Provenance Tracking

Provenance Tracking

Attach verifiable source chains to any research output. Uses Read, Write, Grep, and WebFetch to build the sidecar below.

When Not To Use

This is a file-sidecar workflow for research you have already produced — it does not fetch or verify anything live beyond the URLs already in your output. For live citation verification tools (verify_citation, audit_bibliography, citation_graph) during active research, use web-researcher instead.

Usage

After producing any research artifact, create a provenance sidecar:

/provenance docs/research/my-analysis.md

Provenance Record Format

For each output file <name>.md, create <name>.provenance.md:

# Provenance: [title from the document]

## Metadata
- **Created:** [ISO date]
- **Author:** [human or agent]
- **Method:** [how the research was conducted]
- **Confidence:** [HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW — overall assessment]

## Source Chain
| # | Source | URL | Accessed | Status | Confidence |
|---|--------|-----|----------|--------|------------|
| 1 | [author/title] | [url] | [date] | verified / dead / redirect | high / medium / low |
| 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |

## Verification Log
| Claim | Source(s) | Method | Status |
|-------|-----------|--------|--------|
| [critical claim from document] | [1], [3] | cross-reference | PASS |
| [quantitative claim] | [2] | direct fetch | PASS |
| [inference] | [1] | single-source | CAUTION |

## Evidence Quality
- **Primary sources:** [count] (papers, official docs, data)
- **Secondary sources:** [count] (reviews, articles, blogs)
- **Self-reported:** [count] (vendor claims, press releases)
- **Rejected:** [count] (dead links, unverifiable, AI-generated)

## Limitations
- [any caveats about the research]
- [time-bounded claims that may expire]
- [areas where evidence is thin]

URL Verification

For each source URL:

1. Fetch the URL with WebFetch
2. Live: mark as verified
3. Dead/404: search for archived version, mark as dead or archived
4. Redirect: check if redirected content is relevant, mark as redirect

Integration with RuVector

After completing a provenance record, store a summary for future retrieval — mcp__claude-flow__memory_store({namespace: "patterns", key: "provenance-[slug]", value: "[verification summary]"}):

mcp__claude-flow__memory_store({
  namespace: "patterns",
  key: "provenance-[slug]",
  value: "[N] sources verified, [M] rejected, confidence: [level], key claims: [list]",
  upsert: true
})

Slug Convention

Derive slugs from output filenames:

• docs/research/cloud-sandbox-pricing.md → slug: cloud-sandbox-pricing
• docs/gpu-kernel-integration-qe-plan.md → slug: gpu-kernel-integration-qe-plan

Lowercase, hyphens, no filler words, ≤5 words.