Digest And Explanation

What this skill is for

Use this skill when routed items must become participant-facing digests with clear, faithful, bounded explanations.

Constitutional purpose

Compress routed material into participant-facing outputs without hiding disagreement, uncertainty, or source-evidence limits.

Failure modes targeted

• Explanation overclaiming
• False neutrality or false consensus language
• Untraceable digest items
• Release-ready framing unsupported by source evidence

When to use it

• Reviewing intervention digests before release.
• Checking DigestItem.explanation_text and digest-level routing_explanations.
• Verifying that participant-facing summaries preserve disagreement and uncertainty.

When not to use it

• Do not use it to select routing recipients.
• Do not use it for baseline chronological thread review.
• Do not rewrite canonical digest fields in skill prose.

Inputs expected

• Routed intervention cycle or participant view
• Digest items and routing explanations
• Cycle config and release target
• Optional participant id for focused review

Required evidence for valid use

• Digest items with source contribution references
• Digest-level and item-level explanation text
• Release context sufficient to know whether the work is review-only or release-authorized
• Critic or routing notes when omission/fairness concerns already exist

Preflight / prerequisites

1. Confirm routing is complete.
2. Confirm each digest item has a source contribution reference.
3. Confirm whether the work is review-only or release-authorized.
4. Load protocol contract sections for Digest and DigestItem field names.

Workflow

1. Inspect every digest and item.
2. Confirm item explanations are non-empty and traceable to routing factors.
3. Check digest-level explanations for overclaiming or consensus language.
4. Confirm bridge items are visibly bounded and justified.
5. Recommend release, revise, or escalate.

Decision rules / judgment criteria

• Explanations must be faithful to actual routing factors.
• Digest compression must preserve unresolved questions.
• Do not hide omitted-but-relevant items when critic evidence flags them.
• Participant reading burden remains a hard constraint.

Escalation rules

Escalate when explanation text is missing, source references are ambiguous, bridge exposure is unexplained, or the digest implies consensus that the source material does not support.

Available scripts

• scripts/inspect-digest.mjs: inspect digests and normalize item explanations to protocol-facing review fields.

Produced artifacts

• Digest quality assessment
• Explanation coverage summary
• Release/revise/escalate recommendation
• Participant-facing risk notes

Allowed claims

• That explanation text is faithful or unfaithful to routing evidence
• That a digest preserves or suppresses unresolved disagreement
• That release should be blocked until explanation or source-trace repair occurs

Forbidden claims

• That digest language proves consensus
• That explanation polish substitutes for source support
• That omitted concerns are irrelevant without evidence
• That explanation faithfulness alone establishes fairness or legitimacy

Human override points

• Manual digest revision before participant release
• Source-reference challenge when explanation text is under-supported
• Release hold when compression would misstate disagreement

Outputs

• Digest quality assessment
• Explanation coverage summary
• Release/revise/escalate recommendation
• Participant-facing risk notes

Failure handling

If routing is incomplete, return to epistemic-routing. If explanation fields are missing, block release and request digest repair.

Trust / safety notes

Digest explanations affect perceived legitimacy. Treat vague or overconfident explanations as governance risks.

Composition notes

Use after epistemic-routing and before operator-audit. It is a flagship dependency for public-hearing and Foresight workflows.

Examples to inspect next

Read examples/casebook.md for flagship digest review cases, including faithful explanation and false-consensus anti-patterns.

Evaluation hooks

Run scripts/inspect-digest.mjs and npm run skills:audit. Use evals/rubric.md for explanation faithfulness review.