Knowledge Source Evaluation

Overview

Use this skill before adding a document, framework, policy, or persona to the knowledge registry. It checks whether the source has the metadata, ownership, and exposure rules required by the Knowledge Governance Layer, and recommends a maturity level (minimal, operational, governed) or refusal.

When to Use

• A user proposes adding a base of knowledge to a project.
• A skill author wants to depend on a new framework.
• A source's review cycle has elapsed and re-evaluation is due.

When NOT to Use

• Authoring the framework's content itself (use the source owner's process).
• Resolving conflict between already-registered sources (use knowledge-conflict-resolution).
• Checking restricted-exposure risk at runtime (use restricted-context-check).

Core Moves

1. Identify the candidate: name, owner, link, intended use.
2. Classify type using the source taxonomy in knowledge-source-contract.
3. Assess sensitivity and authority.
4. Determine scope: which task families, skills, agents.
5. Decide retrieval mode and exposure policy.
6. Check whether a capsule is required and exists.
7. Recommend maturity level — or refuse with reason.

Optional Modules

• Capsule readiness check — verify the capsule exists and is operational, not narrative.
• Provenance check — confirm source_integrity_notes are sufficient. Run the data-poisoning-checklist (provenance, validate-before-index, version control, change history, rollback) before recommending register_governed.
• Allowlist scoping — recommend explicit allowed_skills / allowed_agents.

Activation Triggers

• New source proposed.
• Existing source's review cycle expired.
• A skill declares a new dependency type not yet present in the registry.

Expected Output

evaluation:
  candidate:
    proposed_id: <kebab-case>
    name: <name>
    proposed_type: <source_type>
    owner: <person-or-team>
  classification:
    sensitivity: <level>
    authority_level: <level>
    scope: [<scope-tag>, ...]
  retrieval:
    retrieval_mode: <mode>
    full_text_exposure: <allowed|forbidden|conditional>
    export_allowed: <bool>
    capsule_required: <bool>
    capsule_present: <bool>
  recommendation: register_minimal | register_operational | register_governed | refuse
  refusal_reason: <if applicable>
  required_fixes: [<...>]

Verification

• All required manifest fields can be populated from this evaluation.
• If recommendation is register_governed, a reviewer other than the author signed off.
• If the candidate is restricted or higher, human_review_required_for is non-empty.
• Provenance and rollback pass the data-poisoning-checklist; a source that fails it is capped at register_minimal.
• The conditions in human-review-criteria are reflected in the recommended human_review_required_for list.

Handoff Signals

• If refuse, hand back to the proposer with the required fixes.
• If register_minimal, mark sources as low-maturity and exclude from required slots.

Pairs Well With

• restricted-context-check
• knowledge-conflict-resolution

Anti-patterns

• Registering a source without an owner.
• Registering a confidential or higher source without human_review_required_for.
• Approving a capsule_first source with no capsule.
• Inferring sensitivity from "feels internal" rather than from the owner's classification.