The fact-checker

DreamLayer's signature feature is called Veritas: while people talk, it listens for claims and quietly tells you when one does not hold up. This chapter explains what it does in plain terms — and, just as important, what it deliberately does not do.

It is off by default. You turn it on with one switch in the phone's Settings ("Live fact-checker").

What you see

When Veritas has something to say, one card appears for seven seconds. The color tells you everything at a glance:

• Red — "They said different before." The strongest signal. This exact person previously said something that contradicts what they just said, and the card quotes their earlier words back. This works entirely on your own devices, even with no internet at all.
• Amber — "Check this." The claim was checked against your brain (your Mac's knowledge, or the cloud if you allow it) and it did not hold up.
• Green — "Verified." The claim checked out. Green cards are rare on purpose — it only bothers confirming when it is very sure.
• Grey — "Unverified." It heard a checkable claim but could not settle it either way. An honest shrug, not a verdict.

Why it stays quiet most of the time

A fact-checker that pipes up constantly would be worse than none. Veritas is built to be picky:

• It only checks real claims — numbers, dates, facts. Questions, opinions, and hedged statements ("I think...", "maybe...") are ignored.
• It speaks about any one person at most once every 45 seconds.
• It needs to be confident before it flags anything.
• It holds its tongue entirely during Focus mode, and when privacy is on it hears nothing at all.

So when a card does appear, it means something.

Reading the room, not just the words

Two companion features deepen the picture, both also off until you enable them:

The delivery read looks at how something was said — pace, phrasing, strain — always compared against that same person's normal baseline. It refuses to judge anyone it has not spent real time with: strangers are explicitly out of bounds, because everyone's nervous tics look "suspicious" until you know their normal.

The combined read then puts content and delivery together into one honest headline on the card:

"Doesn't add up — and it didn't sound like it, either." "The claim is off, but they seem to mean it." — a false claim delivered sincerely reads as an honest mistake, not a lie. "Checks out — but the delivery was uneasy."

That distinction — wrong versus lying — is the whole point of having both.

What to trust, plainly

• Trust the red cards most. "They said different before" comes with the receipt quoted on the card.
• Treat amber as a prompt, not a verdict. It means "worth checking", and the card shows the basis it used.
• The delivery read is a hint, never an accusation. It is one signal, weighted carefully, and it is honest about its own confidence.
• DreamLayer never announces anything to the room. Every card is for your eyes only, and whether to act on it is entirely yours.