---
name: manuscript-fact-check
description: Audit every quote and source claim in a draft manuscript against primary sources before it ships to a publisher, editor, or peer reviewer. Produces a structured per-claim matrix (claim, source verbatim, status, action, correction), applies corrections to the draft, and flags any remaining items that need physical-copy verification. Use when the user says "fact-check this", "verify the sources", "audit this manuscript", "check every quote", "build a fact-check matrix", "verify against primary sources", or before any publisher / editor submission.
effort-level: high
invocation: explicit
argument-hint: "[path to draft or article]"
---

# Manuscript Fact-Check

The pass that runs before a draft ships. Every quote attributed to a source, every research claim, every statistic, verified against the primary source. Drift caught, corrections applied, audit trail preserved.

This skill exists because Claudia's most catastrophic failure mode in writing work is the subtly-rewritten "quote" that drifts from the original. Editors at credible publishers catch these instantly. The chapter that ships with a misquote loses the editor's trust on page one, and the relationship rarely recovers.

## When to fire

Trigger phrases:

- "Fact-check this manuscript / chapter / article / paper"
- "Verify the sources in this draft"
- "Audit every quote in [file]"
- "Check the citations before I send this"
- "Build a fact-check matrix for [draft]"
- "Make sure these quotes are accurate against the originals"
- "I'm sending this to [publisher]: verify everything first"

Do NOT fire for:

- Polishing prose, restructuring sections, or style edits (different skills)
- Verifying a single fact in conversation (just look it up directly)
- Drafts that contain no quoted sources or specific statistics

## The three-tier strategy

Before any verification begins, classify every claim by tier. The tier determines whether the claim is verified directly by Claudia or delegated to a research-scout agent.

| Tier | What it is | Why direct verification | Examples |
|------|------------|--------------------------|----------|
| 1 | Quotes the publisher *owns* or that an audience knows verbatim | The publisher's editor will compare letter-by-letter. Any drift kills credibility. Never delegate. | Hill quotes for Napoleon Hill publisher. Bible quotes for theological work. Constitution quotes for legal work. The author's own prior books. |
| 2 | Peer-reviewed research claims | Verifiable through DOI / PubMed / journal archive. Agents are good at this. | Neuroscience studies, meta-analyses, survey data, citation chains. |
| 2.5 | Biographical quotes with retelling drift | Verifiable but commonly distorted in derivative sources. Agents work but must compare to primary source, not Wikipedia. | McCartney "Yesterday" story, Kekulé benzene dream, Jobs interviews, founder origin stories. |

**Rule:** Tier 1 is verified by Claudia personally via `firecrawl scrape` + `grep` against the primary public-domain text. Tiers 2 and 2.5 are dispatched to parallel research-scout agents with strict "quote verbatim or flag UNVERIFIABLE" instructions.

## The flow

| Step | Action | Touches |
|------|--------|---------|
| 1 | Read the draft. Itemize every claim attributed to a source: direct quotes, paraphrased quotes, statistics, named studies, citations. | In-memory list. |
| 2 | Classify each claim by tier (1, 2, 2.5). | In-memory list. |
| 3 | For Tier 1 claims: identify the primary source (public-domain text, official transcript, the publisher's own catalog). Fetch directly with `firecrawl scrape`. Search the source with `grep` for each quoted phrase. Compare verbatim. | `sources/.firecrawl/` |
| 4 | For Tier 2 and 2.5 claims: dispatch parallel research-scout agents. One agent for academic / peer-reviewed claims, one for biographical / example claims. Provide each agent with the exact manuscript wording and require structured output: claim, source verbatim, match status, confidence, recommended action. | Agent dispatch. |
| 5 | Build the matrix. One row per claim. Columns: Claim (verbatim from manuscript), Source (verbatim from primary), Status (EXACT / PARAPHRASE / DRIFT / UNVERIFIABLE), Confidence (HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW), Action (KEEP / EDIT / FLAG), Notes. Save as `08-Fact-Check-Matrix.md` (or matching number) in the project bundle. | Writes file. |
| 6 | Apply corrections to the manuscript source. For each DRIFT or PARAPHRASE flagged for EDIT: change the manuscript text to match the verified source wording. For each citation correction: update author names, years, page references. | Edits manuscript source. |
| 7 | Re-render derived formats (PDF, DOCX, HTML) from the corrected source. | Re-runs the rendering pipeline. |
| 8 | Report. Summarize what was verified EXACT, what required EDIT (with before / after), what remains FLAGGED for physical-copy verification, and what is now ready for the publisher. Honest about anything that could not be verified. | Chat output. |

## Status codes

| Code | Meaning |
|------|---------|
| **EXACT** | Manuscript wording matches the primary source verbatim. KEEP. |
| **PARAPHRASE** | Manuscript captures the source meaning but rewords slightly. May be acceptable (with quotation marks removed) or require restoration of the verbatim quote. |
| **DRIFT** | Manuscript presents text as a verbatim quote but the wording differs from the source. Always EDIT. |
| **UNVERIFIABLE** | The source could not be reached or the quote could not be located within it. FLAG for the user to verify against a physical copy or alternate source. |

## Output format (the matrix)

Use this structure for each claim in `08-Fact-Check-Matrix.md`:

```markdown
### [Claim ID]. [Brief topic]

| Field | Content |
|-------|---------|
| **Original claim** | "[verbatim from manuscript]" |
| **Source (verbatim)** | "[verbatim from primary source]" |
| **Status** | EXACT \| PARAPHRASE \| DRIFT \| UNVERIFIABLE |
| **Action** | KEEP \| EDIT \| FLAG |
| **Where it now stands** | "[corrected manuscript text, if action was EDIT]" |
| **Source citation** | [author, title, publisher, year, page] |
| **Notes** | [anything else the editor should know] |
```

End the matrix with a summary table and an "Outstanding items requiring action before submission" section that names every UNVERIFIABLE or FLAG claim and what the user must do to resolve it.

## Why this skill matters

For a publisher-facing submission, the editor's first read is a credibility test. A single fabricated quote, a wrong author initial, a confused year, a phrase attributed to one source when it comes from another: any of these tells the editor the rest of the manuscript cannot be trusted. The matrix prevents that. It also gives the editor a verification artifact: when they ask "where did this quote come from?", the answer is in the matrix, with the primary source cited and the verbatim text shown.

For the writer, the matrix is the audit trail that turns "I think the quote is right" into "I can prove the quote is right."

## Known failure modes

| Failure | What goes wrong | How to handle |
|---------|----------------|---------------|
| Upstream research agents fabricate citations | Agents have produced false author initials, false dates, false page numbers when their search returns weak hits | Always have the agent quote the source verbatim, not paraphrase it. If the verbatim text cannot be produced, status is UNVERIFIABLE, not EXACT. |
| The primary source is paywalled or behind anti-bot | WebFetch returns 403; agent reports the page as unverifiable | Try `firecrawl scrape` first. If still blocked, dispatch a different agent for that specific source. If still no, flag UNVERIFIABLE and ask the user to verify against a physical copy. |
| The quote is widely attributed but the page reference is wrong | The quote is real, the page number is folklore | Mark the quote EXACT and the page number FLAG. The author must verify page references against a physical copy before final submission. |
| The quote is "from" a famous person but only sourced to a later retelling | Common with Tesla, Edison, Twain, Einstein quotes | Skip the quote if the primary source is the person's own late autobiography or a posthumous secondary citation. Note exclusion in the editor's notes. |

## AIAC context

The reference implementation of this skill is the Napoleon Hill "Sixth Sense" chapter fact-check at `~/Downloads/Napoleon-Hill-Sixth-Sense/08-Fact-Check-Matrix.md`. 26 claims audited, ~14 EDITs applied, two FLAGs preserved for physical-copy verification. The chapter was meaningfully strengthened by the pass: at least three errors that would have been caught by a serious editor were caught here first.

## See also

- `auto-research` for iterative draft improvement (different concept: this audits sources, that iterates on prose quality)
- `summarize-doc` for executive summaries (different concept: this verifies an existing draft, that produces a new artifact)
- `ingest-sources` for multi-document processing (related concept: that processes raw inputs, this audits already-cited outputs)
- `capture-meeting` for meeting transcript processing (related concept for transcript-source claims, but different output)
