Authoritative Source Map
What Is It
Define the trust role of each source for a named decision or workflow: authoritative, supporting, derived, disputed, restricted, or excluded. Assign ownership, audiences, permissions, refresh, expiry, and conflict resolution.
Why Use It
Retrieval can make conflicting or stale information easier to find without making it trustworthy. A purpose-specific map prevents “single source of truth” slogans from hiding scope, ownership, and exceptions.
When to Use It
Use when teams repeatedly reconcile sources, context packages lack provenance, or AI behavior changes with retrieval order. Map sources for a defined purpose rather than declaring one enterprise source universally authoritative.
What It Produces
- Source inventory and trust role by purpose
- Owner, steward, audience, permission, freshness, and expiry
- Conflict, fallback, and exclusion rules
- Remediation actions and review cadence
Who Should Participate
Include source owners and users, the workflow or decision owner, data or knowledge stewards, and privacy, security, legal, or governance partners where restrictions apply.
Evidence to Bring
Bring real source samples, metadata, lineage, permissions, update histories, consumer use, conflicts, failures, and ownership records. A source title is not evidence of authority.
How to Do It
- Define the decision, workflow, audience, and consequence the map serves.
- Inventory sources actually used, including shadow and derived sources.
- Classify each source’s trust role for that purpose.
- Record owner, steward, origin, audience, access, sensitivity, refresh, and expiry.
- Identify overlap, contradiction, missing coverage, and derived transformations.
- Define precedence, reconciliation, escalation, fallback, and exclusion rules.
- Test the rules against representative conflicts and stale-source cases.
- Assign remediation actions, review cadence, and evidence of use.
Key Concepts
- Authority is purpose-specific, not a permanent property of a file.
- Ownership includes correction and conflict resolution.
- Access does not imply permission to reuse in AI context.
- Expired trust should change system behavior.
Organizational Applications
Use for policy retrieval, product decisions, customer facts, research repositories, operating metrics, support knowledge, and context-package governance.
Common Pitfalls
- Calling everything authoritative
- Mapping only official repositories while ignoring actual use
- Naming an owner with no correction duty
- Omitting derived sources and transformations
- Assuming freshness from a recent access date
- Defining precedence without testing conflicts
Combine With
Use aipom-context-package-builder to assemble bounded context, aipom-data-readiness-audit for data fitness, and aipom-context-lifecycle-designer for persistence and expiry.
Assets and Templates
- Authoritative source map template
- Synthetic worked example
- Weak example
Sources
This skill is an original AIPOM synthesis of information governance, knowledge stewardship, provenance, and context-engineering practice.
1---2name: authoritative-source-map3description: Define which sources are authoritative for a purpose, who owns them, who may use them, how conflicts resolve, and when trust expires.4---56# Authoritative Source Map78## What Is It910Define the trust role of each source for a named decision or workflow: authoritative, supporting, derived, disputed, restricted, or excluded. Assign ownership, audiences, permissions, refresh, expiry, and conflict resolution.1112## Why Use It1314Retrieval can make conflicting or stale information easier to find without making it trustworthy. A purpose-specific map prevents “single source of truth” slogans from hiding scope, ownership, and exceptions.1516## When to Use It1718Use when teams repeatedly reconcile sources, context packages lack provenance, or AI behavior changes with retrieval order. Map sources for a defined purpose rather than declaring one enterprise source universally authoritative.1920## What It Produces2122- Source inventory and trust role by purpose23- Owner, steward, audience, permission, freshness, and expiry24- Conflict, fallback, and exclusion rules25- Remediation actions and review cadence2627## Who Should Participate2829Include source owners and users, the workflow or decision owner, data or knowledge stewards, and privacy, security, legal, or governance partners where restrictions apply.3031## Evidence to Bring3233Bring real source samples, metadata, lineage, permissions, update histories, consumer use, conflicts, failures, and ownership records. A source title is not evidence of authority.3435## How to Do It36371. Define the decision, workflow, audience, and consequence the map serves.382. Inventory sources actually used, including shadow and derived sources.393. Classify each source’s trust role for that purpose.404. Record owner, steward, origin, audience, access, sensitivity, refresh, and expiry.415. Identify overlap, contradiction, missing coverage, and derived transformations.426. Define precedence, reconciliation, escalation, fallback, and exclusion rules.437. Test the rules against representative conflicts and stale-source cases.448. Assign remediation actions, review cadence, and evidence of use.4546## Key Concepts4748- Authority is purpose-specific, not a permanent property of a file.49- Ownership includes correction and conflict resolution.50- Access does not imply permission to reuse in AI context.51- Expired trust should change system behavior.5253## Organizational Applications5455Use for policy retrieval, product decisions, customer facts, research repositories, operating metrics, support knowledge, and context-package governance.5657## Common Pitfalls5859- Calling everything authoritative60- Mapping only official repositories while ignoring actual use61- Naming an owner with no correction duty62- Omitting derived sources and transformations63- Assuming freshness from a recent access date64- Defining precedence without testing conflicts6566## Combine With6768Use `aipom-context-package-builder` to assemble bounded context, `aipom-data-readiness-audit` for data fitness, and `aipom-context-lifecycle-designer` for persistence and expiry.6970## Assets and Templates7172- [Authoritative source map template](template.md)73- [Synthetic worked example](examples/worked-example.md)74- [Weak example](examples/weak-example.md)7576## Sources7778This skill is an original AIPOM synthesis of information governance, knowledge stewardship, provenance, and context-engineering practice.
Dean Peters