Editorial and review standards
This site is used by people making decisions that carry legal and financial consequence. That imposes obligations on us. This page states them so you can hold us to them.
1. Evidence hierarchy
We source in this order and say which tier a claim rests on when it matters:
- Primary law. The consolidated text of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 on EUR-Lex, and the amending Regulation (EU) 2026/1744. Where these conflict with anything else, they win.
- Official guidance. European Commission guidelines, the AI Office, the AI Act Service Desk, national competent authorities, CEN-CENELEC work programmes, published standards.
- Professional analysis. Law firm and academic commentary, used to corroborate and to surface disagreement, never as the sole basis for a statement of obligation.
- Practitioner experience. Our own implementation work, always labelled as such.
We do not cite forums, social media or AI-generated summaries as authority for a legal statement.
2. Four labels
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified fact | Traceable to primary law or official guidance. Article numbers and dates given so you can check. |
| Expert analysis | Our reading of how a provision applies. Reasonable practitioners may differ. Always marked. |
| Practical recommendation | What we would do. Not a legal requirement, and never presented as one. |
| Unsettled | Genuinely open: no guidance, no enforcement decisions, active disagreement. We say so rather than picking the more dramatic reading. |
3. Provenance on the page
Legal claims carry a provenance chip naming the article and the instrument:
Amendments are marked separately, so you can see at a glance when a statement depends on the 2026 amendment rather than the original text:
4. Review cadence
- Every page carries a review date and a next review date.
- Target cadence is 30 days for pages describing live obligations and dates, longer for stable explanatory content.
- A material regulatory event triggers an immediate out-of-cycle review of every affected page.
- A page that cannot be kept current is removed or retired with a 410, not left standing. We retired our own August 2026 countdown article on that basis.
5. Corrections
If we are wrong we fix it and say what changed and when. We do not quietly edit a page and leave the review date implying it was always right. Report an error →
6. What we do not claim
We are not lawyers and this site is not legal advice. HumanAudit publishes AI governance documentation. We are practitioners in compliance documentation, not qualified counsel in any EU member state.
We do not claim expert or legal review unless it has happened. Where a page has been reviewed by a named qualified reviewer, that person is named on the page with their qualification. Where no such line appears, no such review has taken place. We will not describe an unnamed “team of experts” or “panel of reviewers”.
We do not reproduce standards. ISO, IEC and CEN standards are copyright of their respective bodies. We describe what requirements ask for; we do not reproduce the text. Buy the standard.
We are independent. Not affiliated with the European Commission, the AI Office, CEN, CENELEC, ISO or any EU institution.
7. Commercial disclosure
This site is published by HumanAudit Inc., which sells AI governance documentation, and links to its sister property iso42001toolkit.com. We think that is a reasonable next step for many readers and we say so where it is relevant. It does not change what we write. Where our commercial interest and the accurate answer diverge — for example, that ISO/IEC 42001 does not satisfy the EU AI Act, or that certification may be premature for you — we publish the accurate answer.
Tell us where we are wrong
Corrections are the fastest way to improve a reference. If a date has moved, a standard has been published, or a reading is wrong, we would rather hear it from you than from a reader who quietly stops trusting the site.
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