From skills-for-humanity
Traces a claim back to its origin by identifying who first made it, what evidence it rested on, and how it has been distorted in transmission.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/skills-for-humanity:s4h-investigation-source-traceThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Most claims arrive pre-laundered. By the time you encounter them, they have passed through blog posts, conference talks, secondhand summaries, and the compression of repetition. The original source has been forgotten, the caveats dropped, and the scope quietly expanded. Source tracing is the discipline of reversing that process: going back upstream to find what was actually said, by whom, with ...
Most claims arrive pre-laundered. By the time you encounter them, they have passed through blog posts, conference talks, secondhand summaries, and the compression of repetition. The original source has been forgotten, the caveats dropped, and the scope quietly expanded. Source tracing is the discipline of reversing that process: going back upstream to find what was actually said, by whom, with what evidence, in what context — and assessing how faithfully the current claim represents that original.
Step 1: Capture the Claim as Received Write out the claim exactly as you have encountered it. Note: who is asserting it now, in what context, and what confidence level they are expressing ("studies show" vs. "I've heard" vs. "it's well established that").
Framing check: Confirm the specific claim before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual claim being traced and the current form it takes — in one sentence, then use AskUserQuestion:
Step 2: Identify Potential Origin Points Work backward. What is the earliest source you can find for this claim? Strategies:
Step 3: Evaluate the Origin Source Once you have the earliest traceable source, assess it:
Step 4: Map the Transmission Chain Trace how the claim moved from origin to present form. For each major step in transmission:
Classify each change:
Step 5: Assess Credibility of the Origin Apply a credibility test to the original source:
Step 6: Issue a Verdict Compare the claim as received with the claim at its origin. Answer:
Before proceeding, use the AskUserQuestion tool. State your interpretation of the situation in 1–2 sentences — what is being analyzed and what the core question is — then ask:
Proceed based on their selection. If the user reframes, incorporate the correction before running any analysis.
[The claim, as encountered, with the current asserter's confidence level]
Source: [Author, publication, date, type] Original claim: [What was actually said — verbatim if possible] Original evidence: [What the source based it on] Original caveats: [Conditions or limitations stated in the original]
| Step | Source | Change Made | Change Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origin | [Source] | [Original form] | — |
| Step 2 | [Source] | [What changed] | Faithful / Scope expansion / Caveat stripping / Inversion / Fabrication |
| ... | |||
| Current form | [Current asserter] | [Final form] |
Faithfulness: The current claim [faithfully represents / partially represents / significantly distorts / inverts] the original.
Original evidence strength: [Strong / Moderate / Weak / No real evidence at origin]
Most defensible version of this claim: [The narrower, more accurate formulation that the actual evidence supports]
Use investigation-triangulation when you want to verify a claim across multiple sources (rather than trace a single claim's origin). Use investigation-evidence-audit when the source is known and the question is whether the evidence itself is good enough. Source trace is specifically about the genealogy of a claim — where it came from and how it changed.
After delivering this output, use AskUserQuestion to offer the next move:
/s4h-investigation-evidence-audit — Audit the quality of sources now that they're identified/s4h-epistemology-justification — Assess the justification quality of each traced source/s4h-logic-argument-validation — Validate arguments built on these sourcesnpx claudepluginhub human-avatar/skills-for-humanityProduces a structured research plan for tracing a widely circulated claim back to its original source, mapping citation chains and identifying distortion.
Entry point for the investigation toolkit. Routes to the right skill for tracing sources, decomposing claims, auditing evidence, generating counter-hypotheses, or triangulating across independent sources.
Investigates complex claims across diverse sources or fact-checks contradictory information via triangulation, credibility audits, and verification matrices using WebSearch, WebFetch, Read, Grep, Glob.