Preservation doesn't stop at capture-time hashing.

Write-block, capture, verify, document.

Archivists already think in this checklist. Most tools don't mirror it, so the workflow lives in someone's head or a shared document instead of on screen. DF Sentinel makes each stage a literal, visible step against every case — something an operator can point to and explain to a colleague or manager, not a process only one person fully understands.

Format identification the preservation world already speaks.

Every file is identified against the UK National Archives' PRONOM registry via an integrated Siegfried engine — by inspecting content and structure directly, not by trusting a file extension that could be wrong, missing, or deliberately misleading.

Identified formats are then rated for obsolescence risk, with a suggested action attached — the preservation-planning step most tools skip entirely.

Capturing a file correctly is only half of preservation.

The other half is noticing when it stops being correct. DF Sentinel's fixity monitor re-checks every preserved file's checksum against what was recorded at capture — on demand, or on a schedule you set — so bit rot or silent corruption years later doesn't go unnoticed. If nothing has changed, it says so plainly.

If a check finds nothing it can verify — because a file was added outside the normal capture flow, say — it's reported honestly as a coverage gap, never quietly counted as a pass. A check that's stopped early never overwrites an earlier failing result or resets the "last checked" clock. That's the difference between a tool that reassures you and a tool that's actually watching.

Described once, carried everywhere.

Title, creator, date range, scope and content, subjects, rights, provenance and arrangement notes — captured once during processing, then carried automatically into every BagIt export as standard Dublin Core tags. The archival package describes itself to whoever opens it years from now, without anyone having to re-enter the same details by hand.

BagIt export your repository already understands.

A standards-compliant RFC 8493 BagIt package for transfer into digital repositories and preservation systems — with exact payload validation and the case's descriptive metadata carried automatically into bag-info.txt. No proprietary container to negotiate with whatever system your institution already runs downstream.

The state of a collection, without digging through a log.

A calm, ambient case-confidence indicator sits beside every open case — green when verified, amber when work is outstanding, red only when something has actually failed. Alongside it, a Digital Asset Register export gives a CSV register of everything preserved in a case, in the format archivists already use to report holdings upward to managers and funders.

Questions about the preservation workflow.

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