Prove what you were allowed to do.
Truestone records what your agency was permitted to do with a third-party data source on the day it did it — and produces the record the defence will ask for. It starts with forensic investigative genetic genealogy, because that is where the rules are sharpest and the failures are documented.
Free, no account, nothing to install. Runs entirely in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.
There is no standard. There is only your record.
Forensic investigative genetic genealogy has resolved roughly 1,600 cases in the United States and Canada. It has no published standard governing how any of it is done.
The uncomfortable one, and the reason this product exists.In February 2025 an Idaho trial court held that violation of a database’s terms “cannot alone give rise to Fourth Amendment challenge where… the search of the databases was otherwise lawful” — in a case where unsealed testimony had established investigators searched two databases they were not permitted to search. The court did not find the rules were followed. It found the violation was constitutionally irrelevant. That moves the problem into discovery, policy and credibility, and in all three of those the only thing that helps you is a record made at the time.
Eight gates, working the way the case actually works.
Not a form. Each gate reads the record you have entered and tells you where a requirement is unmet — including when leaving a question blank is itself the problem.
Eligibility
Case type, CODIS first, exhaustion, prosecutor concurrence — and whether the federal policy binds you at all.
State law
Maryland, Montana and Utah requirement by requirement. Everywhere else, an explicit record that counsel was consulted.
Sample and funding
Viability before spend. A CODIS-sufficient sample is routinely not FIGG-sufficient.
Databases and terms
Which platform, and the date you read its terms. Terms move faster than statute.
Search log
Every search: date, platform, who ran it, and why.
Third-party contacts
Each person approached, the basis, the consent, and whether covert collection followed a refusal.
Confirmatory testing
The one rule the method turns on, enforced rather than suggested.
Notification and disclosure
A draft family-notification protocol, and the disclosure checklist that stops FIGG material going missing.
It prints a record
One dated document: what was checked, what was found, what was not met, and every source the reference block relied on. That is the artifact that goes in the file and travels through discovery.
It refuses to flatter you
A gate goes green only when a requirement is actually satisfied. Unanswered never counts as satisfied, and the printed record says “no gate is recorded as unmet” rather than claiming compliance it cannot verify.
The law is data, with a date on it
The DOJ policy, the three state statutes and every platform’s current terms sit in a versioned block stamped 16 August 2026, shown on the face of the tool. Nothing is hidden in code.
Three steps, and none of them involve us.
Open it
No sign-up, no email, no procurement. It is one page. If your agency will not let you load an unfamiliar site, save the file and open it from your own disk — it works identically with no network at all.
Work the case
Answer as you go, from the eligibility check through to the notification plan. The gate panel updates live and names the specific requirement behind every stop, so you find out in week one rather than at a suppression hearing.
Save the file, print the record
Your case file is a JSON file on your own disk. Reopen it any time to continue. Print the record for the case file, for your prosecutor, or for disclosure.
A note on where your case data goes.Nowhere. The tool contains no analytics, no external fonts, no images and no third-party scripts, and it never writes to browser storage — so nothing is left behind on a shared machine either. You do not have to take that on trust: the whole thing is one readable file.
The tool is free. It stays free.
The paid tiers are for agencies that need more than one person’s record — shared standards, change alerts, and an audit history that outlives the detective who opened the case.
Practitioner
- All eight gates, unlimited cases
- Runs fully offline; nothing transmitted
- Case files saved to your own disk
- Printable process record
- Dated legal reference block
- Draft family-notification protocol
Agency
- Everything in Practitioner
- Your agency’s own SOP as the reference block
- Alerts when a statute or a platform’s terms change
- Shared case records with an audit history
- One-click disclosure packet export
- Quarterly reference-block updates, version-dated
- Named support contact
Statewide
- Everything in Agency
- Unlimited users and agencies
- Single sign-on and role-based access
- Self-hosted or in-region deployment
- Retention and destruction policy controls
- Data sources beyond DNA as they ship
- API and case-management integration
Honest status: Practitioner is built and working today — the link above opens it. Agency and Statewide are in development and the prices are indicative. Nobody is being charged for anything yet, and the waitlist is a waitlist rather than a queue for an invoice.
Tell us what you would need it to cover.
We are especially interested in one answer: is there a data source other than DNA you would want this to record? That question decides what gets built next, and it is the single most useful thing you can tell us.
We store only what you type above, use it only to email you about Truestone, and delete it on request. No tracking, no third-party analytics, no list sales, ever. See privacy and data handling.
The ones that decide it.
Does any case data leave my computer?
No. The case tool has no account, no server call and no browser storage. It contains no analytics, no fonts, no images and no scripts loaded from anywhere else — you can read the file and check. Your case file is a JSON file you save to your own disk, and closing the tab discards everything. The waitlist form on this page is the only thing on this site that transmits anything, and it sends only what you type into it.
Can I use it offline, or on a machine with no internet?
Yes. Save the page to disk and open it from there. It is one self-contained HTML file with no external dependency of any kind, which is deliberate — the machines this belongs on are often the ones that cannot reach the internet.
Is this legal advice, or a compliance certification?
Neither, and it says so on every screen and on every record it prints. It records what you did and flags where what you recorded does not meet a requirement it knows about. It cannot tell you whether your conduct was lawful, it does not know your state's law beyond the three states with FIGG-specific statutes, and its legal reference block carries a date because it will go stale.
Why does the record matter if genetic genealogy never goes in front of a jury?
That is exactly why it goes missing. Genealogy material is not presented at trial, so it gets left out of discovery — which the Policing Project's June 2026 review named as a process failure, because it prevents defence counsel evaluating how the lead was generated at all. An Idaho trial court held in February 2025 that violating a database's terms cannot on its own ground a Fourth Amendment challenge where the search was otherwise lawful. That does not make the violation disappear. It relocates it into discovery, policy and credibility, where a contemporaneous record is the only answer.
What happens to the free tool if the paid tiers take off?
It stays free, and it stays offline-capable. That is not generosity: a practitioner tool that starts phoning home is a different product with a different trust story, and the whole argument here is that provenance has to be verifiable rather than promised.
Who is behind this?
It began as the working tool behind a conference session on forensic investigative genetic genealogy, built because the presenter went looking for the guidance and found that none existed. Every factual claim in the tool traces to a dated, cited source, and the sources are published on this site rather than kept as a selling point.