The domain · 6 min

What people see

The status says what's true. The phase says what to show. And every outcome becomes exactly one headline, one fix and one action.

Status and phase are different things

A claim's status is stored. Its phase is worked out on every read, from the status and the last check. A pending claim could be waiting for you, or being checked, or waiting on a cache, and those call for very different screens.

Every phaseRuns the real toClaimView

Provider

One character looks right but isn't the same

Fix needed

Character 41 is “1” where the code has “l”. Those are easy to mix up when a value is retyped.

In Cloudflare, replace the Content with the one from the Copy button.

Check now

What this phase carries

claimId

domainAscii

domainUnicode

status

record

instructions

timing

phase

outcome

explanation

One case where the page shows something elseWhen a check finds nothing at the record's name, this function says fix_needed. The claim page shows that one case as Add record, because the worker's first look happens about 30 seconds in, while the person is still reading the steps. The rule is isWaitingForRecord in apps/web/components/claim/phase.ts, and The page and its motion walks through it. Everywhere else the page shows exactly the phase it's given.

Predict it first

You got a new code. The last check found nothing. Which phase are you in?

The same failure, in each provider's words

Providers call the same fields different things, and saying the wrong word sends people hunting. The copy always uses the provider's own.

Provider	The fix we show
GoDaddy	In GoDaddy, replace the Value with the one from the Copy button.
Cloudflare	In Cloudflare, replace the Content with the one from the Copy button.
Namecheap	In Namecheap, replace the Value with the one from the Copy button.
Amazon Route 53	In Amazon Route 53, replace the Value with the one from the Copy button.

The copy rules

These came out of the research, and a test enforces them across every outcome.

Rule	Instead of	We say
Never blame	You entered it wrong	We can't see the record yet
No judgement words	Invalid value	One character looks right but isn't the same
Name who we're waiting on	Pending	We're waiting on Google Public DNS
Lead with the typical time	Can take up to 48 hours	Usually a few minutes
One fix per failure	Check your settings and try again	In Cloudflare, replace the Content

Every outcome also gets exactly one primary action. There's no menu of things to try. The action is one of check_now, wait, new_code or none.

Alerts follow the same rules. Their words are written in packages/core/src/alerts.ts, next to the rest of the copy, and alerts.test.ts checks that every title names the domain, fits in 60 characters and never uses a blaming word.