Rolling your own audit tables vs using Veritio
The default move: an `audit_events` table, some triggers or middleware, `actor`, `action`, `created_at`. Every team has built one. It works — until someone asks whether the history can be trusted, exported, or explained.
What DIY audit tables does well
- Zero new dependencies; lives in the database you already run.
- Total control over schema and retention.
- Perfectly adequate for internal debugging and light traceability.
- No procurement, no vendor review.
Where Veritio differs
- Append-only by convention is not tamper-evident: anyone with a migration or DB access can rewrite history without trace. Veritio’s records are hash-linked, so any edit breaks the chain visibly.
- A table has no export story: handing a reviewer database access is not evidence. Veritio exports open, verifiable bundles a third party can check without touching your systems.
- Risk and structure come free: origin typing (user / service / AI agent), deterministic risk scores, and episode rollups — things a bare table grows only through years of accretion.
- The schema, SDK, and verifier are open source — you can adopt the structure without adopting a vendor.
At a glance
| DIY audit tables | Veritio | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first row | An afternoon | An afternoon (npm install @veritio/core) |
| Tamper evidence | By convention only | Hash-linked chain |
| Independent verification | — | Open verifier + export bundles |
| AI agent modeling | Roll your own | Sessions, tool calls, episodes built in |
| Risk scoring | Roll your own | Deterministic policy, 0–1 per event |
| Long-term cost | Accretes ad hoc | Maintained open protocol |
Comparison last reviewed July 2026. Products change — check vendor documentation for current behavior. Veritio provides evidence support for reviews and investigations, not automatic compliance.
Choose DIY audit tables when…
You need light internal traceability, your reviewers are your own engineers, and nobody will ever ask for proof that history was not rewritten. A plain table is genuinely fine for that.
Choose Veritio when…
Someone — a customer, an auditor, a future you during an incident — will eventually ask "can you prove this happened as recorded?" Retrofitting tamper evidence onto years of mutable rows is much harder than starting with a chain.