Standards
Every published specification, schema, and protocol that VC Deal Flow Signal implements end-to-end. Each entry links to the canonical spec and to the surface on this site that exposes it. We do not declare conformance to standards we do not implement.
The one belief this page asks for: a standard you can’t independently check is just a badge. Every spec below links to the canonical source and to the exact surface here that implements it, so your engineer can confirm it without taking our word.
Why this page exists. E-E-A-T signals are not just bylines and headshots. They are verifiable, machine-checkable conformance to the standards that the web of data is built on. Every row below is a public spec you can validate this site against, open the spec URL, hit the "applied at" endpoint, and check the output.
For a non-technical buyer,the takeaway is simpler: you don't have to take our word for anything. Every claim on this site resolves to a public spec or a public dataset your firm's engineer can validate in an afternoon, and you can hand this page to them without reading a line of it yourself.
Structured data
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| Schema.org (JSON-LD) WebSite + Organization + Person + SoftwareApplication on every page; 40+ specialized types across pSEO templates (Dataset, FAQPage, ScholarlyArticle, Course, ClaimReview, Speakable). | schema.org/ | Site-wide @graph |
| JSON-LD 1.1 Stable @id anchors so cross-page references collapse into the same entity in any consumer's graph. | www.w3.org/TR/json-ld11/ | All <script type="application/ld+json"> blocks |
| Speakable Specification Voice-assistant-friendly summaries scoped to h1, h2, and [data-speakable] selectors. | schema.org/SpeakableSpecification | Pillar + answer pages |
Citation & scholarly
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| Highwire Press citation_* meta 13 citation_* + 6 DC.* meta tags per finding for Google Scholar indexing as a citable subdivision of the SSRN paper. | scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html | /research/* pages |
| Dublin Core Metadata Element Set DC.title / DC.creator / DC.identifier / DC.publisher / DC.subject / DC.rights on every research finding. | www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dces/ | Research findings + dataset descriptors |
| BibTeX, RIS, APA, MLA, Chicago Five canonical citation formats plus AI-attribution template, all served as plain text. | www.bibtex.org/Format/ | Citation guide + per-page citation block |
| DOI (Digital Object Identifier) DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6606558 registered through Crossref; resolves to the canonical PDF. | www.doi.org/the-identifier/what-is-a-doi/ | SSRN paper |
| ORCID iD Persistent author identifier 0009-0002-2222-4112 for The Data Nerd; used in JSON-LD Person.identifier. | info.orcid.org/what-is-orcid/ | Author identity |
Open data & FAIR
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| FAIR Data Principles Findable (Wikidata + Crossref + OpenAlex); Accessible (HTTPS + CSV + JSONL + JSON-LD); Interoperable (Schema.org + DCAT 3); Reusable (CC BY 4.0 + provenance). | www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/ | Dataset distribution |
| DCAT 3 DataCatalog + Dataset + Distribution + DataDownload typed entries with dcat: + dcterms: cross-vocabulary. | www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat-3/ | /.well-known/dataset.json |
| Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 CC BY 4.0 declared on every distribution surface and in every JSON-LD license: field. | creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | Dataset, Q&A corpus, research findings |
| DataCite Schema 4.5 Dataset deposit registered with DataCite via Zenodo; receives a DataCite DOI. | schema.datacite.org/meta/kernel-4.5/ | Zenodo deposit |
API & agents
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAPI 3.1 Full spec for every public endpoint; consumed by Postman, Insomnia, Swagger UI, Bruno, and AI agents. | spec.openapis.org/oas/v3.1.0 | /api/openapi.json + /.well-known/openapi.json |
| Model Context Protocol (MCP) Live stdio + HTTP MCP server, Glama A-Tier (4.9/5.0 across 6 tools). Six tools (trending, sector, profile, summary, scout receipts, methodology) free forever. | modelcontextprotocol.io/specification | /api/mcp/rpc + /.well-known/mcp.json |
| A2A Protocol (Agent2Agent) AgentCard discovery endpoint and JSON-RPC stub conforming to the A2A v0.1 spec. | a2a-protocol.org/ | /api/a2a + /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| llms.txt Three layers, index, full corpus, per-pillar segments, so retrieval pipelines can grab as much or as little as they need. | llmstxt.org/ | /llms.txt + /llms-full.txt + /llms/[pillar] |
| ai.txt + ai-policy.json Per-bot machine-readable allow/deny policy; explicit allowlist for 25+ AI crawlers. | site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt | /ai.txt + /.well-known/ai-policy.json |
| OpenSearch Description Format Browser address-bar search engine descriptor; also referenced from <link rel="search">. | github.com/dewitt/opensearch | /opensearch.xml |
Web platform
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| Sitemaps Protocol 0.9 Sitemap index + per-section paginated sitemaps; News-Sitemap variant at /news-sitemap.xml. | www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html | /sitemap.xml + /sitemap/[id] |
| robots.txt (RFC 9309) Named-allowlist for 25+ AI bots; sitemap pointers for both apex and signals subdomain. | www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309 | /robots.txt |
| RSS 2.0 + JSON Feed 1.1 Both XML RSS and modern JSON Feed; LLM ingestion pipelines prefer JSON Feed. | www.jsonfeed.org/version/1.1/ | /feed.xml + /feed.json |
| ISO 8601 (date/time) All timestamps emitted in ISO 8601 with explicit UTC offset. | www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html | All datePublished / dateModified / lastmod fields |
Identity & federation
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| WebFinger (RFC 7033) JRD descriptor enables Mastodon, Lemmy, and IndieWeb crawlers to resolve canonical entity metadata. | www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7033 | /.well-known/webfinger |
| NodeInfo 2.1 Federated-graph discovery for the fediverse. Identifies the site's protocol and software footprint. | nodeinfo.diaspora.software/protocol.html | /.well-known/nodeinfo |
| IndieWeb rel=me Reciprocal identity verification across ORCID, Wikidata, X, GitHub, LinkedIn, npm, Telegram. | indieweb.org/rel-me | Site-wide <link rel="me"> |
| Wikidata Q-ID Q139376302 with sameAs cross-graph; primary canonical identity in JSON-LD Organization.sameAs. | www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction | Cross-graph @id reference |
| host-meta (RFC 6415) Site metadata document; enables clients to resolve canonical URIs for the host. | www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6415 | /.well-known/host-meta + host-meta.json |
Operations & trust
| Standard | Specification | Applied at |
|---|---|---|
| security.txt (RFC 9116) Security disclosure contact + canonical URL + preferred languages + expiry. | www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9116 | /.well-known/security.txt |
| traffic-advice Origin-policy hint to private-prefetch proxies (Chrome's Privacy Sandbox). | github.com/buettner/private-prefetch-proxy/blob/main/traffic-advice.md | /.well-known/traffic-advice |
| OAuth 2.0 Authorization Server Metadata (RFC 8414) Server metadata document for clients to discover OAuth endpoints and capabilities. | www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8414 | /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server |
| Change Password URL Well-Known (RFC 8615) Standard discovery endpoint that lets password managers route users to the change-password flow. | www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615 | /.well-known/change-password |
Editorial policies
The accountability policies a publisher is expected to state plainly. These are the human-readable source for the publishingPrinciples, noBylinesPolicy, correctionsPolicy, ownershipFundingInfo, verificationFactCheckingPolicy, unnamedSourcesPolicy, and actionableFeedbackPolicy properties declared in this site's Organization JSON-LD.
Bylines & author identity
Editorial work is published under the pseudonymous byline The Data Nerd by deliberate policy, not omission. The methodology is the protagonist; the operator stays anonymous on purpose. The identity is nonetheless persistent and accountable: one ORCID iD, one author profile, and a published, DOI-bearing methodology paper stand behind every claim. No claim depends on the author's identity, each is traceable to the public dataset.
Ownership & funding
Independently operated and self-funded by subscription and dataset revenue, not affiliated with, owned by, or funded by any incumbent VC platform, fund, or data vendor. Full ownership and funding disclosure is published in the annual Transparency Report.
Ethics & sourcing
Every signal is derived from public GitHub activity. We use no private, scraped-behind-login, or unnamed-source data, and we do not pay for tips. There are no anonymous sources to protect because there are none, the inputs are public and the transformation is documented in the methodology. Conflicts of interest (any position in a covered company) are disclosed at point of coverage.
Corrections & feedback
Spotted an error? Email signals@gitdealflow.com or open a public GitHub issue. Verification-driven fact-checking is documented in the methodology, and every accepted correction is logged publicly, with date and rationale, in the corrections log.
How to verify
- Pick a row above and open the "Specification" link to read the canonical spec.
- Open the "Applied at" URL and inspect the raw output (Schema.org JSON-LD validates at validator.schema.org; OpenAPI at editor.swagger.io; sitemaps at xml-sitemaps validator).
- If anything fails to validate, open an issue on the public GitHub repository or email signals@gitdealflow.com. Documented fixes go in the public corrections log.
Cleared the diligence? Here’s the low-risk next step.
You came here to vet us, fair. If it checks out, the calmest way in is the free Sunday digest: five accelerating startups a week, no card, one-click unsubscribe, and you never have to read a line of code. Nothing on this site auto-charges, and the methodology behind every pick is public.
See also: Citation guide · Reproducibility kit · Third-party attestations · Corrections policy & log