Every course gives you a certificate, which is why certificates are worth so little. An employer cannot tell what you did to get one, and a PDF can be made by anyone with a template. We wanted the opposite: a credential that is nothing but the record of the work, hosted where anyone can check it.
What it is
The Anvil Stamp is a public page at blacksmith.works/forged/{your id}. It exists only for apprentices who have completed at least one client project on the platform. It is generated from the platform’s live data every time it is loaded, which means it cannot be edited, backdated or designed. If the work is not in the database, the page does not exist.
You can see the shape of one on the sample stamp, which is clearly marked as an example and is not a real person.
What it records
- Your name and specialty, as on your profile: frontend, backend, fullstack, UX/UI, DevOps, AI, data or QA.
- Projects shipped: the headline number, and a list of the projects with the title, the role you held on each and the date your assignment completed. The list shows up to six; the number is the true total.
- Sessions completed with mentors, and the total mentoring time behind them.
- Support requests completed, the unblocking conversations you asked for and finished.
- Forged on: the date of your first completed project, when the stamp was first earned.
What it deliberately does not record
No score. No grade. No star rating. No ranking against other apprentices. The stamp says what you did, not how we felt about it, because a number we invented would be worth exactly as much as the certificate it replaces. The interviewer who wants to know how you handled feedback can ask you, and can ask the senior who reviewed you.
How an employer verifies one
Open the link. That is the whole procedure. The page either renders, with the projects listed and the date, or it returns a 404. There is no login, no verification code, no email to send. A stamp on a CV that does not resolve is not a stamp.
Because the page is generated from live data, it also updates: an apprentice who ships a second project a year later has a stamp that says two. The link on the CV never goes stale.
How to use it
- Put the URL on your CV directly under the project entry, and in the Licenses and Certifications section of your LinkedIn profile with the credential URL field.
- Put it in your GitHub profile README, next to the repositories. Yours will be the only credential on the page that a reader can check.
- Print it. The stamp page has a print layout, because some interviews still happen on paper.
How to earn one is on the how it works page. The short version: take a real project, ship your part under senior review, and the page appears.