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Produce a Compliance Report for an Auditor

Generate a signed, self-contained HTML report of the ledger that an auditor can receive and verify independently.

Anchor the chain head before producing the report so the auditor has a verifiable reference point:

php artisan chronicle:checkpoint

2. Generate the report​

# Full ledger report
php artisan chronicle:report /tmp/chronicle-report-q1.html

# Scoped to a date range
php artisan chronicle:report /tmp/chronicle-report-q1.html \
    --from=2025-01-01 \
    --to=2025-03-31

The command writes a single HTML file. On success, it prints:

Entries:    4 821
Chain head: a3f7c9...
Report hash: 8e12bd...
Written to: /tmp/chronicle-report-q1.html

3. Share the HTML file with the auditor​

The file is self-contained: it embeds the entry count, chain head, reporting period, report hash, signature, algorithm, and key id. No database access is needed to read it.

What the auditor can verify​

The report includes a signature block. An auditor with the corresponding public key (CHRONICLE_PUBLIC_KEY) can verify that:

  1. The report hash covers the canonical data (entry count, boundaries, chain head, period)
  2. The signature was produced by the key identified by key_id

Example verification with OpenSSL (Ed25519):

# Extract from the report HTML: report_hash, signature, public_key
echo -n "<report_hash_hex>" | xxd -r -p > hash.bin
echo "<base64_signature>" | base64 -d > sig.bin
echo "<base64_public_key>" | base64 -d > pub.bin
openssl pkeyutl -verify -inkey pub.bin -keyform DER -sigfile sig.bin -in hash.bin -pubin

Verify it worked​

Open the HTML file in a browser - it renders a table with all report fields. Confirm the period, entry count, and chain head match what you expect from chronicle:stats.

php artisan chronicle:stats

See also​