How to contribute

This is a private alpha. Every contribution goes through moderation before it appears publicly, so take your time and attach good evidence — the goal is a version history a stranger can trust.

1. Search before you submit

Start from the search box in the header (or the search page) to find the product you want to document. If it already exists, open it and submit your snapshot against the existing product so it joins that product’s timeline rather than creating a duplicate.

2. Submit a snapshot

A snapshot is the product’s label at one point in time: its ingredients, nutrition facts, allergen statement, net content, claims, and region. From the Submit a snapshot wizard you can:

• Pick an existing product, or describe a new brand / product.
• Fill in only what the label shows — leave a field blank if you don’t know it. Blank means “unknown,” never “changed.”
• Set the first-seen date as precisely as your evidence supports (a year alone is fine if that’s all you can date).

When a product already has a published version, the wizard pre-fills the latest one so you only edit what changed.

3. Attach good evidence

Every published version is backed by evidence. For now, evidence is a link (photo uploads are coming soon — see below). Strong evidence is dated and durable:

• Wayback Machine permalinks (web.archive.org) are the best evidence — a dated, rot-proof snapshot of a retailer or brand page. Prefer these.
• A live retailer or official brand product page works as secondary evidence.
• A link to a photo or source you host is fine — just make sure it loads.

Photo uploads are coming soon. For now, link to a photo or a source page — Wayback permalinks are ideal.

4. What happens in moderation

After you submit, a moderator reviews your snapshot. They may:

• Approve it — your version publishes, and if it differs from the previous version, the change is recorded on the product’s timeline automatically.
• Ask for more — if evidence is missing or a detail needs fixing, the submission bounces back to you with a note; edit it and it returns to the queue.
• Reject it — with a reason you can read.

You can track every submission and its status on your My submissions page.

Testing? Make junk obvious

If you’re submitting throwaway data to try the flow, make it extremely obvious it’s a test — e.g. brand “ZZ Test”, product “DELETE ME”. It keeps the public catalog readable and makes cleanup easy before launch.

Questions or bugs?

Tell us in the project Discord — that’s where alpha discussion and feedback live. Join the Discord.