How we write these guides

This site is a handbook for people making decisions with legal and financial consequences, often in a second language and under time pressure. That only works if the guides are true. This page says plainly how they are produced, so you can judge how much to trust them.

New guides are written by an automated pipeline

From August 2026, each new guide is researched, written and checked by software, without a person reading it before it goes live.

That sounds like a reason to trust it less, and it would be, if it worked the way most automated content does. Here is what is different.

The older guides were written by hand

Guides published before August 2026 were researched and written by a person, against the same official sources. They are not being replaced. Instead the same pipeline re-checks them on a rotation: it re-fetches the sources a guide was built from, compares every figure against them, corrects what has moved, and deletes any claim the sources no longer support.

So an older guide showing a recent “✓ Last verified” date has been through the same checks described below, even though a person wrote the words.

It may only cite official sources

The pipeline is restricted to a fixed list of official French and EU sources — government departments, the social security and tax administrations, and the public bodies that actually set the rules. It cannot cite a blog, a forum, a bank’s marketing page or a news article, even when those are easier to read.

service-public.gouv.fr
legifrance.gouv.fr
ameli.fr
impots.gouv.fr
urssaf.fr
caf.fr
france-visas.gouv.fr
administration-etrangers-en-france.interieur.gouv.fr
interieur.gouv.fr
travail-emploi.gouv.fr
francetravail.fr
entreprises.gouv.fr
economie.gouv.fr
tarifs-bancaires.gouv.fr
ants.gouv.fr
ofii.fr
securite-sociale.fr
defenseurdesdroits.fr
campusfrance.org
etudiant.gouv.fr
actionlogement.fr
visale.fr
anil.org
enic-naric.net
ecologie.gouv.fr
eur-lex.europa.eu

If a fact is not on one of those pages, it does not go in the guide.

The part that writes cannot reach the internet

Research and writing are done by two separate programs.

The first fetches official pages and records verbatim quotes from them. The second — the one that actually writes the guide — has no internet access at all. Its only input is those quotes. It cannot cite a page nobody fetched, because it has no way to reach one.

This matters because the characteristic failure of AI-written content is a confident, plausible, invented citation. Here it isn’t discouraged; it’s impossible.

Every figure is checked by something that didn’t write it

Before publication, a third program compares the finished guide against the quotes, line by line. Every deadline, fee, income ceiling, fine and legal condition must trace back to a quoted passage. Its instruction is to refute the guide, not to approve it, and to fail when it is unsure.

If anything cannot be traced, nothing is published. The failure is recorded and waits for a human.

The site is also checked automatically for broken links, and every source URL must resolve before a guide can go live.

What the badges mean

✓ Last verified — on that date, every source was fetched fresh and every figure in the guide traced back to a quoted passage from it.

⚠ This guide hasn’t been checked in over a year — the guide is still here, but its figures may have moved. French thresholds and fees change most years. Check the linked official source before acting on anything.

We show the amber banner rather than quietly hiding old guides, because knowing that something is stale is more useful than not knowing.

What this does not protect against

Being honest about the limits:

Official pages are sometimes wrong, out of date, or contradictory. The pipeline is faithful to the source; it cannot be more correct than the source.
Rules change between checks. A guide verified in March can be wrong in April.
Local practice varies. What a prefecture, CPAM or bank branch actually does is not always what the rule says. We tell you what you are entitled to, which is not always what you will be offered.
Nothing here is legal advice. For a decision that matters, confirm with the administration concerned or a professional.

Tell us when we are wrong

This is the part that needs you. If a guide contradicts what an administration told you, or a figure is out of date, please get in touch — say which guide and what happened. Corrections are the fastest way this site gets better, and a report about one guide usually reveals a problem in several.