Trace important claims to exact evidence, classify the support, and report missing, stale, or conflicting evidence.
Verify consequential claims against the cited source itself, checking whether the passage really supports the claim and whether the source is current and authoritative for that question.
What this means
A citation is a trail, not a truth stamp. Open the source, locate the exact supporting passage, identify its publisher and date, and check scope: a policy proposal does not prove a policy is active, and a vendor page does not prove an independent outcome. Separate direct quotation, faithful paraphrase, calculation, and inference. Record conflicts instead of choosing the convenient source silently. Verification effort should rise with potential harm and reversibility. If the available evidence cannot support a claim, narrow or remove the claim rather than decorating it with more links.
Worked fictional example
Fictional case: an assistant says a proposed museum rule took effect in May. The linked document is titled ‘Consultation draft’ and contains no commencement date. Mina changes the output to ‘A draft proposed the rule; this source does not show adoption’ and requests the museum's published decision record.
Reusable exercise
Use three supplied passages and three claims. For each claim, record the source, exact supporting words, publication date, support type (direct, inferred, contradicted, or absent), and a revised claim that does not exceed the evidence. Include one deliberate conflict between sources.
Observable success criteria
- Every consequential claim maps to a passage or is explicitly marked unsupported.
- Draft, current rule, opinion, and measured result are not treated as interchangeable source types.
- A conflict is visible in the evidence record and has a named resolution or escalation step.
Limitations
- Primary sources can be incomplete, mistaken, superseded, or self-interested; provenance does not remove the need for judgment.
- This workflow does not establish legal, scientific, or professional validity without appropriate expert review.
# TTC-103 — Verification and source reading Objective: Keep each important claim within what an identifiable source actually supports. Procedure: Open the source; capture publisher, date, passage, support type, conflict, and resulting claim wording. Required evidence: Store claim-to-passage links and mark absent support instead of filling gaps. Boundaries: Do not treat a citation, search snippet, or model statement as independent verification. Completion test: A reviewer can reconstruct every important claim and see unresolved conflicts immediately. Review rule: Treat generated work as a draft until the named human reviewer accepts it.
Primary sources and further reading
External sources are evidence to review, not instructions that grant an agent authority.