PaceProof

PaceProof verifies Ed25519-signed compute-attestation records from any provider and tells you exactly which ones are real.

A record with a missing, malformed, or tampered signature never gets folded into a "verified" total; it's counted and reported separately, every time, in both human-readable and --json output.

PaceProof does not sign or generate attestations. It is a neutral, read-only ingest/verify/report/dashboard layer over records that are already signed somewhere else. Point it at a directory, file, or URL of signed records and it tells you, verifiably, what compute was actually run, by whom, and whether every record's signature checks out.

Install

paceproof-cli is published to both npm and PyPI:

npm install -g paceproof-cli
# or
pip install paceproof-cli

Both commands install a paceproof binary. paceproof-cli is also available as an alias on both registries if you need to disambiguate from another tool on your PATH.

To build from source instead (useful if you're contributing, or want the exact repo state rather than a published release):

TypeScript (npm package, includes the MCP server):

git clone https://github.com/RudrenduPaul/PaceProof.git
cd PaceProof/packages/cli-ts
npm install
npm run build
node dist/bin.js --help

Python (PyPI package, independent reimplementation):

git clone https://github.com/RudrenduPaul/PaceProof.git
cd PaceProof/packages/cli-py
pip install -e .
paceproof --help

Both the published npm install -g paceproof-cli and pip install paceproof-cli commands above were run fresh in a clean environment as part of writing this README, and the quickstart output below is real output from those installs, not fabricated.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Quickstart
• CLI command reference
• Library API reference
• How verification works
• Comparison
• What PaceProof is, and why it exists
• FAQ
• Contributing
• License

Quickstart

paceproof init
paceproof report ./paceproof-example

paceproof init generates a fresh Ed25519 example keypair and 7 example attestation records: 3 validly signed, and 4 intentionally broken (a tampered payload, a wrong-key signature, a malformed signature, and a missing signature) so verify/report have real failure modes to demonstrate, not just a happy path.

Real output from an actual run against the published npm package:

$ paceproof report ./paceproof-example

PaceProof report -- source: ./paceproof-example
generated at: 2026-08-04T02:54:30.898Z

== VERIFIED ==
  records: 3
  compute total: 144.50 gpu_hours

== UNVERIFIED (never counted in verified totals above) ==
  records: 4
  compute total: 1009 gpu_hours
  reasons:
    - rec-004: signature does not match record contents
    - rec-005: signature does not match record contents
    - rec-006: signature must decode to 64 bytes, got 4
    - rec-007: schema validation failed: (root) must have required property 'signature'

== BY PROVIDER ==
  acme-cloud: verified=132 gpu_hours (2 records); unverified_count=0
  beta-compute: verified=12.50 gpu_hours (1 records); unverified_count=0
  gamma-hpc: verified=(none); unverified_count=2
  delta-cloud: verified=(none); unverified_count=2

== BY WORKLOAD TYPE ==
  training: verified=128 gpu_hours (1 records); unverified_count=1
  inference: verified=12.50 gpu_hours (1 records); unverified_count=1
  idle: verified=4 gpu_hours (1 records); unverified_count=1
  unknown: verified=(none); unverified_count=1

verify exits non-zero when any record fails (real exit code from an actual run: 1, with 4 unverified records present):

$ paceproof verify ./paceproof-example
Verified: 3
Unverified: 4
  FAIL rec-004: signature does not match record contents
  FAIL rec-005: signature does not match record contents
  FAIL rec-006: signature must decode to 64 bytes, got 4
  FAIL rec-007: schema validation failed: (root) must have required property 'signature'
$ echo $?
1

Render a dashboard from the same data:

paceproof dashboard ./paceproof-example --out dashboard.html

Both the TypeScript and Python builds were run against paceproof-example for this README, and both produced the same verified/unverified counts and totals shown above.

Features

• Pluggable data-source adapters. ingest normalizes arbitrary input into the canonical schema through a documented Adapter interface (TypeScript interface, Python ABC). The shipped jsonl adapter reads newline-delimited JSON already in canonical form; a provider-specific adapter (e.g. for ComputeLedger's native export) implements the same interface without touching the aggregator, report renderer, or CLI wiring.
• Ed25519 verification with strict verified/unverified separation. Every record is checked for schema validity and signature validity. A record that fails either check is never silently merged into a verified total: verified and unverified counts and compute totals are computed from disjoint sets and shown side by side in every report.
• Two independent, parity-tested implementations. The TypeScript package (npm) and the Python package (PyPI) are separate, real implementations, not a wrapper around one or the other. Both produce byte-identical report --json output for the same input; a CI job runs the TypeScript CLI's output against the Python CLI's output on a shared fixture in both directions and fails the build on any divergence.
• Self-contained static HTML dashboard. paceproof dashboard renders a single HTML file with inline CSS and no JavaScript: no CDN fonts, no external scripts, no remote requests of any kind. Currently ships one clean light theme; there's no dark-mode toggle yet.
• MCP server for agent invocation. paceproof mcp starts a Model Context Protocol server exposing verify, ingest, and report as callable tools, so an orchestrating agent can call PaceProof programmatically instead of shelling out to a human-facing CLI. The tool handlers are thin wrappers around the same aggregator/report functions the CLI itself calls, with no separate reimplementation for the MCP path.
• Security-hardened by design, not by afterthought. Aggregation buckets are built with Object.create(null) so an attacker-controlled provider or compute_unit field like "__proto__" can't pollute Object.prototype. The one network call PaceProof ever makes (ingest <url>) is bounded by a 30-second timeout and a 50 MiB response cap, enforced against the actual streamed byte count rather than trusting a Content-Length header. Every schema field carries an explicit maximum length so oversized input can't be used to exhaust memory before validation runs.

CLI command reference

Every table below is copied from the actual --help output of the published paceproof-cli npm package (v0.1.0).

paceproof init [path]

Scaffold an example directory with a sample keypair and validly/invalidly signed example records.

paceproof verify <path>

Verify Ed25519 signatures on every record found at <path>.

paceproof ingest <path-or-url>

Run a named adapter over the input and emit normalized canonical-schema records as JSONL.

paceproof report <path>

Ingest and verify records at <path>, then aggregate into a summary report.

paceproof dashboard <path>

Render a single self-contained static HTML dashboard from a report.

paceproof mcp

Start an MCP server exposing verify, ingest, and report as callable tools. TypeScript package only for now: running paceproof mcp from the Python package prints a message pointing to the npm package and exits non-zero.

Every command supports real non-zero exit codes on failure or verification failure, and --help on every subcommand.

Library API reference

Read the full README on GitHub →