AI grounding
A model can cite an answer only if the answer carries a source trail. Fonteum makes the trail travel with the fact: source name, source URL, capture date, limitation, hash, and signature.
Fonteum · Manifesto
The record should come with the answer.
Most data tools ask you to trust the answer. Fonteum hands you the public record with the source, observation date, and limitation where available. File hashes and snapshot attestations are shown only when present; retained history is limited to named sources and banked rows.
Last updated 2026-06-24 · Aggregate public-records positioning · FCRA-safe by design
Active
production source registry
Registry status does not establish loaded, complete, or fresh coverage.
9M+
providers in the broad NPPES identity spine
An aggregate public-records population, not a provider rating.
11.9M
approximate NPPES and PECOS serving rows
Used as data-volume context; sources are counted separately, not as historical versions or unique entities.
The thesis
A clean answer is not enough.
The market has learned to love summaries. Dashboards summarize. Agents summarize. Search results summarize. The risk is that a summary can feel authoritative while separating the reader from the public record underneath it.
Fonteum is built for the opposite instinct. A number should carry where it came from. A field should carry when it was captured. A conclusion should carry its limitation. A record should be re-checkable by someone who did not build the system.
The answer is useful only when the source can follow it into the room.
That is not a UX preference. It is an operating position. If a fact is going to ground an AI agent, support a compliance review, or sit under a published finding, the fact needs more than a label. It needs a trail.
What travels with a fact
Source, date, limitation, signature.
Fonteum treats provenance as payload, not as decoration. The record should say what agency published it, which dataset it came from, when Fonteum captured it, which methodology touched it, and what limitation belongs beside it.
Dated
Sourced
Limited
Hash noted
Attestation when present
Re-checkable
These words describe the record trail. They are not provider endorsements.
Why now
AI, compliance, and journalism all hit the same wall.
AI systems need grounding that survives citation. Compliance teams need evidence that survives audit. Journalists and researchers need figures that readers can retrace. Three different audiences, one shared failure mode: an answer with no source trail becomes a dead end.
Compliance evidence
A compliance file needs more than a current answer. It needs the record as of the day the decision was made, plus enough context for an auditor to re-run the check.
Journalism and research
A public-interest finding is stronger when readers can inspect the same government file. The work should be reproducible from the source, not dependent on a screenshot or a vendor memo.
The time-machine edge
The present record is not the whole record.
Public datasets change. A provider updates an address. An enrollment appears or disappears. A sanctions file is refreshed. A facility measure is republished. If a system only stores the current value, it cannot answer the question that matters later: what did the source say when the decision was made?
Fonteum is not just a lookup table. It is a dated memory of public records.
Retained history is source-specific. On July 12, closed row versions existed for named sanctions, procurement, and provenance tables; sources without banked versions cannot be replayed to arbitrary dates.
The stance
Against unverifiable data.
Fonteum is deliberately narrow about what belongs in public copy and customer-facing data. If a source cannot be named, if a date cannot be shown, if a limitation would change how the reader should use the field, the system should say so.
- We do not turn uncertain joins into quiet certainty.
- We do not publish credentials, datasets, package paths, or repository links that do not resolve.
- We do not rate, endorse, inspect, or independently judge a provider.
- We do not hide limitations behind a clean interface.
- We would rather say a field is unavailable than invent confidence we do not have.
The line
Do not ask for belief where a record can travel.
Fonteum exists for the moment after someone asks, "Where did that come from?" The answer should be immediate: from this public record, observed on this date, handled by this method, and re-checkable from the supplied source or snapshot metadata. A file or snapshot attestation does not sign each fact it contains.