When you called it first and someone bigger takes the credit.
You wrote the post, the prediction, the joke, the design mockup. You hesitated, didn't ship it, kept the draft in Notes. A week later it goes viral under someone else's byline. There's no neutral arbiter for 'I had it first' on the internet — timestamps in tweet threads can be edited, screenshots of your draft can be edited, and 'check my notes app from October' is not evidence anyone will accept. A receipt fixes this in ten seconds: screenshot your draft (or your scratchpad, or your DMs to a friend where you floated the idea), drop it on /seal, and the cryptographic timestamp is anchored externally within thirty minutes. From that moment, nobody — including you — can change it. When the dispute happens, the receipt URL is the I-called-it. The receipt doesn't prove the take is good, original, or true. It only proves you wrote it down at the timestamp shown.
When this scenario hits you
- You drafted a prediction (market call, election take, sports prediction) and didn't post it. A bigger account posts the same call days later and it goes viral.
- You sent a meme to a friend in DMs; they didn't laugh. Two weeks later it's an account with 800k followers and a viral status nobody connects to you.
- You posted a design mockup on a small Discord; a much larger studio ships the exact aesthetic and claims it as their concept.
- You wrote a hot take in a draft tweet at 2am, didn't send, slept on it, woke up to find someone else posted the same thing and is now milking the engagement.
- Open-source: you described a project idea in a public Gist, didn't build it, and a few months later a similar project gets traction with no acknowledgement.
What you actually do
- 01
Screenshot the draft, the scratchpad, the DM, the whiteboard photo — anything that has the idea written down.
Include enough context that the screenshot reads as a draft, not a forgery. Your Notes app with timestamps, your draft tweet with the compose box, your DM thread with the friend you floated the idea to. Don't crop tightly — receipts hash bytes, more context = more proof.
- 02
Seal it on receipts.you/seal the moment you write it.
Don't wait. The receipt timestamp is when you seal, not when you wrote the draft. If you're posting a take and want unambiguous priority, seal-then-post is the right order — seal at T, post at T+30 seconds, and your receipt timestamp is provably before any reaction.
- 03
Optional: post the receipt URL alongside the take.
If your audience cares about provenance (technical Twitter, finance Twitter, prediction-markets folks), publishing the receipt URL alongside the take builds a public 'I called this at T' artifact. The URL is short and the receipt page is shareable.
- 04
When the steal happens, post the receipt URL as the reply.
Don't argue. The receipt's timestamp + signature speaks for itself. If the receipt is older than ~30 minutes, it's externally anchored via OpenTimestamps; even the most aggressive 'they backdated this' accusation falls apart against the chain's proof-of-work.
- 05
Aggregate your receipts if you do this regularly.
Some users seal every draft they don't ship and keep a private journal of receipt URLs. When patterns of theft emerge, having a track record of dated calls turns one accusation into a portfolio of evidence.
Why the receipt holds
- The OpenTimestamps anchor commits your hash into a Merkle tree inside a public blockchain transaction within ~30 minutes of sealing. The chain doesn't rewind; we can't backdate.
- Both the clean original and the QR-stamped version are hashed. Whichever copy you have, verification works.
- The receipt URL is short and shareable — easy to drop into a reply, link in a quote-tweet, paste into a Discord debate.
- If you're a high-trust public figure (open-source maintainer, journalist, researcher), the cumulative pattern of timestamped calls becomes its own reputational asset over time.
Where the receipt stops
- It doesn't prove originality. Someone else may have had the same idea even earlier and just not sealed it. The receipt proves you had it by T — not that nobody else did.
- It doesn't prove the idea is good, true, or actionable. Sealing a wrong prediction makes the wrong prediction permanently provable. Some people consider that a feature.
- It doesn't grant copyright or any legal exclusivity. For trademark/copyright/patent priority, the legal process is the legal process. The receipt is supporting evidence at best.
Specific questions about this scenario
What if I sealed a draft but never published it — can I still claim priority?
The receipt is the priority. The receipt page shows the timestamp and a SHA of the file; the file content (your draft) is yours to publish at any point. Publishing later doesn't reduce the receipt's force; if anything, the gap between sealed-T and published-T (when the steal happened in between) is exactly the evidence you want.
Does sealing public posts make sense, or only private drafts?
Both. Public posts are already 'timestamped' by the platform, but platform timestamps can be edited (or the post can be deleted, breaking the link). A sealed copy is independent of the platform's continued operation. For drafts and DMs, sealing is the only real option.
Can I seal a screenshot of someone else's older post to 'prove' they had the idea before me?
The receipt would prove the screenshot file existed when you sealed it — not when the underlying post was made. It's evidence you had access to that file at T, not that the post is older than T. For older-post evidence, archive.org and Wayback snapshots are stronger.
Is there an API I can use to seal automatically from a notes app or scripting workflow?
The /api/seal endpoint accepts a JSON POST with the SHA-256 + perceptual hashes computed locally. It's documented in /methodology and used by the /seal page itself. You can wire it up to a personal automation; the API is open and unauthenticated for v1.
If the steal happens years later, will my receipt still verify?
Yes. Receipts are append-only and the OpenTimestamps anchor is permanent. Even if receipts.you the service disappeared tomorrow, the anchor + your public-key copy + the receipt JSON together verify the timestamp forever.
Related scenarios
The receipt is your I-called-it.
Drop the draft, walk away with a dated, signed proof. Free, browser-only, anchored within minutes.