Source Dossier

Source Dossier

Seed question: Who is this source, structurally?

Relentless self-reflexive dialectical thinking that questions its own premises.

Core Principle

A source is classified by what can be OBSERVED about it, not by what it is called. Labels compress someone else's classification — adopting one un-traced imports their incentives (Principle P4 (counter-default): the trace applies symmetrically, or it is not a method).

The anti-pattern this counters:

❌ "It's an established fact-checker" used as a terminal argument
❌ "It's state media" used as a terminal argument — same move, other camp
❌ Re-deriving the same source's profile from scratch every investigation

The pattern this enforces:

✅ Four observable grounds, checked and dated, for every recurring source
✅ One standard for everyone: the dossier opens at first use regardless of camp
✅ Append-only memory: classifications accrete and date, never silently mutate

When This Applies

TRIGGER:

• A source keeps recurring across an investigation and its trustworthiness is doing real work in the emerging conclusion.
• "Is this outlet reliable / independent?", "Who's behind this source?", "Are these sources independent or all echoing one origin?"
• A fact-checker, anti-disinfo NGO, or debunker is about to be used as an anchor ("X has debunked this, so we can close it") — the symmetry gate must open a dossier on the debunker too.
• Government sanction lists or entity/designation lists enter the evidence base as though they settled a question rather than being positioned sources.
• The same source will be met again later and its profile is worth keeping in a dossier rather than re-deriving from scratch each time.

DO NOT TRIGGER:

• One-off sources cited once in a quick lookup, where no recurring trust judgment is load-bearing.
• A single primary used directly for its own content (a statute text, an official filing quoted as itself), not weighed as a positioned source against others.

The Four Grounds (all observable; cite what you actually observed)

1. Own content over time. What has this source published, corrected, retracted? Consistency between its claims and later-established facts — dated instances, not impressions.
2. Ownership & registries. Beneficial ownership, funding, corporate registries, grant databases, imprint/legal notices. Who pays; who appoints.
3. Declared self-positioning. What the source SAYS it is (mission, "about", methodology page) — recorded as a claim by an interested party about itself, valuable precisely where behavior later diverges from it.
4. Dated case behavior. Concrete episodes: how it handled a specific correction, a specific conflict of interest, a specific story that ran against its position. Cases carry dates; "generally reliable" does not.

Hard Rules

• Labels ≠ anchors. A classification (anyone's, including this dossier's) is an input to be traced, never a terminal argument.
• Platform ≠ author. Hosting, aggregation, or republication is not authorship; classify the author, note the platform.
• Political orientation ≠ presumption of lying. Orientation predicts selection and framing; it does not falsify content. Verdicts stay with evidence.
• Network-convergence ≠ independent confirmation. Sources citing each other, sharing funders, or sharing a methodology pool are one node (cui-bono §3a).
• Symmetry gate (hard). The power/funding trace applies to ALL sources — including debunkers, fact-checkers, and anti-disinfo NGOs. A dossier opens at FIRST use of any source as an anchor, regardless of camp. Government sanction and entity lists are positioned sources under Principle P4 (counter-default) — traced inputs, never anchors.

Per-Source Memory (append-only, outside the plugin)

Dossiers persist across investigations in the operator's config store — NEVER inside the plugin (public artifact; wiped on cold-start). Use the research profile's storage mechanism (research skill, Investigation Profile): elements under dossiers/<source-slug>. Each entry is appended, never edited:

## [YYYY-MM-DD] — [investigation slug]
Ground [1–4]: [what was observed, with source]
Classification delta: [none | tightened | loosened — why]

Append-only is the point: a dossier that silently mutates loses the history that makes its current classification auditable.

Mandatory Output Slots

Worked Example (fictionalized)

Two sources recur in an investigation in the invented state of Varenia: The Meridian Ledger (an outlet critical of the government) and the ClearSignal Integrity Initiative (an anti-disinformation NGO whose reports the government cites). The symmetry gate opens BOTH dossiers at first anchor-use. Grounds find: the Ledger's ownership is a single named proprietor with a dated retraction record (ground 1 solid, ground 2 thin); ClearSignal's funding traces to a ministry-adjacent foundation and its methodology page post-dates its most-cited report (ground 2 solid and adverse, ground 3 diverges from ground 4). Classification: both usable-with-scope; neither is an anchor. What would change it: audited ownership filing for the Ledger; a pre-registered methodology for ClearSignal.

Cross-References

• cui-bono — §3a source topology and §3b expert-stakeholder mapping feed grounds 2 and 4; references/data-tool-assessments.md (moved from cui-bono's SOURCE_CLASSIFICATIONS) shows the grounds applied to data tools
• manufactured-consensus-detection — network-convergence testing for the hard rule of the same name
• ground-level-triangulation — where a source sits among language-publics
• research hub — storage mechanism for the per-source memory

Vasana

A vasana is a pattern that persists across unrelated contexts. If during this task you notice such a pattern emerging, it may be worth capturing. This skill works best alongside the vasana skill and vasana hook from the Vasana System plugin.

Modify freely. Keep this section intact.