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See it work

_{▶  Watch the 20-second demo with sound  ·  See more on the website}

What it does

Reads the label Point the camera at an ingredient list or a barcode. An AI reader transcribes it, and on-device OCR takes over when there's no signal or no key.	Checks six official lists Every ingredient is looked up in the EU additives database, FDA's Substances Added to Food, IARC, California's Prop 65, and the FSSAI and Codex oil standards, all mirrored daily.
Shows who decided, with the source Bans, pending bans, warning labels and hazard listings, by jurisdiction. Each carries its regulation, a link and the date the list was last checked.	Compares countries Line up one product's labels from two markets and see exactly what differs. Lay's in India listed palmolein where the US label listed sunflower, corn or canola oil.
Scores additive hazard, honestly A 0–100 score where points come off only for bans, warnings and hazard listings on record. It is withheld when too little of the label has been checked, so an additive nobody has researched never reads as "fine".

How it works

Four layers, stored apart on purpose:

Layer	Schema	What it holds
1	product	Products from Open Food Facts (ODbL)
2	canon	One entity per ingredient, with every name it goes by, in several languages
3	evidence	Regulatory status, hazard findings, composition and the mirrored official lists, every row cited
4	verdict	Scores, claims and cross-market comparisons

Two rules hold the design together:

Rule	How it is enforced
Open Food Facts data is never merged with Verso's own data on disk.	The two sides are joined at request time. pnpm lint:layers checks the migrations and the live database for any foreign key, view or materialized view that crosses the boundary.
A model never decides what differs between two products.	Differences are computed in code after both lists go through the canon. Every sentence comes from a template, and a claim without a citation can't be inserted: citation_id is NOT NULL.

The reasoning in full: methodology · claim templates · build plan.

Official sources

Source	What Verso reads	Entries
EU Food Additives Database	Authorised additives and their conditions of use (Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008)	412
FDA Substances Added to Food	Regulated uses by 21 CFR section; Part 189 prohibitions	3,971
IARC Monographs, List of Classifications	Carcinogen classifications, Groups 1–3	1,128
California Proposition 65 list	Chemicals listed for cancer or reproductive toxicity	990
FSSAI regulation 2.2.1	India's standards for edible oils	32
Codex CXS 210-1999	International standards for named vegetable oils	24

pnpm sources:sync downloads each list, records every added, changed or removed entry, and refuses a download that shrinks a list by more than a fifth. With VERSO_SOURCE_SYNC=daily the API re-runs it once a day.

Quick start

You need Node 22.13+, pnpm 11, Docker, and poppler (brew install poppler) for the two PDF standards.

pnpm install
cp .env.example .env              # add an AI reader key if you want photo reading
pnpm db:up && pnpm migrate && pnpm seed
pnpm sources:sync                 # download the official lists
pnpm api                          # API on http://127.0.0.1:4310

Then try the app in a browser:

pnpm --filter @verso/mobile web

Development builds show test labels on the Scan tab. They run through the real API and canon and skip only the camera. Before sending a change, run pnpm check (layer lint, tests and the phase 0 criteria).

Run it on a phone

pnpm dev brings up Postgres, the API and Metro on the Mac's Bonjour name, so a phone on the same network (or USB) can reach them. Then install a development build:

pnpm --filter @verso/mobile ios   # or: android

The camera and on-device OCR need a development build, not Expo Go.

Configuration

Variable	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	Postgres connection. The default matches docker-compose.yml (local development only).
VERSO_OCR_PROVIDER	Who reads label photos: gemini, anthropic, opencode, or openai for any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, a local model included
GEMINI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, VERSO_OCR_API_KEY	The key for that provider. Keys belong in .env, which git ignores. With none set, the phone reads labels on the device.
VERSO_SOURCE_SYNC	daily to re-download the official lists from the API process

.env.example documents every option.

Project layout

apps/mobile          Expo app: guided capture, offline cache, verdict and compare screens
services/api         Fastify API: /v1/verdict, /v1/compare, /v1/ocr, /v1/sources, …
packages/db          migrations, one file per layer
packages/canon       ingredient canon: seeder, resolver, on-demand identification
packages/evidence    curated evidence; sources/ parses the official lists, sync.js mirrors them
packages/verdict     score.js, templates.js, build.js, compare.js
packages/shared      label-text normaliser and the product_ref boundary
data/canon           ingredient and synonym source of truth (JSON)
data/evidence        regulatory, hazard, composition and contaminant findings (JSON, every row cited)
tools/               layer lint, source sync, Open Food Facts ingest, dev stack, demos
docs/                plan, methodology, claim templates, brand

Security and privacy

• The API has no authentication. It is built for local development; don't expose it to the internet as is, because /v1/ocr spends your AI provider's quota.
• Label photos, and the names of ingredients Verso hasn't seen before, go only to the AI provider you configure. With none configured, labels are read on the device.
• Please report vulnerabilities privately through GitHub security advisories, not in a public issue.

Note

Verso does not produce the regulatory or hazard information it shows. Each item is published by the official source linked beside it, a regulator, a WHO agency or a court, and is dated by when that source was last checked. Verso can't guarantee it. It is not medical, nutritional or legal advice.

License

• Code: MIT.
• Curated data in data/canon/ and data/evidence/: CC BY-NC 4.0. Free for non-commercial use with attribution; ask about commercial use.
• Third-party material keeps its own terms: quotations from regulators inside data/evidence/, the EU additives data behind data/canon/eu-additives.generated.json, the downloaded official lists, and Open Food Facts data (ODbL), which is fetched at runtime and is not in this repository.

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_{Verso is the reverse side of a printed page: the ingredient panel is on the back of the pack.
Built by Aniket Shukla.}