epistemic-grounding

Epistemic Grounding

Use this skill whenever Spotlight turns source material into claims or evaluates whether a claim is ready for editorial use.

The core question is:

Does this exact evidence justify believing this exact claim?

A source is only an anchor. Grounding is the relationship between the claim and the anchor.

Grounding Ladder

Classify each candidate finding on this ladder:

1. Unsourced signal — interesting, but no source anchor yet.
2. Source-adjacent lead — a source mentions the topic, but does not support the claim.
3. Partially grounded claim — evidence supports some claim elements, but missing assumptions remain.
4. Directly grounded claim — source text directly supports all material claim elements.
5. Independently verified finding — direct grounding plus independent corroboration and no unresolved contradiction.

Only levels 4-5 can be high confidence. Levels 1-2 are leads, not findings. Level 3 is at most medium confidence and often low.

Required Grounding Check

For every finding or claim:

1. Break the claim into material elements: actor, action, object, time, place, amount, relationship, status.
2. Identify the exact quote, table row, record, image frame, metadata field, or document passage that supports each element.
3. Classify the source role:
   • primary — original record, document, direct statement, data source, filing, archived page, or observable artifact.
   • secondary — reporting, analysis, database aggregation, third-party summary.
   • contextual — useful background, but not evidence for the claim.
4. Classify support type:
   • direct — evidence states the claim elements plainly.
   • indirect — evidence supports the claim through a short, explicit inference.
   • inferred — evidence requires unstated assumptions or synthesis across sources.
   • contradicted — reliable evidence conflicts with the claim.
   • insufficient — source does not support the claim.
5. Name missing assumptions and misgrounding risks.
6. Search for contradictions before raising confidence.
7. Apply the confidence cap.

Confidence Caps

Use these caps even if the claim sounds plausible:

Condition	Maximum Confidence
No scraped local file	low
Search snippet only	low
Source is contextual or adjacent	low
Evidence is inaccessible, abstract-only, or materially redacted	low
Claim requires unstated assumptions	medium
Only secondary sources support the claim	medium
Single primary source, no contradiction search yet	medium
Direct primary source plus independent corroboration	high
Credible unresolved contradiction	low or disputed

Never upgrade a claim beyond the weakest material element. If the amount is directly supported but the date is inferred, the whole claim is only partially grounded.

Output Contract

Every findings.json finding must include:

"grounding": {
  "support_type": "direct|indirect|inferred|contradicted|insufficient",
  "source_role": "primary|secondary|contextual",
  "claim_elements_supported": ["actor", "action", "date"],
  "missing_assumptions": [],
  "confidence_cap": "high|medium|low",
  "misgrounding_risk": "short risk statement",
  "grounding_rationale": "why the evidence does or does not ground the claim; include the contradiction-search outcome here"
}

Every fact-check claim must include a grounding_assessment explaining whether the cited evidence actually grounds the claim.

Failure Routing

When a finding feels wrong, do not patch the wording first. Diagnose the grounding failure:

• Evidence mentions the topic but not the claim: source-adjacent lead.
• Evidence supports a weaker claim: narrow the claim.
• Evidence supports only some elements: mark partial and name missing assumptions.
• Evidence depends on OCR/layout extraction: verify against the original document or image.
• Evidence chains through another citation: trace to the origin.
• Evidence conflicts with another reliable source: mark disputed and preserve both trails.

Read references/failure-router.md for deeper failure classes. Read references/grounding-theory.md when designing or revising grounding policy.