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s4h-investigation-source-trace

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Traces a claim back to its origin: who first made it, what evidence it rested on, and how it has been distorted in transmission. Use when you've heard something and want to know where it actually came from — 'where does this claim come from', 'who first said this', 'I've heard that X is true', 'trace the source', 'is this just a rumor', 'how did this become conventional wisdom'.

skills/s4h-investigation-source-trace/SKILL.md

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# Investigation: Source Trace

Most claims arrive pre-laundered. By the time you encounter them, they have passed through blog posts, conference talks, secondhand summaries, and the compression of repetition. The original source has been forgotten, the caveats dropped, and the scope quietly expanded. Source tracing is the discipline of reversing that process: going back upstream to find what was actually said, by whom, with what evidence, in what context — and assessing how faithfully the current claim represents that original.

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## Your Process

**Step 1: Capture the Claim as Received**
Write out the claim exactly as you have encountered it. Note: who is asserting it now, in what context, and what confidence level they are expressing ("studies show" vs. "I've heard" vs. "it's well established that").

**Framing check:** Confirm the specific claim before continuing. State what you've identified — the actual claim being traced and the current form it takes — in one sentence, then use `AskUserQuestion`:
- **Question:** "I'm reading this as: [your one-sentence framing of the claim and its current form]. Is that right?"
- **Header:** "Framing"
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