Most shipped work can't answer two questions: what changed for the person it was built for, and how would anyone check? Status reports say "done." Demos say "look." Neither says so what.
Keep a Value is a standard I published for closing that gap. It defines one
file — VALUE.md — that lives at the root of any project and states, in plain
language: who the work is for, what changes for them, and the specific check
that would prove or break the claim. A project's value statement starts as
Proposed and only becomes Proven when the check passes against the real,
shipped thing.
It came out of a habit: testing what I ship harder than anyone who works for me, and keeping the unflattering results. Writing the check down before claiming success turns "we shipped it" into "here is what it changed, and here is how you can tell."
The full standard — with a runbook, a template, worked examples, and a stranger-test harness for checking whether a document communicates on its own — is published at keepavalue.com.