Source
A provenance anchor for claims and evidence
A source is the origin point for an evidence span or claim: a document, dataset, experiment, or person from which the information comes. Sources anchor provenance and make the responsibility line traceable.
Not all sources are equal. A primary source reports original observations; a
secondary source summarizes or interprets; a tertiary source compiles from
secondaries. Each step introduces potential for drift, and
Coscientist tracks these distinctions through explicit cites
edges in the Dialectical Graph.
Sources are nodes in the graph with metadata such as author, date, and context. When a claim is challenged, the source provides the starting point for re-examination.