Did You Write This? Shiro Can Show It.
Shiro records how every passage of your book arrived: typed, pasted, or accepted from its AI. It can turn that record into a signed report for an editor, a contest or a publisher. The report shows the record hasn’t changed since it was signed. It can’t show who was at the keyboard, and this page explains why.
What Goes in the Record
While you write, Shiro notes where each character came from and keeps a log of timed changes for each scene. Reports sort the text into six kinds.
- Typed: your own keystrokes, in Shiro.
- Pasted: from the clipboard or dragged in, with the source app where Shiro can tell, such as Google Docs or Word.
- Rewritten: your text, rewritten or corrected by Shiro.
- Written by Shiro: accepted as it came, with the model and the route noted: ghost text, rewrite, agent or translation.
- Shiro, edited: text Shiro wrote that you’ve changed since.
- Not recorded: written before the record began, or changed outside Shiro.
The record is on by default and you can switch it off. The colours only appear while the Authorship section is open, so you aren’t drafting inside a colouring book. Replay plays a scene back session by session, which is evidence of a kind, and also a way to watch yourself write the same sentence five times.
In a local project the log sits in .shiro/authorship/, with the rest of your files. Nothing leaves your computer until you save a report and send it yourself.
What You Can Send
The process report comes as a PDF to read and a signed JSON file to check. It gives the title, author and language, word totals for each kind, your sessions and active minutes, first and last dates, the number of changes, and a tally for each scene. It also carries the answer to KDP’s AI question and the models involved, useful when a publisher asks for an AI disclosure and you’d rather look it up than remember it.
The report doesn’t contain the book. Each scene appears as a SHA-256 fingerprint of its text, so the report can go out before the manuscript does and the two can be compared later.
Programmes such as the Authors Guild’s Human Authored certification ask how a book was written, and the PDF can go with your application. It’s a record, not a certification, and whether it satisfies a given programme is that programme’s call. A report showing plenty of Shiro’s text is just as valid as one showing none. Nobody is being graded.
How a Rewrite Shows
Every line of the log holds a SHA-256 hash of the previous hash plus the line itself, so changing an old line breaks every hash after it. The report is signed with an ECDSA P-256 key made on your device. To check one, open the JSON in Shiro under Publish, or run shiro verify report.json. The command-line tool is built from source for now.
What It Can’t Show
An editor with a sceptical streak will think of these, so here they are.
Who typed it. The record shows that keystrokes reached Shiro. Copy a chatbot’s chapter out by hand and it reads as typed, and all you’ve earned is a sore wrist.
Who you are. The key isn’t tied to an identity. It can show that one device signed two reports. It can’t say whose device that is.
When. There’s no outside timestamp. Dates come from the computer’s own clock, which its owner can change. For a date a third party will stand behind, look to a copyright registration or a dated deposit.
Anything from elsewhere. A draft you imported, or a chapter you fixed in another editor, shows as not recorded. That accuses nobody of anything, but a book begun elsewhere will have a lot of it.
That the whole log is genuine. The software runs on your machine, so a patient programmer could write a false log from scratch and sign it with a fresh key. The chain catches changes made after signing. It doesn’t make a record unforgeable.
The Questions People Ask
Can this prove I wrote my book?
Not on its own. It’s evidence of how the text arrived in Shiro on one device, and that the record hasn’t changed since it was signed. It can support your word. It can’t replace it.
Is it proof of human authorship?
It’s a record, not a certificate. It shows what was typed, pasted or accepted from Shiro, but keystrokes don’t identify a person, and no third party has checked it. You can attach it when a programme asks how a book was written.
Does Shiro detect AI writing?
No. It never reads your prose for signs of anything. It only knows what happened in Shiro: text written with another AI and pasted in shows as pasted, and text copied out by hand shows as typed.
Will it help with an AI disclosure on KDP?
It gives you the figures. The report holds the answer to KDP’s AI-content question, based on what Shiro recorded, along with the models used. Text Shiro never saw isn’t counted, so read the answer against what you know before you give it.
Can I turn it off?
Yes. When it’s off, nothing new is recorded and the record so far stays. You can also clear it, which deletes the record of every scene and leaves the text as it is.