Source-Tracing Table¶
Artifact — instantiates Cautious Pattern Completion
Maps every element of a completion to its provenance — direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, or missing source — in a standing ledger anyone can audit claim by claim.
A Source-Tracing Table is a grid whose rows are the individual claims of a completion and whose columns record, for each one, where it came from: direct evidence, indirect or inferred evidence, assumption, or no source at all. Its defining move is exhaustive, cell-by-cell provenance mapping — every element of the finished story must be placed against a source category, so that the completion's evidential backbone is laid bare in one auditable object. It is not a review pass and not a narrative; it is a durable ledger. Its whole value is that a reader can run a finger down the "source" column and instantly see which claims rest on evidence, which rest on assumption, and which rest on nothing — the provenance made visible all at once rather than argued sentence by sentence.
Example¶
An investigative reporter has drafted a story alleging that a city contractor won bids through insider access. Before the piece can run, the desk builds a Source-Tracing Table: each factual assertion in the draft becomes a row, and each is mapped to its provenance. "The contractor won 9 of the last 11 bids" traces to direct evidence — the public procurement records. "A former official steered the awards" traces to indirect evidence — a single anonymous source, uncorroborated. "The two men had met privately before each award" traces to assumption — inferred from overlapping calendar entries, never confirmed. And "the payments were kicked back" traces to missing source — asserted in the draft with nothing behind it.
Laid out as a grid, the story's spine is suddenly legible: the strong rows and the hollow ones sit in the same table. The kickback claim, unsupported, is cut before publication; the "steered the awards" row is held until a second source corroborates it. The table did not write the story or judge the sources' honesty — it mapped each claim to its provenance so an editor could see, at a glance, exactly where the piece was load-bearing and where it was air.
How it works¶
The artifact is defined by completeness and by the fixed provenance vocabulary — no claim is allowed to escape categorization.
- One row per claim. Decompose the completion so that every distinct assertion gets its own line; a paragraph that mixes three claims becomes three rows.
- A fixed source taxonomy. Each row is assigned to a stable set of categories — direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, missing source — so the labels mean the same thing across rows and across tables.
- Force the empty cells to show. A claim with no source is not omitted; it is entered as missing source, which is the table's most valuable output.
- Keep it standing. The table persists as a reusable ledger, updated as sources firm up or fall away, rather than being discarded after one review.
Tuning parameters¶
- Row granularity — how finely the completion is split into claims. Fine rows expose provenance precisely but make large tables; coarse rows are compact but let a mixed-provenance sentence hide.
- Taxonomy resolution — how many source categories the columns distinguish (a blunt evidence/assumption split vs. a graded scale from primary source to bare guess). More categories capture nuance and demand more judgment per cell.
- Corroboration bar — how many independent sources a claim needs to count as "direct" rather than "indirect." A high bar hardens the table's strong rows; a low bar lets thin support masquerade as solid.
- Maintenance cadence — how often the ledger is revisited as sources change. Frequent updates keep it honest; a frozen table slowly drifts from the evidence it claims to map.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is making provenance inspectable in aggregate: instead of trusting that a completion is well-sourced, a reviewer sees every claim's backing side by side and can spot the unsupported ones by scanning a column. It formalizes the discipline of chain of custody — the principle from evidence handling that a claim is only as trustworthy as the unbroken, documented trail from observation to assertion.[n1]
Its failure modes are procedural. A table can achieve provenance theater — every cell dutifully filled, but the "direct evidence" labels applied so loosely that weak sources are dressed as strong, so the grid looks rigorous while certifying guesswork. It can also fracture a completion into so many rows that the forest is lost in the trees, or freeze into a one-time artifact that no longer matches sources that have since shifted. And the table maps where a claim came from, not whether the source is honest or correct — a well-traced claim from a lying source still traces cleanly. The guarding discipline is a real corroboration bar for the strong categories, an honest missing source entry wherever one belongs, and treating the ledger as a living object rather than a compliance exhibit.
How it implements the components¶
source_trace— the table is the trace: every claim in the completion is mapped, cell by cell, to its provenance category, producing an auditable evidential map of the whole.assumption_marker— the "assumption" column explicitly identifies which elements are inferred bridges rather than evidence, separating connective tissue from fact within the same grid.
It records provenance but does not run the claim-by-claim review that tests a generated draft for fabricated support — that is verification_step, held by Hallucination Check: the check consults this ledger, the ledger does not perform the check. Nor does it bound and narrate the raw input of a reconstructed whole in prose — that is partial_input, held by Reconstruction Note, its nearest twin, which tells the story in prose where this maps it in a grid.
Related¶
- Instantiates: Cautious Pattern Completion — the table is the archetype's provenance backbone, making the evidence/inference distinction auditable across an entire completion.
- Sibling mechanisms: Hypothesis List · Diagnostic Differential · Disconfirming Evidence Search · Hallucination Check · Reconstruction Note · Uncertainty Tagging · Withhold-Conclusion Checkpoint · Assumption Log
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Record, Log & Register
Rationale: Source Tracing Table operates by preserves one provenance-categorized row for every claim so no assertion loses its source history. That concrete deployed or enacted form is Record, Log & Register under the frozen taxonomy.
Nearest alternative: Representation, Specification & Plan — Although Representation, Specification & Plan can support this mechanism, the frozen evidence makes its operative form the act that preserves one provenance-categorized row for every claim so no assertion loses its source history; the alternative is therefore secondary rather than defining.
Review outcome: Adjudicated after independent review; high confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: History & Historiography
Origin pattern: Convergent development
Present-day reach: Universal
Rationale: Mapping each claim to direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, or gap is source criticism rendered as a provenance ledger. NARA's archival principle preserves creator and context, while W3C PROV formalizes derivation and attribution.
Related originating lineages:
- Accounting & Auditing — Claim-level traceability enables evidence inspection and reperformance.
- Communication & Media Studies — Reported claims require explicit sourcing and identification of unsupported inference.
- Computer Science & Software Engineering — Computer science and software-engineering practice supplies a parallel or contributing lineage for the mechanism's defining operation: maps every element of a completion to its provenance — direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, or missing source — in a standing ledger anyone can audit claim by claim.
- Law & Governance — law_governance contributes legal doctrine, regulatory governance, and procedural accountability to this mechanism's defining operation—Maps every element of a completion to its provenance — direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, or missing source — in a standing ledger anyone can audit claim by claim—without displacing the selected primary historical lineage.
- Library & Information Science — Provenance metadata links statements to records.
- Security Studies & Intelligence Analysis — security_intelligence contributes security engineering, threat analysis, and intelligence practice to this mechanism's defining operation—Maps every element of a completion to its provenance — direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, or missing source — in a standing ledger anyone can audit claim by claim—without displacing the selected primary historical lineage.
Review resolution: The blind reviewers disagree on primary lineage (history_historiography versus library_information_science). Authoritative or primary research supports history_historiography as the best historical origin: Mapping each claim to direct evidence, indirect evidence, assumption, or gap is source criticism rendered as a provenance ledger. NARA's archival principle preserves creator and context, while W3C PROV formalizes derivation and attribution. The cited National Archives, Archival Principle of Provenance; W3C, PROV Model Primer directly supports the mechanism's defining operation. All independently supported contributing domains are retained without an arbitrary cap. origin_mode=convergent records lineage, while domain_reach=universal records later applicability separately from provenance.
Encyclopedia synthesis: The exact catalogued form synthesizes established practice rather than reproducing a single standard historical label.
Review outcome: Researched adjudication after independent review; high confidence.
Sources consulted:
Notes¶
[n1] Chain of custody — in forensics and law, the documented, unbroken record of who handled a piece of evidence and how, from collection to courtroom; a break in the chain makes the evidence untrustworthy regardless of its content. A Source-Tracing Table applies the same logic to the claims of a completion: each must show an intact trail back to its source. ↩