source-evaluation

name	source-evaluation
description	NON-NEGOTIABLE — use on every source the engine consults. Carries the engine's anti-hallucination guardrail (evidence discipline), the 5-tier credibility ladder, the Burke five-term source-doubt pentad, the Tudor twelve-point rubric for media/journalism, Silverman/Bellingcat media-forensics workflow, and automated reliability triage. Load only what the source type demands.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex","generic-agent"],"priority":"critical"}

Source Evaluation

Single entry skill for vetting any source the engine consults. Plagiarism prevention is in academic-writing; this skill governs whether a source is trustworthy in the first place and whether claims drawn from it have hallucinated detail.

The non-negotiable guardrail (load first)

Always load references/evidence-discipline.md. The engine's first rule: no claim, statistic, quote, name, case, statute, URL, date, or place appears in output unless traceable to a real source. This applies to every output of every skill.

Source-type router — load the matching reference

Source type	Load
Any source — the universal floor	references/evidence-discipline.md (always) + references/credibility-ladder.md
Primary document (archival record, legal filing, government publication, leaked file, manuscript)	references/burke-five-term-doubt.md
Media, journalism, analyst report, think-tank publication	references/tudor-twelve-points.md
Misinformation-prone news / viral information stream	references/tudor-twelve-points.md + references/misinformation-and-bias-checks.md
Image, video, audio, screenshot, suspect document	references/silverman-media-forensics.md
Encyclopaedic / reference work	references/credibility-ladder.md (tier 4: tertiary)
Social media post / forum / comment	references/tudor-twelve-points.md + references/silverman-media-forensics.md (provenance)
Statistic / dataset	references/credibility-ladder.md + Walker four-axis (data-quality-assessment)
Automated source / claim reliability triage	references/automated-reliability-triage.md + references/credibility-ladder.md

The 5-tier credibility ladder (universal)

Detail in references/credibility-ladder.md. Quick reference:

Tier	Type	Trust default
1 — Primary	Original document, dataset, transcript, recording, photo with provenance	High; still apply Burke pentad
2 — Authoritative secondary	Peer-reviewed paper, government statistical release, audited corporate filing, court judgment	High
3 — Vetted journalism / analyst	Established outlet, named analyst report, named expert quote in mainstream press	Medium-high; apply Tudor twelve points
4 — Tertiary / reference	Encyclopaedia, textbook, well-cited Wikipedia article, dictionary	Medium for orientation; never sole proof
5 — Unvetted	Social media post, blog, forum, AI output, anonymous source	Low; treat as lead, not evidence

Rule: any tier-5 claim must be triangulated against ≥2 tier-1 to tier-3 sources before it appears as fact. Tier-4 claims need ≥1 tier-1 to tier-3 source for any load-bearing assertion.

Burke's five-term source-doubt pentad (primary documents)

Detail in references/burke-five-term-doubt.md. For every primary document, ask:

1. Author — who wrote it; what was their position, motive, knowledge?
2. Provenance — chain of custody from creation to your hands; gaps; tampering opportunities.
3. Production — when, how, under what conditions; first or revised; original or copy.
4. Mechanics — language, format, conventions of the era; do they match?
5. Aims — what was the document trying to do; who was the intended audience?

A document that survives the pentad is evidence with known limits. A document that hasn't faced it is evidence with unknown limits, which is dangerously close to hallucination input.

Tudor's twelve-point evaluation (media / journalism / analyst)

Detail in references/tudor-twelve-points.md. Twelve criteria:

1. Recency · 2. Relevancy · 3. Authority · 4. Completeness · 5. Accuracy · 6. Clarity · 7. Verifiability · 8. Statistical validity · 9. Internal consistency · 10. External consistency · 11. Context · 12. Comparative quality

Apply when a media or analyst source carries a load-bearing claim. The audit produces a one-line verdict that the engine logs in the manifest.

Misinformation and bias checks (viral / politicized / contested claims)

Detail in references/misinformation-and-bias-checks.md. Before a contested or viral claim enters the corpus:

1. Separate fact, opinion, and interpretation.
2. Check the claim against the original source, not just reposts or reactions.
3. Identify the likely biases in the source and in the analyst.
4. Treat virality as a warning sign, not corroboration.
5. Downgrade any claim whose chain leads only to commentary, screenshots, or clipped excerpts.

Silverman / Bellingcat media-forensics (images, video, documents)

Detail in references/silverman-media-forensics.md. Workflow:

1. EXIF extraction — camera, GPS, timestamp.
2. Reverse image search — Google Lens, Yandex, TinEye, Bing.
3. Geolocation by landmark / shadow-time computation.
4. Archive recovery — Wayback, archive.today, original posting site.
5. Provenance tracing — who first published; cross-platform trail.
6. Tampering detection — error-level analysis, metadata anomalies.

Output: provenance chain logged with timestamps, URLs, and confidence.

Universal output rule

Every cited claim in engine output carries:

• Source reference (URL, DOI, archive link, document ID).
• Source tier (1–5 from the credibility ladder).
• Verification trail (Burke / Tudor / Silverman audit if applicable, otherwise "credibility-ladder" only).
• Confidence (high / medium / low).
• Date accessed (UTC).

If any of those is missing, the claim does not ship.

If automated reliability scoring was used, the output must also expose the axis-level breakdown and human-review flags from references/automated-reliability-triage.md. A composite score alone is not evidence.

Universal anti-patterns

• Trusting a tier-5 claim without triangulation.
• Treating an automated reliability score as a source verdict instead of a triage signal.
• "Studies show" without footnote.
• Citing a stat older than 3 years without flagging.
• Single-source paragraph on contested terrain.
• Image used as evidence with no reverse-image-search trail.
• Wikipedia footnote chasing skipped — citing the article instead of its source.
• Author of a document never named, motive never considered.
• AI-generated source list passed through unchecked — must be 100 % verified before any output.
• Quote attribution to a person without locating the original utterance.
• URL cited without archival snapshot — link rot kills evidentiary trails.
• Mixing source-tier verdicts in one paragraph without flagging the weakest.

Universal ship gate

• evidence-discipline.md audit run on every claim.
• Every source assigned a tier (1–5).
• Every primary document has Burke pentad notes.
• Every media / journalism source has at least a 12-point quick verdict.
• Every load-bearing image / video has a Silverman provenance trail.
• Every tier-5 claim triangulated against ≥2 tier-1 to tier-3 sources.
• No URL ships without an archive.org or archive.today snapshot.
• Manifest entry per source: {ref, tier, verification, confidence, accessed}.
• Hallucination check: any claim absent from the source list is removed.

Companion skills

• data-quality-assessment — for source-vetting at the dataset level (Walker four axes).
• web-scraping-foundations — when you collect the source yourself.
• osint-investigation — when sources sit inside a broader investigation.
• academic-writing — when sources feed an academic artifact (citation styles in references).
• analytic-tradecraft — when source disputes become estimative judgments.