---
sidebar_position: 4
title: Canonicalisation
description: "How TrackForge canonicalises evidence packets, leakage vectors and rating events into deterministic JSON so identical inputs always produce identical hashes."
keywords:
  - canonicalisation
  - canonical JSON
  - evidence packet
  - rating event
---

# Canonicalisation

Canonicalisation turns evidence packets, leakage vectors, and rating events into deterministic JSON. Deterministic JSON is required because the same input must always produce the same hash.

TrackForge uses sorted keys, compact separators, ASCII-safe output, and UTF-8 encoding before hashing.

Canonicalisation applies to:

- Evidence packet JSON.
- Leakage vector JSON.
- Rating event JSON.
- Legacy certification records where historical verification requires them.

See [Canonical JSON Schema](/docs/certification/technical/canonical-json-schema) for the byte-level rules.