Offline website guide
What belongs in a website snapshot manifest?
A useful manifest explains both the files you received and the capture decisions that produced them. It should be portable, reviewable and honest about partial results.
Record the capture contract
Include the requested origin, start URL, page, file and byte limits, robots choice and capture time. These values define what the snapshot attempted to prove.
Describe each resource
For every discovered URL, retain its final status, MIME type, response byte count, local relative path when captured and the reason when skipped, blocked, unsupported or broken.
Hash committed files
Store SHA-256 values for the files that actually exist in the snapshot. Avoid absolute source or export paths so the receipt remains valid when the folder moves.
Compare like with like
When a prior manifest is available, report added, changed, unchanged and removed resources by stable origin URL and content hash. Treat a missing or incompatible prior manifest as explicit evidence rather than an empty diff.