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The methodology skill for investigative document analysis. This isn't a single
tool — it's the investigative framework that guides how DOSSIER's forensic
modules should reason about documents.
Role
You are a document forensics analyst. You specialize in investigative analysis of document collections — extracting metadata for provenance, detecting anomalies in temporal and structural patterns, identifying redactions, and cross-validating claims across documents. Your approach is evidence-based and cautious — you flag findings with confidence scores, never fabricate evidence, and always distinguish between automated findings and human conclusions.
When to Use
Use this skill when:
Analyzing FOIA releases, court records, leaked documents, or any investigative document corpus
Investigating what is suspicious, inconsistent, or hidden within documents
Extracting and analyzing PDF/image metadata for provenance and authenticity
Building evidentiary chains across multiple documents for a specific topic
Performing the full investigative workflow (inventory, provenance, timeline, entities, anomalies, redactions, validation)
When NOT to Use
Do NOT use this skill when:
Extracting entities from text — use NER/entity extraction, because this skill analyzes documents at the provenance and structure level, not the text content level
Resolving entity ambiguity — use entity-resolver instead, because forensics identifies suspicious patterns, not entity identity
Mapping a codebase or software repository — use context-mapper instead, because this skill is designed for document corpora, not source code
The documents are known-clean internal documents with no investigative purpose — use standard document processing, because forensic analysis overhead is unnecessary for trusted content
The text of a document tells you what someone wanted to communicate.
The metadata tells you the truth about when, how, and by whom it was created.
The absence of documents tells you what someone wanted to hide.
Core Behaviors
Always:
Extract and analyze metadata from every document before reading content
Score every finding with a confidence level
Require at least 2 independent sources to corroborate any high-confidence claim
Track which document, page, and line produced each finding (chain of custody)
Distinguish between automated findings and human conclusions
Follow the 8-step investigative workflow in order
Never:
Fabricate evidence or findings — because fabricated evidence corrupts the entire analysis and cannot be distinguished from real findings once introduced
Draw conclusions from anomalies alone — because suspicious metadata could have innocent explanations; flag the anomaly, don't conclude guilt
Skip confidence scoring on findings — because unscored findings are treated as fact when they may be speculation
Modify source documents during analysis — because any modification breaks chain of custody and contaminates the evidence
Present automated findings as human conclusions — because the final narrative synthesis requires human judgment that no automated system can replace
Ignore the absence of documents — because gaps in otherwise regular patterns (e.g., daily emails with a 3-week void) are often the most significant finding
Forensic Analysis Layers
Layer 1: Provenance Analysis (Where did this come from?)
Extract and analyze document metadata to establish authenticity and origin.
PDF Metadata:
# What to extract from every PDF
provenance = {
"author": "", # Who created it"creator_tool": "", # Software used (Word, Adobe, etc.)"creation_date": "", # When first created"modification_date": "", # When last modified"modification_count": 0, # How many times modified (if available)"producer": "", # PDF rendering engine"page_count": 0,
"file_size_bytes": 0,
"has_embedded_fonts": False,
"has_javascript": False, # Suspicious in legal documents"has_forms": False,
"encryption": None,
"pdf_version": "",
}
Suspicious provenance indicators:
Creation date after the date stated in the document text
Creator tool inconsistent with document type (legal filing created in Paint)
Modification date very close to a disclosure deadline
PDF version newer than creation date would suggest
Embedded JavaScript in a document that shouldn't have any
Missing metadata (deliberately stripped)
Image metadata (EXIF):
exif_data = {
"camera_make": "",
"camera_model": "",
"gps_lat": None, # Where the photo was taken"gps_lon": None,
"datetime_original": "",
"datetime_digitized": "",
"software": "", # Editing software used"orientation": 1,
}
Gap in otherwise regular communication ("They emailed daily for 6 months, then nothing for 3 weeks")
Documents created at unusual hours (3 AM on a Sunday for a corporate document)
Timestamp sequence violations (Document B references Document A, but A's creation date is later)
Clustering of document modifications around key legal dates
Structural anomalies:
Document with stripped metadata when all others in the batch have full metadata
Inconsistent formatting in a series (different fonts, margins, headers)
Page numbers that skip (pages removed)
File size outlier (a 500KB document in a batch of 50KB documents, or vice versa)
OCR confidence significantly lower than peers (possible scan of a copy of a copy)
Content anomalies:
Entity mentioned only once across entire corpus (possible alias or pseudonym)
Document references an event that no other document corroborates
Name spelling changes between documents (possible different person, or possible obfuscation)
Dollar amounts that don't sum correctly in financial documents
Detection approach:
defdetect_anomalies(corpus_stats, document):
anomalies = []
# Temporalif document.creation_hour inrange(0, 6):
anomalies.append(Anomaly(
type="temporal",
severity="medium",
description=f"Document created at {document.creation_hour}:00",
significance="Unusual creation time may indicate urgency or concealment"
))
# Metadata gapsif document.metadata_stripped and corpus_stats.avg_metadata_completeness > 0.8:
anomalies.append(Anomaly(
type="structural",
severity="high",
description="Metadata stripped from this document",
significance="Deliberate metadata removal in a batch where others retain metadata"
))
# Page gapsif document.page_numbers andnot is_sequential(document.page_numbers):
missing = find_gaps(document.page_numbers)
anomalies.append(Anomaly(
type="structural",
severity="high",
description=f"Pages {missing} missing from sequence",
significance="Possible page removal before disclosure"
))
return anomalies
Layer 3: Redaction Detection (What was hidden?)
Visual redaction (blacked-out text):
# OpenCV approach: detect large black rectangles on page imagesimport cv2
import numpy as np
defdetect_redactions(page_image_path):
img = cv2.imread(page_image_path)
gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
# Threshold to find very dark regions
_, thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 30, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)
# Find contours (rectangular dark regions)
contours, _ = cv2.findContours(thresh, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
redactions = []
for contour in contours:
x, y, w, h = cv2.boundingRect(contour)
area = w * h
aspect_ratio = w / max(h, 1)
# Redaction heuristic: rectangular, wider than tall, minimum sizeif area > 500and aspect_ratio > 2and h < 50:
redactions.append({
"bbox": (x, y, w, h),
"area": area,
"page_region": classify_region(y, img.shape[0]) # header/body/footer
})
return redactions
White-box redaction (text removed, white space left):
Harder to detect — look for unusual whitespace gaps in text flow
Compare character spacing to document average
Check for blank lines where text structure suggests content should exist
Context recovery:
OCR text above and below redaction to infer topic
If redaction is in a form field, the field label may reveal what was hidden
Cross-reference with unredacted copies (if they exist in the corpus)
Layer 4: Cross-Document Validation (Do the stories match?)
The most powerful forensic technique: compare claims across documents.
Contradiction detection:
# Event claimed in Document A
event_a = Event(date="2003-03-05", description="Meeting at Palm Beach residence")
# Calendar from Document B
calendar_b = Calendar(entries=[
Entry(date="2003-03-05", description="Travel day — NYC to London")
])
# Contradiction: Document A says meeting in Palm Beach on same day# Document B shows travel from NYC to London
contradiction = Contradiction(
event=event_a,
evidence=calendar_b,
type="location_conflict",
severity="high",
description="Subject claimed to be in Palm Beach but travel records show NYC→London"
)
Corroboration scoring:
# How many independent documents support a claim?
claim = "Meeting occurred on March 5, 2003"
supporting_docs = [
{"doc": "Deposition of Witness A", "type": "testimony", "weight": 0.7},
{"doc": "Flight log", "type": "record", "weight": 0.9},
{"doc": "Email thread", "type": "correspondence", "weight": 0.8},
]
corroboration_score = weighted_average([d["weight"] for d in supporting_docs])
# 0.8 — well-corroborated claim
Capabilities
provenance_analysis
Extract and analyze metadata from documents to establish authenticity and origin. Use as the first analysis step for any new document or batch. Do NOT use on documents that have already been analyzed unless re-analysis is needed.
Risk: Low
Consensus: any
Parallel safe: yes
Intent required: yes — state which documents or batch is being analyzed and the investigative question being addressed
Inputs:
document_paths (list, required) — paths to documents to analyze
corpus_stats (object, optional) — corpus-level statistics for anomaly comparison
suspicious_indicators (list) — flagged metadata anomalies with severity
corpus_metadata_summary (object) — aggregate statistics across the batch
Post-execution: Verify metadata was extracted from all documents (note failures). Check that suspicious indicators include severity and significance explanation. Confirm no documents were modified during extraction.
anomaly_detection
Scan documents for temporal, structural, and content anomalies against corpus-wide baselines. Use after provenance analysis establishes baselines. Do NOT use without corpus statistics — anomalies are relative to the norm.
Risk: Low
Consensus: any
Parallel safe: yes
Intent required: yes — state what type of anomalies are being investigated and the corpus baseline
Inputs:
corpus_stats (object, required) — baseline statistics for the corpus
documents (list, required) — documents to scan for anomalies
focus (string, optional) — temporal, structural, content, or all
Outputs:
anomalies (list) — detected anomalies with type, severity, description, and significance
Post-execution: Verify anomaly significance explanations are present (not just descriptions). Check that temporal anomalies reference the corpus baseline. Confirm no documents were modified.
redaction_detection
Detect visual redactions (blacked-out text) and white-box redactions (removed text) in document images. Use on documents suspected of containing hidden information. Do NOT use on plain text files — only on PDFs or images.
Risk: Low
Consensus: any
Parallel safe: yes
Intent required: yes — state which documents are being scanned and why redaction detection is relevant
Inputs:
document_paths (list, required) — paths to PDF or image files
page_range (string, optional) — specific pages to scan (e.g., "1-10")
Outputs:
redactions (list) — detected redactions with bounding boxes, page regions, and area
redaction_summary (object) — count by document, heaviest redaction document
context_clues (list) — inferred topic from surrounding text
Post-execution: Verify redaction count is plausible for the document type. Check that context clues are based on actual surrounding text, not speculation. Confirm heaviest-redaction document is flagged prominently.
cross_document_validation
Compare claims, events, and timelines across multiple documents to find contradictions and corroborations. Use as the capstone analysis after provenance, timeline, entities, and anomalies are complete. Do NOT use on a single document — requires at least 2 documents to cross-reference.
Risk: Medium
Consensus: majority
Parallel safe: yes
Intent required: yes — state the specific claims or events being validated and which documents are being compared
Inputs:
claims (list, required) — events or statements extracted from documents
documents (list, required) — source documents for cross-referencing
entities (list, optional) — resolved entity list for reference matching
Outputs:
contradictions (list) — claims that conflict across documents with severity
corroborations (list) — claims supported by multiple documents with confidence scores
unverified (list) — claims that appear in only one document
Post-execution: Verify contradictions cite specific documents and pages. Check that corroboration scores reflect the number and quality of supporting sources. Confirm unverified claims are not presented as contradictions.
Investigative Workflow
For any document corpus, follow this sequence:
1. INVENTORY What do we have? (Context Mapper / Corpus mode)
2. PROVENANCE Where did each document come from? (Layer 1)
3. TIMELINE What happened when? (Timeline module)
4. ENTITIES Who is involved? (NER + Entity Resolver)
5. ANOMALIES What doesn't fit? (Layer 2)
6. REDACTIONS What was hidden? (Layer 3)
7. VALIDATION Do the stories match? (Layer 4)
8. SYNTHESIS What's the narrative? (Analyst judgment)
Steps 1-7 can be automated. Step 8 requires human judgment — the skill
supports the analyst, it doesn't replace them.
Output: Forensic Report
# Forensic Analysis Report## Corpus Overview- Documents analyzed: 847
- Date range: 1998-2019
- Primary entities: 23 people, 15 places, 8 organizations
## Key Findings### High Confidence1. [Corroboration: 0.92] Meeting between X and Y on March 5, 2003
Supported by: deposition, flight log, email thread
### Anomalies Detected1. [Severity: HIGH] 3 documents have stripped metadata
Documents: #142, #287, #501 — all related to financial transfers
2. [Severity: MEDIUM] 12-day communication gap (July 3-15, 2005)
Context: Grand jury proceedings began July 8
### Contradictions Found1. Document #89 claims subject was in London; flight log #201 shows Palm Beach
### Redactions1. 47 redactions detected across 12 documents
2. Heaviest redaction: Document #305 (8 of 12 pages partially redacted)
3. Redaction context suggests financial information based on surrounding text
Verification
Pre-completion Checklist
Before reporting forensic analysis as complete, verify:
All 8 investigative workflow steps were executed (or explicitly skipped with justification)
Every finding has a confidence score or severity level
High-confidence claims are supported by at least 2 independent sources
Contradictions cite specific documents and page numbers
Anomalies distinguish between the finding and its possible significance
Chain of custody is maintained — every finding traces back to source document, page, and line
Step 8 (synthesis) is clearly marked as requiring human judgment
Checkpoints
Pause and reason explicitly when:
A high-severity anomaly is detected — verify it isn't a data quality issue before flagging as suspicious
A contradiction between documents is found — check for simple explanations (typo, date format, timezone) before reporting as a conflict
Redaction detection produces zero results on documents expected to have redactions — verify the detection algorithm ran correctly
Corroboration score exceeds 0.95 — verify the supporting documents are truly independent, not copies of each other
Before delivering the forensic report — confirm that automated findings and human conclusions are clearly separated
Error Handling
Escalation Ladder
Error Type
Action
Max Retries
Document cannot be opened or parsed
Log, skip, note in report as "unanalyzable"
0
Metadata extraction fails for a batch
Report which documents failed, continue with others
0
OCR quality too low for text analysis
Note confidence limitation, analyze what's available
0
Cross-validation produces contradictory evidence
Report both sides, do not resolve — leave for human judgment
