How do I build an evidence bundle for a freelance platform dispute over AI work?
Build one ordered bundle: the platform contract and agreed scope first, then the delivery record (steps, timestamps, source states), then the acceptance evidence, then the message thread. Lead with the handover link, keep the whole bundle skimmable in five minutes, and name each exhibit for the claim it answers.
Platform disputes are decided by arbitrators working from uploads, under time pressure, inside the platform's categories. Your bundle's job is to make the correct decision the easy one. That means order and naming do as much work as evidence: an arbitrator who must hunt through forty screenshots experiences your case as disorganized, whatever the facts are.
The delivery record changes the bundle's spine. Instead of proving work through message fragments, the bundle links and prints the handover: the steps as delivered, the timestamps fixed at execution, the source states, and the client's decision where one was recorded. Exhibits then support the record rather than substitute for it: the contract pages for scope, the thread for anything the record does not cover, and a one-page timeline tying dates together.
Build the bundle from the job folder in under an hour, and write the cover page last, in the arbitrator's language: the claim, your answer in two sentences, and the exhibit that proves each sentence. If part of the work ran unrecorded, the bundle says so in the cover page and bounds it; arbitrators reward the seller whose bundle admits its edges over the one whose bundle pretends completeness.
Template: the platform dispute bundle
Cover page: dispute reference; the claim; your two-sentence answer; exhibit index. Exhibit 1: contract and scope (platform pages, agreed changes). Exhibit 2: delivery record: handover link, printed step list with timestamps, receipts checkable at https://zambo.dev/verify/ . Exhibit 3: acceptance evidence (recorded decision, or delivery and use correspondence). Exhibit 4: timeline, one page, dates only. Exhibit 5: full message thread, unedited. File naming: [dispute-id]-bundle.pdf; check the platform's size limit before merging.
Worked example
Exhibit 2's live core: https://zambo.dev/handover/45434a17-4afc-486a-9646-e689bcee4297 opens a delivered job with its steps and recorded client acceptance. In the bundle it appears as a link and a two-page print; the arbitrator can skim the print and verify the link, which is the strongest position a seller's upload can be in.
Frequently asked questions
Should I include every message I ever exchanged with the client?
Include the thread for the disputed job, whole and unedited, as the last exhibit. Completeness there protects you; the cover page and the record exhibits are what the arbitrator reads first, which is why the bundle is ordered, not dumped.
The platform asks for evidence in its own form fields. Does the bundle still help?
Yes: paste the cover-page answer into the form, name the exhibits in the text, and upload the bundle where attachments are allowed. The form gets your summary; the bundle carries the proof behind it.
What if the client opened the dispute before I delivered everything?
The record separates delivery time from decision time, step by step. Show what was delivered before the dispute opened, with its timestamps, and state the remainder's status plainly in the cover page.
By Brennan Zambo, founder of Zambo.
Last verified: 2026-10-17.
Try a handover
A handover gives your client one proof link with verifiable receipts to review, then Accept or Flag.
try it: say 'use zambo to hand this over to <client>' in your ai