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World desk5 min

Handling PDF Integrity Verdicts in Code: Intact, Modified, or Inconclusive

Treat PDF integrity results as three distinct signals: intact is not proof of authenticity, modified is evidence for review, and inconclusive calls for context—not an automatic rejection.
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Handle intact, modified, and inconclusive as three distinct outcomes—not as a pass/fail Boolean. An intact result means the check found no structural evidence of post-creation changes; it does not prove the document is authentic or truthful. A modified result is a structural finding, not proof of who changed the file or why. Inconclusive means the check could establish neither that the file is unchanged nor that it was modified.

What each verdict tells your application

A structural PDF check describes evidence in the file’s structure. It cannot establish whether the document’s claims are true, whether the claimed organization issued it, or whether its sender intended fraud.

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Verdict What the check established What it does not establish
intact No structural evidence of post-creation changes was found. That the content is true, that the named issuer created it, or that the document was not fabricated from scratch and then exported cleanly.
modified One or more structural markers indicate evidence of post-creation modification. Who changed the file, when or why they changed it, or whether the change was fraudulent.
inconclusive The check could not establish that the file is unchanged, and did not establish that it was modified. That the file is modified. Some origins or processing histories can make a structural comparison inapplicable.

These definitions follow the HTPBE service overview and its API documentation. The verdict is one input to a decision, not a judgment about a person.

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How should code route each result?

Keep the three branches explicit and let your wider workflow decide what happens next. A reasonable default is human review for a modified result, issuer confirmation or review for an inconclusive result, and continuation to other checks for an intact result. These are workflow defaults, not universal policy: expected provenance matters. A document expected from an institution may warrant issuer confirmation when inconclusive; a document authored by a counterparty may reasonably have passed through consumer software.

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switch (result.status) {
  case 'modified':
    return routeToHumanReview(result.modification_markers);
  case 'inconclusive':
    return requestIssuerConfirmation(result.status_reason);
  case 'intact':
    return continueWithOtherChecks();
  default:
    return routeToHumanReviewForUnknownStatus();
}

The code is illustrative: verify field names and allowed values against the API version you use. If multiple services need the same routing policy, centralize it in an action or policy layer rather than scattering status comparisons across the application. Preserve the verdict and its supporting details so a reviewer can understand the route chosen.

Modified: send evidence to a reviewer

Use the marker details to explain why the file was flagged and help prioritize review. Do not translate a marker into an accusation or an automatic rejection. HTPBE’s official documentation states: “A structural verdict describes the file, not the person who sent it, so it must never be the sole basis for an automatic adverse decision (rejecting or denying an applicant, claimant, or customer).”

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Inconclusive: resolve the missing context

Look at the reason supplied with the result and compare it with the document’s expected origin. Depending on your process, request a fresh copy or confirmation from the issuer, or send the case for human review. Do not map inconclusive to modified: the check has not established modification.

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Intact: continue independent checks

An intact result only answers the structural question within the check’s scope. Continue with the identity, issuer, content, or policy checks your application requires; do not treat this result alone as proof of authenticity.

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Use machine-readable markers and handle unknown values

The API documentation describes modification_markers[] as stable machine-readable IDs. Branch on IDs, not localized display labels; render user-facing labels from the current published dictionary when appropriate. Examples documented by HTPBE include:

  • HTPBE_SIGNATURE_REMOVED
  • HTPBE_DATES_DISAGREE
  • HTPBE_MULTIPLE_REVISION_LAYERS

Markers should be treated as an unordered set: do not make routing depend on their array order. For inconclusive results, inspect the reason field when available. Reasons described in indexed documentation include consumer-software origin, online-editor origin, a scanned document, unverifiable metadata, a filled form, and a Fill & Sign overlay. The exact field names and enum values for these details are not established by the official material cited here, so check the current API reference before hard-coding them.

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Likewise, treat confidence as a prioritization aid for human review, not an independent verdict; allow for null confidence and unrecognized future reason values. Preserve unknown values in logs and route them to a safe fallback rather than silently treating them as intact.

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Integrate and test the API flow

HTPBE’s repository documents a two-step REST flow: submit an accessible PDF URL to POST /analyze, then retrieve the full result from GET /result/{id}. It also documents test API keys and synthetic URLs for intact, modified, and inconclusive examples. Use those fixtures to exercise every branch, including unknown statuses, without relying on a real customer’s document. Check the current repository documentation for live request and response details before implementation.

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The same repository describes PDF-only input, a 10 MB web-upload maximum, URL-fetch and analysis timeouts, and limitations of structural analysis. In particular, a change that leaves no structural trace—such as some pixel-level or text-level alterations—may not be detected. The service says it does not replace legal or forensic expert review. Confirm current limits and operational details in the live documentation before setting upload validation, timeouts, or service-level expectations.

For transient capacity or server failures, follow the API’s documented retry behavior; invalid inputs and billing failures should not be retried as if they were transient. Exact status codes, headers, and retry guidance are not specified here, so use the current API reference. For historical auditability, retain the algorithm version used for each verdict if the API exposes it, and verify the version field and format in that reference.

What to compare when choosing a check

If you are evaluating structural integrity checks or comparing providers, compare the capabilities that shape your workflow rather than treating one verdict as a complete authenticity decision.

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  • Analysis scope: structural checks versus visual or content analysis, including what changes can go undetected.
  • Explainability: whether reasons and machine-readable markers are available and documented.
  • Decision safeguards: whether the provider warns against using a verdict as the sole basis for an adverse decision.
  • Operational fit: supported formats, file-size limits, test facilities, versioning, and audit history.
  • Service characteristics: price and latency, checked against current terms rather than inferred from a verdict demonstration.

HTPBE’s undated service page, accessed in 2026, reports 63 forensic checks per document, 117 structural signals evaluated, and median analysis time under three seconds. These are vendor-published figures, not independent comparative results. They should not be read as a guarantee for a particular file or workload.

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