> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.1kosmos.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.1kosmos.com/identity-verification/core-concepts/verification-flow.md).
# Verification flow
### Overview
A **verification flow** (also called a **journey**) is the reusable recipe that drives every session. You define one flow per use case, say, "high-risk onboarding for US banking" and reference it from your sessions by its unique tag.
A flow answers four questions:
1. **What can the user submit?** Allowed countries, regions, and document types.
2. **What checks must pass?** Document authenticity, face match, liveness, database lookups, name comparison.
3. **How strict is each check?** Standard vs. Strict policy, liveness level, face-match score threshold, fuzzy-match tolerance.
4. **What happens to the data?** Retention policy, retry count, session expiry.
### Flow types
1Kosmos ships three pre-built flow types. Pick the one that matches your assurance and friction budget.
{% tabs %}
{% tab title="KYC with Selfie" %}
**Document + biometric.** The user scans an ID and takes a selfie. 1Kosmos runs document authenticity, passive liveness, and face comparison against the photo on the ID.
**Use when:** You need to bind a person to a document, onboarding, account recovery, age verification. This is the default for most consumer use cases.
{% endtab %}
{% tab title="Document Only" %}
**Document, no biometric.** The user scans an ID and 1Kosmos validates it, but no selfie or face match is performed.
**Use when:** You only need to confirm the document is genuine, for example, age gating, document re-enrollment, or B2B contexts where a biometric is overkill.
{% endtab %}
{% tab title="IAL2" %}
**Two documents + biometric + SSN.** A Kantara-certified flow that produces a NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 result in one session. Sessions expire after 30 minutes by default and data is *not* persisted to a wallet unless you explicitly enable it.
**Use when:** You're subject to federal identity proofing requirements, or you need the highest level of assurance for a one-time event.
{% endtab %}
{% endtabs %}
### Flow lifecycle
{% stepper %}
{% step %}
**Create**
An administrator with `idproofing.add-journey` opens **Verification → Verification Flows** in AdminX and walks through the three-step wizard. The flow is saved with a **unique tag** that your API callers use to start sessions.
{% endstep %}
{% step %}
**Test**
Generate sessions directly from the flow card in AdminX to QA the experience before going live.
{% endstep %}
{% step %}
**Promote**
Promote the same flow tag from your staging to production tenant, your application code doesn't change.
{% endstep %}
{% step %}
**Tune**
Edit the flow at any time. Existing in-flight sessions continue with the configuration they started with; new sessions pick up the change immediately.
{% endstep %}
{% step %}
**Retire**
Delete the flow when no session generation references it. You'll be prompted to confirm. Past sessions and their results are preserved.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}
### Anatomy of a flow
Every flow regardless of type exposes the same configuration surface:
| Group | What you configure |
| -------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Use case** | Context (remote vs. in-person), Document Verification Policy (Permissive → Very Strict), and Retry Count. |
| **Identification** | Journey name (human-readable) and unique tag (machine-readable, immutable). |
| **Allowed documents** | Allow-list or block-list of document types, scoped by country and region. National vs. state formats are selected separately. |
| **Expiration** | "From Session Creation" (how long the URL stays valid if untouched) and "From Session Start" (how long after the user opens it before it times out). |
| **Data comparison** | Which user-provided fields are compared against extracted document fields. Fuzzy matching, ignore-middle-names, and DOB comparison live here. |
| **Biometric** *(KYC with Selfie only)* | Liveness Level (Soft / Regular / Hardened) and Face Matching score threshold (0–100%, default 50%). |
| **Data retention** | Discard immediately, discard after result is retrieved, or discard after N days/minutes. Applies per outcome (Success, Failed, Review, Abandoned). |
---
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