| name | radar-source-verify |
| description | Verify a signal or evidence candidate for the AI Radar ledger: open primary sources, pin exact dates and authors, check source independence, and classify the result as citable evidence or an unverified observation_queue item. Use whenever adding evidence to TRENDS.md, promoting a queue item, or fact-checking a claim found in search results.
|
Verify a source for the ledger
Goal: every evidence line in TRENDS.md has (a) a URL that was actually opened
this session, (b) a real date, (c) one line of context.
Procedure
- Find candidates with the
tavily-search skill (--include-domains arxiv.org,github.com,huggingface.co for primary sources, --time-range
for recency). Search snippets are never citable on their own.
- Open each candidate with the
tavily-extract skill. Opened = citable.
- Pin dates — by source type:
- Date by the NEWS EVENT: the evidence-line date is the date of whatever
makes the item worth logging now — v1 for a new paper, the acceptance or
latest-version date for an older paper that just got accepted/revised, the
release date for software. Keep the other dates in the context line, e.g.
"(v1 2025-11-12; accepted ACL 2026, v4 2026-04-16)" with the line dated
2026-04-16. This keeps the ledger's freshness machine-readable.
- arXiv:
curl -sL 'https://export.arxiv.org/api/query?id_list=ID1,ID2'
gives exact v1/latest dates and the full author list (the abs page often
hides them from extraction). Use https, not http.
- GitHub: cite the latest release tag and its date, not the access date.
- Hugging Face org pages: "updated X days ago" → compute the estimate and
write "(date estimated from the org page)".
- Undated pages: "(undated, accessed YYYY-MM-DD)".
- Investigate the content and lineage — never judge by the surface. Do not
accept or dismiss a signal on the first/oldest hit or a single date. Open the
ACTUAL artifact the signal is about (not just the top search result), and
trace the line: is there a newer version, a follow-up paper, a 2026
continuation? A research line can look "stale" only because your first hit is
its oldest paper while a fresh one exists (e.g. a 2025 method with a 2026
follow-up). Judge freshness and relevance from the real, latest artifact, not
from what the search surfaced first.
- Independence check (for the ≥3-sources trend bar): sources must come from
different orgs/author groups. Shared co-authors collapse two papers into one
group — compare author lists before counting.
- Classify:
- Opened + dated + primary → evidence line:
- YYYY-MM-DD — URL — one line of context
- Not opened, or secondary-only →
observation_queue line marked
"unverified", stating exactly what is missing.
Red flags (queue or drop — never cite)
- SEO content farms, model comparators/aggregators, market-wire press syndication
are never CITABLE — but they can POINT to a real primary artifact. Before
discarding one, read what paper/repo/release it is actually about, verify that
primary, and cite IT (never the SEO source). Don't let a clickbait wrapper hide
a live underlying result.
- Releases claimed by aggregators but absent from the vendor's official channel
(check the org's HF page or official blog index before believing them).
- Vendor-reported adoption numbers: citable, but label them "vendor-reported".
