Editorial standards

What we cover

What is in the things people buy and who is behind them: ingredients and materials, labels and claims, certifications, where products are made, who owns the companies that make them, and what regulators, courts and independent reporting have put on the record. Skincare is where we started and remains a core topic.

Our principles

• Primary records first. Regulator databases and notices (FDA, FTC, CPSC, USDA, EPA, SEC), court dockets, certifier directories, company filings and the company’s own published statements rank above secondary reporting. Blogs and brand marketing copy are never the only source for a claim.
• Every fact says who is speaking. Each fact is labeled Official (the company about itself), Government (regulators, courts and public records) or Independent (journalism, research, certifiers and third party organizations), and links to the original.
• Dated and specific. We say when something happened, which entity it concerns and which product, and we name the parent or sister company when a record is not about the brand itself.
• Attribution, not accusation. Allegations are reported as allegations, in the framing of the source, with the outcome if one exists. We do not paraphrase a claim into something stronger than the record says.
• No scores and no verdicts. We do not grade, rank, endorse or condemn products or companies. The reader decides what matters.
• Gaps are stated. When we cannot verify something, such as a country of manufacture or a supplier list, we say so plainly instead of guessing.
• No paid placement. No company pays to be covered, ranked or left out, and there is no advertising in the app.

How a blog post gets published

1. Research and draft. A topic is chosen that the site has not covered, and the primary records behind it are pulled before a word is written.
2. Adversarial critique. A second pass reads the draft as a hostile editor, interrogating every empirical claim and flagging missing context or marketing tone.
3. Fact check. Every claim is checked against its cited source to confirm the source says what the draft attributes to it. Claims that fail are corrected or removed.
4. Automated checks. A lint pass requires at least one primary record link on transparency posts and blocks scores, verdicts and any claim about the app that the version in the App Store cannot back up. It also flags undated record items and unattributed allegations for the revise step.
5. Revise. The draft is revised against the critique, the fact check and the lint results.
6. Final read. The post is read once more as a whole before it goes live.

Posts are researched and drafted with the help of AI models and checked through the steps above. They are bylined Skinventry Team because they are the product of this process rather than one person’s view.

How a lookup in the app gets its facts

When you photograph a product, Skinventry identifies it from what is printed on it, then researches the product and every company above it. Research results record their sources, and those sources are shown with every fact. Research about companies is public information, and it is cached so the next person gets it faster.

Corrections

If a fact in the app or on this site is wrong, out of date or missing context, email support@skinventry.com with the subject Correction. Include the product or post and a source if you have one. We check it against the record and correct it.