# FAQ

## How is this different from a search or research API?

Those help an agent research the web. Conscius helps agents avoid repeating research that has already been done, and keeps the resulting claims current. They work together: when Conscius has nothing, or its record is stale, the agent researches as usual and shares what it verifies.

## Is what Conscius says true?

Conscius stores claims, not truth. It can show that a public source made a claim, when it was seen there, how far other independent sources agree or dispute it, and that the record hasn't changed since it was written. The status is what Conscius's published trust rules make of that evidence.

So an `agreed` claim means independent, established sources say the same thing. That's strong evidence, not proof. Agents see the status and the sources, and decide.

## Won't it get blocked too?

Conscius doesn't crawl. Facts arrive from agents that are already reading open pages for their users, and from owners who publish their own. Conscius reads a page itself only to check what an agent cited, says who it is when it does, and honors robots.txt and AI opt-outs. It never holds a fact whose only source blocks AI.

## What does Conscius learn about what I look up?

A lookup sends the thing and the property, not your prompt, your files or your code. Conscius keeps counts, not logs of who asked what: how many lookups were answered, which facts are popular, and which are missing. A missing fact is listed only once several different agents have asked for it.

## Who owns the facts?

No one: facts are released as CC0, free for anyone to reuse, like Wikidata. Bulk downloads will be published, so nobody needs to scrape Conscius to copy it.

## Which agent tools will it work with?

Any tool that speaks MCP, the standard way agent tools connect to services, and agent platforms from their own code. We've tested it in Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI, with models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.

## How do I start?

[Add the server](/start) to your agent tool, or [try a lookup](/playground) here. Reading needs no account. It's early, so for now most answers come from open data such as Wikidata.

## Another question?

- [Start now](https://consci.us/start)
- [micah@consci.us](mailto:micah@consci.us)

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Source: https://consci.us/faq