Check an employer

Facts about one employer, each with a source and a time. Never a score or a verdict.

Use it when the user asks "is this company real / legit / what it says it is?" or is about to apply somewhere they have never heard of. It answers with a checklist, not a judgement: a company can fail an item and be fine (a young domain, an overseas site with no ICP record) or pass every item and still waste the user's time. Relay the items; do not total them, and do not call a company "safe" or "a scam" on this basis.

What runs for free, with nothing from the user:

• in_index: whether the employer's own system is in this index, how many postings are live, the median days open, whether the posting dates are the employer system's own or self-reported (date_source), whether the employer claimed its tenant. For an employer we know but do not index (Feishu-hosted, 蔚来, or one that has ceased operations) the item says that instead.

• domain_age (RDAP registration date; under 180 days is reported, not judged), site_history (earliest Wayback Machine capture), icp_on_homepage (the ICP 备案号 the employer's own homepage carries, if any). These need the employer's own domain: pass domain when the employer's careers page is on a vendor host.

• posting_red_flags: when the user pastes the posting text, the words recruitment scams rely on (境外高薪, 包机票, 不限经验, 打字员, visa provided ...) are listed if present. Absence proves nothing; presence is worth saying out loud.

• sanctions_screen: the OFAC SDN and consolidated sanctions lists, downloaded to the user's machine at most once a day and matched against the company's name there (the name is sent nowhere). A match names the entry, list and programme; it is a reason to read the entry, not a verdict, since names collide. A live company registration proves little on its own: Prince Group's Hong Kong companies were on the register the day they were sanctioned.

• org_events: the organisational and financing events EarlyTip (earlytip.com) has on public record for the employer (executive departures, restructurings, funding rounds, acquisitions, bankruptcies, new companies; 2026-09-20 onwards), read from its public export, downloaded whole to the user's machine once a day and matched there by the export's published company_key. Each event is a type, one date (the event's own when known, else EarlyTip's publication day: date_kind), the amount where EarlyTip's record carries one (amount, verbatim), the source domain and a plain link; never the headline, and no link where the source site's terms list linking among the prohibited acts (link_withheld). role says whether the employer is the event's subject or its counterparty; unverified carries EarlyTip's own "待核实" marker. EarlyTip checked its values against its own published headline and summary, not the source article: relay an event as "on EarlyTip's record, see the source", never as an established fact, and reason: no_record means the file holds nothing on this employer, which says nothing about it.

What costs money and is therefore pending_user unless the user set their own key:

• registry_record: the company register (成立日期, 经营状态, 注册资本, 参保人数, 法定 代表人). The government site sits behind a captcha; 天眼查 sells it per call. With TIANYANCHA_API_KEY set on the user's machine this tool fetches it once per call, paid by the user's own 天眼查 account; the key and the lookup never reach us. Without it, pending_user[] lists the ways: set the key, use a 天眼查 MCP the assistant already has, or the free manual lookups (爱企查, 国家企业信用信息公示系统; for a Hong Kong or overseas employer the HK Companies Registry e-Services search, the HK Police Scameter for a phone number / URL / receiving account, and OpenCorporates). Offer them; do not invent the record. If the assistant already has a 天眼查 tool or connector (for example the one built into Tencent WorkBuddy), use it to fill registry_record directly instead of sending the user off to apply for a key.

An unavailable item carries reason: network means this query could not reach the source (a restricted network, a timeout) and says nothing about the employer; say that rather than "no record". no_record / http_status mean the source answered.

Privacy: this tool sends the company's name or domain to RDAP, the Internet Archive and the company's own site, and to 天眼查 only with the user's key. The OFAC lists and the EarlyTip file are downloaded whole, so neither learns the name. Nothing about the user is sent anywhere, and nothing fetched is stored in the index.

Args: company: an employer id ("unitree") or any part of the name in either language. Ambiguous input is refused with the candidates, never guessed. domain: the employer's own web domain ("unitree.com"), when the user has it or when the company is not in the index. Either argument alone is enough. posting_text: the text of the posting the user is looking at, for the red-flag check. job_id: a posting from search_jobs / check_watches. The employer is taken from it and the red-flag check runs over the posting as this index holds it, so you can check a role you just found without pasting anything. posting_text, if also given, wins.

Returns: checks[] (id, label, status: verified | not_verified | unavailable | not_applicable | pending_user, note, source, checked_at, plus the item's own fields), pending_user[] with how[], summary, not_a_verdict, privacy.