# Staffetta > Staffetta is a neutral record of custody for parcel delivery. Each handoff a shipment makes is signed where it is observed and appended to a tamper-evident log that no party in the delivery, Staffetta included, can quietly rewrite. On top of the record, Staffetta produces plain conclusions (for example, whether a parcel was delivered to the premises) that people, platforms and AI agents can act on and verify. Status: in development, October 2026. There is no public API yet; early access is open to a small number of design partners. ## In plain words When a customer says a parcel never arrived, retailers today have only the carrier's word for it. Staffetta puts a small smart label in the parcel; everyday Bluetooth gateways (phones, routers, vehicles), or cellular for high-value shipments, spot it along the way; and every sighting is sealed into one tamper-evident record that retailers, insurers, payment platforms and AI agents can all check. Why it matters: 68% of UK consumers had a delivery problem in the past six months, and 26% had a parcel left in an inappropriate location (Ofcom, 22 October 2025). Merchants win on average 50% of contested chargebacks (Mastercard with Datos Insights, 2025). ## For network and label partners Staffetta makes no hardware and runs no network: every parcel it protects needs a label and a network to hear it. It turns raw detections into an outcome someone pays for (a dispute settled on evidence). Design partners get early integration with the record and input into the Staffetta label specification. Contact hello@staffetta.io, subject "Staffetta partners". ## What a record contains - Who held the shipment at each handoff, identified by that actor's own signing key (warehouse, courier, locker, vehicle, robot, or an agent). - What was observed: presence, movement and, where a sensor is fitted, condition such as temperature or shock. - How it was sensed: battery-free tag, battery-powered Bluetooth tag, cellular tracker, sensing built into a vehicle or locker, or no sensor at all (carrier feed or signed confirmation). - Where it was signed: on the device, at a gateway, or by the platform. A reading the platform was told about is never presented as one it observed. - What it does not prove, stated with the record. ## How to read Staffetta evidence correctly - The format is shared across sensing methods; the evidentiary weight is not. Always check how a reading was sensed and where it was signed before relying on it. - Presence detected by a gateway at an address means the tag was near that gateway. It is not a measured distance to the door. - Silence means different things by sensing method: hours without a reading from a battery-free tag can be normal in transit; the same silence from a cellular tracker can indicate a problem. - Demonstrations on staffetta.io use illustrative data. Nothing on the site describes a live deployment. ## Planned (not yet available) - Typed conclusions: delivered_to_premises, custody_unbroken, condition_within_spec, each with evidence links, confidence, sensing method, signing point and stated limits. - An API and an MCP server with tools to verify a record, fetch evidence and open a dispute, read-only at first. - Scoped, expiring, per-shipment access grants that record which agent acted and on whose behalf. ## The interactive demo (example data) Most of the demo is built by JavaScript, so this is a plain summary of what it shows. All shipments in it are illustrative; field trials on real parcels start in October 2026. - One parcel's journey shown at three tiers of evidence: Status (the carrier's own data, watched by the agent), Ambient Trace (a low-cost Bluetooth label heard by everyday gateways such as phones, routers and vehicles) and Full Custody (a cellular device plus signed handoffs at every transfer). Pricing is set with pilot partners. - Failed-delivery scenarios: never arrived, damaged in transit, cold chain broken, wrong item, and a "nobody was in" failed attempt. In each, the agent reads the record, reaches a conclusion and drafts a message that waits for the person's approval. - A tamper test: edit any entry and the seals after it break. The demo seals are a short non-cryptographic hash; production uses cryptographic signatures made at the earliest point that can sign (device, gateway or Staffetta's ingest), and each entry records which. - Evidence is worded as sightings near a gateway at a time, not measured distances. Not being heard is not proof on its own. ## Pages - [Home](https://staffetta.io/): what Staffetta is, in one page - [For builders and AI agents](https://staffetta.io/build.html): the trust layer, record contents, planned conclusions, early access - [FAQ](https://staffetta.io/faq.html): independent proof of delivery, evidence for item-not-received chargebacks, parcel claim evidence for insurers, verification, availability - [Interactive demo](https://staffetta.io/demo.html): four failure scenarios (never arrived, damaged, cold chain broken, wrong item) and a tamper test - [Privacy](https://staffetta.io/staffetta-privacy.html) ## Contact - hello@staffetta.io (subject "Staffetta early access" for design-partner enquiries)