Provenance

Provenance is the origin and custody chain of a claim or piece of evidence: who asserted it, when, based on what, and how it reached its current form. Without provenance, you cannot distinguish primary sources from repackaged summaries, and you cannot know whether apparent agreement reflects independent evidence or circular citation.

In a Dialectical Graph, provenance is encoded through source nodes, evidence spans, and cites edges that make attribution explicit rather than implied by prose. This prevents the excerpt truncation problem common in RAG, where quoting drops context and the responsibility line disappears.

Provenance is a prerequisite for traceability: if you cannot trace a claim to its origin, you cannot correct it when the world changes.