TIP Protocol

TIP Protocol (Trust Identity Protocol) is an open content-provenance specification. The WordPress plugin lets publishers and creators sign their published content with a cryptographic identity, label whether AI was used to write it, and surface a verifiable trust badge to readers. It works as an editorial layer on top of WordPress without requiring a browser extension.

Every post can carry one of four origin labels: Original Human (OH), AI-Assisted (AA), AI-Generated (AG), or Mixed (MX). The label is part of the cryptographically signed payload, so it cannot be modified after publication without invalidating the signature. Readers and verifiers see a verified AI-disclosure label, not a self-claim.

No. They solve adjacent problems. C2PA and Content Credentials focus on signing images and video at capture time, typically inside a camera or generative tool. TIP Protocol focuses on signing the final published article (text, media manifest, author roster, AI label) at the moment a publisher hits Publish in WordPress. They can coexist on the same site.

A TIP-ID is a unique cryptographic identifier in the format tip://id/REGION-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Publishers receive a reviewed publisher TIP-ID from The AI Lab. Individual writers can generate a personal creator TIP-ID on vp.theailab.org. Both types are imported into WordPress as a signed .tip.json package.

In the block editor, open the post sidebar and use the TIP Protocol panel. In the classic editor, use the TIP Origin Declaration metabox. The label can also be confirmed or changed in the biometric sign popup that opens right after you publish.

Every signature is confirmed on one of your devices with Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello, a fingerprint or a security key, so a signature needs both your WordPress account and a device you set up. Right after you publish, a popup asks you to confirm, then signs the post and registers it on the TIP network. The first time, the popup asks for your WordPress password and sets up the device; you are emailed whenever a device is added or removed. Your fingerprint or face never leaves the device. WordPress stores each device's public key, its name, and when it was added and last used. You can add or remove devices in your WordPress profile, and administrators can remove a user's device if it is lost. When a post signs with its author's personal TIP-ID (sites without a site-wide TIP-ID), only that author can confirm the signature. Retracting a post (moving it to the trash) and updating its address after a permalink change are signed automatically, because they add no new authorship claim.

The post publishes normally. It is not signed yet, because those tools cannot show a biometric prompt, so it waits as "awaiting biometric signature" and appears under Waiting for a signature in the TIP Protocol dashboard widget. The next time its author opens the post in the WordPress editor, the sign popup opens once, and the TIP Protocol panel keeps a Sign with biometrics button until it is signed. Scheduling a post from the editor opens the popup straight away and signs the post with the address it will have once live, so it is signed before it goes live. Private posts are never prompted, because signing registers a post on the public TIP network; you can still sign one from the panel. Sites that sign in through single sign-on, where users may not know a WordPress password, can turn off the password step for adding devices with the theailab_webauthn_require_password filter.

Yes. Browsers only allow passkeys, Face ID, Touch ID and Windows Hello on secure pages, so wp-admin must load over HTTPS (plain http on localhost also works for development). The plugin shows an admin notice when it detects that wp-admin is not on HTTPS.

Yes. The site signs with your organization's TIP-ID, and each post can also credit the people on your organization's team on the TIP network. You invite writers on your Team page at vp.theailab.org/team, and once they accept, they appear in the byline picker. Each person credited on a post gets a role for that post (author, editor, contributor, reviewer or correspondent). The organization is always credited first, so it stays the owner of every post it signs. A free organization has two team seats, and larger teams can add seats on the Team page.

Yes. TIP Protocol registers any public editor-supported content type, which includes WooCommerce products, custom post types, news/event types, and pages built with Elementor, Beaver Builder, Bricks, and similar tools. Multisite installations are supported.

No. TIP Protocol detects active major SEO plugins. When Yoast SEO or Rank Math is present, TIP Protocol merges TIP provenance into their existing JSON-LD graph instead of emitting a competing article-schema block. When neither is active, TIP Protocol emits its own complete provenance-enriched article schema.

No. The badge ships as a bundled local web component by default. A CDN option is available in plugin settings if you explicitly choose it, but the default works fully offline and respects strict CSP environments.

Private keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. The key-derivation input includes WordPress salts plus a PBKDF2 stretch (200,000 iterations of SHA-256). The admin UI never exposes the stored encrypted private key back to the browser. Decryption only happens server-side at the moment of signing.

A reviewed .tip.json package that contains tip_id, public_key, private_key, algorithm, region, created_at, and (for organizational identities) vp_id. Publisher packages come from The AI Lab after organization review. Personal creator packages are exported from vp.theailab.org and can be DOB-locked for additional protection.

Yes. The plugin is licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later. The TIP Protocol specification is open. The plugin can be used commercially on any number of sites.

By default the plugin talks to the TIP node at https://node.theailab.org for registration and verification calls. You can configure a different node URL in plugin settings if you operate a self-hosted TIP node. Signing a post sends its address, its text, content hashes, the origin label, author TIP-IDs, and signatures to the TIP node, which uses the text to check the content (for example the AI-origin prescan). Biometric data is never sent anywhere.

No. Reader-facing badges use a small bundled web component (about 8 KB), all provenance meta is emitted server-side as HTTP headers and HTML meta tags during the normal page render, and verification lookups for trust scores are cached. There is no extra browser fetch on every page load.