did back, and what you were looking at when you acted, timed together.
- Who was in the seat, by name, and the agreement that covered them at the moment the recording was made.
- Which machine it was, and how it was set up.
- The photograph of the disconnected state, before and after, and the check that nothing was connected.
- The ground, the material and the weather, as the crew found them, or noted as missing.
- Notes made against the clock, by name, saying where to look.
- One signature over all of it.
Not written
- No score, no grade and no ranking. Nothing here ranks, scores or rates a person.
- No opinion of how you worked. Whether the work was good is a thing the people who asked for you already know.
- No comparison with anybody else. A built thing is what a machine ends up running, and nothing of yours goes into one with another person's work unless you said yes to that, separately.
- No verdict on the day. A session is admitted or refused on equipment and paperwork alone, and a refusal travels with its reason.
The chain has no opinion about the person in the seat. It only knows whether the record is whole.
A procedure, not a judgement, so it is written as one.
The record is incomplete
A field the record needs is missing, or the chain does not verify. The reason names the first span that failed.
The consent was not live
The agreement covering the recording was not in force at the time it was made.
The set-up cannot be shown
Something was connected that should not have been, or the photograph or the check is missing, or the machine does not match its profile.
A session is admitted when none of these apply. Refused is not a criticism of you. Every reason is about equipment or paperwork, and no check anywhere grades how you worked. A refused session is kept rather than thrown away and the reason travels with it, because a record of what went wrong is worth as much to us as a record of what went right.
Nothing is learned on the machine, and what comes back to one is a release.
When the recorder comes off, the session goes with it, and what happens to it next happens away from the machine. Nothing that happened in the cab was AI learning from you. The learning happens after, away from the machine, only from records you said yes to, and you are paid for every hour it works. Your skill stays yours. What comes back to a machine is a different thing from what left it.
Checked
Every session goes through the written procedure above and comes out admitted or refused, with the reason named. Nobody learns from a session before that.
Built away from the machine
We build a way of working from admitted records only, and we do it away from the machine. What reaches a machine is a release, and a named person signs it. A release is what goes out to a machine from us, built for the controls that machine already has.
Chosen, then cleared
A release runs on a job only after a person on the crew has chosen, by name, whose way of working runs, and cleared the machine on the day. A way of working proposes. It never authorizes.
What comes back to a machine is a release with a name on it.
Built away from the machine from admitted records, chosen by a person on the crew, and cleared on the day.
You see all of it. An owner sees the hours on their own machines. Nobody else sees anything of yours without your yes.
A session identifies the person in the seat by design, so it is information about you, and who can open it follows from that rather than from who arranged the recording.
The person in the seat
Your own record, whole.
- What was recorded, session by session.
- What was admitted and what was refused, with the reason named.
- What was built from it.
- Where it is listed, under your name.
- The hours it has worked, and what you are owed.
The door to it is yours and not your employer's.
The owner of the machine
The hours a licensed way of working ran on their own machines, on the record that shows who on their crew chose it and cleared the work, because it is what they are charged for, and nothing else of yours.
Us
The session is ours, made of your skill and held for you, and your skill stays yours. We run the written procedure on it, build from admitted sessions away from the machine, and count the hours, so an accounting is owed with them. It goes anywhere else only on a fresh agreement carrying your signature.
Nobody else
Whoever licenses a way of working cannot pass it to anybody else. A use you did not agree to is not one we supply it for, whoever asks.
For the owner, the operator and the people who can say no.
Nothing of ours takes power off your machine, and the recorder comes off and leaves no mark. The photograph of the disconnected state goes into the record, before and after, for the day somebody asks. Your controls feel the same, and that is checked before any kit is fitted.
You run the machine as you always have. You press start and you press stop, and nothing between the two asks anything of you or grades you. What is recorded is information about you, the recording of it is ours and held for you, and you can open all of it.
The recorder has no actuator and no wire to one. It cannot move a machine and it cannot stop one, so it is not an interlock and it is not a guard, and no part of any safety case rests on it. Every part of that is something a person can walk up to and check, and the walk-around on this page is written so that they can.
We treat a session as information about an identifiable person. The recording of it belongs to Even Steven, for the person it came from, and the skill it came from stays theirs. Whether that is how it falls to be treated where you operate is for your counsel. The agreements that covered it are checked at the moment of recording and carried inside it, the procedure that admits or refuses it is written and on this page, and the rights that attach to it are on the covenant.
See the recorder before you agree to anything.
If you want to see it on a machine, to run the walk-around yourself, and to look at the photograph before you say yes to a session, write to us. Bring whoever on your crew has to be satisfied before anything is agreed.