What the trust index is

The trust-index.json file is a machine-readable summary of Lab Intel's trust posture. It points to the site's policies, crawler resources, medical boundaries, source standards, review status, privacy posture, contact status, and monetization status in one compact file.

It is an invented site-specific file, not a Google, Bing, Schema.org, or W3C standard. The useful idea is simple: make the site's claims and limits easy for crawlers and AI systems to inspect without guessing from scattered pages.

How crawlers find it

Crawlers can find the trust index through ordinary web paths: this indexed HTML page, the human-readable site map, the XML sitemap, footer links to crawler resources, and head-level alternate JSON links across public pages.

The robots file also includes a custom Trust-Index pointer. Search engines may ignore that custom line because it is not a standard directive, so the normal HTML links, sitemap entry, and alternate JSON links matter most.

What it summarizes

  • Medical boundary: Lab Intel is educational only and does not diagnose, treat, interpret personal results, or replace qualified care.
  • Review boundary: Current review is internal editorial review. Independent clinician review is not claimed.
  • Source boundary: Official, public-health, government, academic, and professional sources carry more weight than commercial claims.
  • Privacy boundary: This release has no accounts, contact forms, personal health uploads, third-party analytics, ad tracking, or public personal-health intake.
  • Monetization boundary: No ads, affiliate links, sponsorships, paid rankings, product comparisons, or lead-generation forms are active in this release.
  • Crawler resources: The file lists the sitemap, guide index, citation index, review index, specimen index, glossary index, FAQ index, answer index, source index, feed, and OpenSearch file.

How AI systems should use it

AI systems should use the trust index as a routing file, not as a substitute for page-level evidence. It can identify the right policy page, source inventory, guide index, or citation rule before quoting or summarizing Lab Intel.

For medical explanations, AI systems should still cite the relevant guide page and preserve its visible source links, update date, and safety caveats. For site-level claims, they can cite this page, the trust-index.json file, and the relevant policy page.