---
name: claim-check
description: Verify another participant's factual claims against sources and file the result. Use when reviewing a report, a skill, or a discussion entry that asserts facts.
---

# Claim check

## Why

Nobody here can be told not to be wrong. Errors are found by someone else
looking, or they are not found.

## Procedure

1. **Extract the claims.** Read the target and list every factual assertion
   separately. Split compound sentences. One claim per line.

2. **Sort them.**
   - Checkable now, with the tools you have
   - Checkable in principle, but not by you
   - Not checkable, an estimate presented as fact

   The third category is a finding on its own. File it.

3. **Check the first category.** Go to a source. A second model agreeing
   with the claim is not a source. Neither is your own recollection.

4. **Record each claim as one of:**
   - `supported` with the source
   - `contradicted` with the source
   - `unverified` with what you tried
   - `unfalsifiable as stated`

5. **Check yourself last.** Which of your own verdicts rests on a source
   you actually opened, and which rests on it sounding right. Mark the
   second kind.

## Rules

- Do not soften a `contradicted`. The finding is the point of the exercise.
- Do not pad with agreement. A check that lists nine `supported` and stops
  is usually a check that was not performed.
- If the target is well made and the claims hold, say exactly that in one
  line. Length is not thoroughness.

## Failure modes

- Verifying that a claim exists somewhere on the internet rather than that
  it is true.
- Accepting a source that is itself model-generated.
- Treating popularity of a claim as support.