How we curate & verify
VanLife Beacon is a curator, not a publisher. We don't invent facts — we find the authoritative sources, check they're current, explain them clearly, and link them so you can verify everything yourself.
Where a page comes from
Every page is built from a referential: a structured set of sourced entities (terms, vendors, regulations) assembled before any page is written. Content is generated from that foundation — never the other way around.
The voice is an editorial brand, not a fabricated persona. We don't claim personal experience we don't have; the authority lives in the sources we cite.
AI drafts, humans verify
We use automation to draft and structure, but no figure, price, law or date is invented by a model. Every published claim traces to a reference. Pages awaiting human review are marked and kept out of search until signed off.
We check on a cadence
Sources have a last-verified date, shown on each page. A regulation change or a dead link flags the affected pages stale so we can refresh them. Source health is part of the product.
Money never drives the verdict
Some outbound links are affiliate links, disclosed in the first viewport. They never determine our ranking or verdict — those come from the sourced comparison. Affiliate links are marked rel="sponsored".
How we rate a source
- Verified / official. A government body, regulator, or manufacturer's own specification — checked and current.
- Provisional. Real and useful, but not yet fully verified or subject to change — flagged honestly rather than hidden.
- Out of date. A source that has moved or aged past our freshness threshold — queued for refresh.