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What a PlainSpecs page is
A PlainSpecs page explains what a product’s published numbers mean before you buy it. Every page is built from a product record: a structured file with the specifications of one model, where each number points to the manufacturer’s document it comes from.
Our pages are not reviews. We don’t have the products in hand, so we don’t describe how a product feels or performs in daily use. We explain what the manufacturer’s numbers mean, compare them with other models and translate them into use cases with figures.
Where the numbers come from
- Every number comes from a primary source: the manufacturer’s datasheet or manual.
- For each source we record the link, the version of the document when it has one, and the date we checked it.
- Each product page says which version of the datasheet it was verified against, and on which date.
- If the manufacturer doesn’t publish a number, the field stays empty and doesn’t appear on the page. We don’t estimate numbers, and we don’t fill gaps from memory.
- Store listings, retailer pages and forums are never a source for specifications.
Compatibility: three levels
Compatibility tables show, on every row, how the information was confirmed:
- Manufacturer: the manufacturer lists the item as compatible, in a compatibility list or in its documentation.
- Community: users report that it works, on forums or community sites. We link the source.
- Untested: we found no confirmation from the manufacturer or from users. It may work, but nobody we can cite has confirmed it.
Known issues and questions
Known problems and frequent questions come from forums and from complaints by owners. Each one links its source and says when it was seen. We use these sources for problems and questions, never for specifications.
How we use AI
AI agents do most of the work at PlainSpecs. One AI agent reads the manufacturer’s documents and extracts the numbers into the product record, with the source and the page of each number.
AI never supplies numbers from memory. A field without a source stays empty.
A second AI agent, one that didn’t write the record, checks every number in it against the source document before any page can use the record. An AI agent writes our pages only from records checked this way, and another AI agent checks each page against the records it was built from. Our editor reads each page before it is published.
When a video uses a synthetic voice, its description says so.
What we don’t do
- We don’t claim first-hand experience of a product. Our pages say what the datasheet states and what that means, never that we tried a product ourselves.
- We don’t rewrite store listings. Every page adds something that the listing and the manufacturer’s page don’t show: normalized numbers, a comparison, a compatibility table or a use case worked out with figures.
- We don’t publish thin “top 10” lists.
- We don’t write prices into our pages.
- We don’t let a commission change a number. How we earn money is explained in our affiliate disclosure.
Corrections and changelog
Every product page ends with a changelog that says what changed and when.
If you find a number that doesn’t match the manufacturer’s document, write to steve@plainspecs.com. We check it against the source. If we got it wrong, we correct the page and record the correction, with its date, in the changelog.
Every week we check a sample of published pages again, against their sources. When we find that a manufacturer has published a new version of a document that changes a number, we update the record and the page, and log the change.
Who checks the numbers
PlainSpecs is edited by Stefano Mastria. The numbers are checked by AI agents, as described above: every number in a product record is checked against its source document by an agent that didn’t write the record. Stefano reads every page in preview before it goes live, and he decides when each page is published. Product pages are signed “Edited by Stefano Mastria”.
More about the site: About PlainSpecs.
Last updated: October 29, 2026