The purpose
Reach the strongest answer the verified record permits. The verdict is an accountable assessment at a stated time, not a vote among publications or a permanent claim of certainty.
How to apply this skill
- Restate the exact question and cutoff. Preserve its geography, time period, population, and material qualifiers. If a question contains several separable claims, assess them individually before offering an overall answer.
- Read the verified claim ledger, original supporting passages, strongest contrary evidence, and unresolved gaps. Distinguish direct records, attributed accounts, and analytical inferences. Identify dependencies that make several sources one evidentiary chain.
- Choose a useful category: supported, contradicted, mixed, insufficient evidence, or not fact-checkable. Define the category in relation to the actual question. A forecast can be assessed for assumptions and evidence, but cannot be described as an observed outcome.
- Explain the decisive evidence and how it connects to the answer. State why the strongest alternative does or does not explain the same facts. Where observations fit several explanations, preserve that ambiguity rather than selecting the most dramatic one.
- Bound the conclusion. A source establishes only what its methods and access support. Missing proof of a claim does not automatically disprove it. A failed search is evidence about the search unless records were expected, accessible, complete, and relevant enough to justify a stronger inference.
- State what new record, finding, or correction would materially change the assessment. Use concrete conditions rather than a generic promise to update. Identify a watch only if such evidence is reasonably expected or the stakes justify continued monitoring.
- Align the verdict with headline, deck, narrative, and summary. The reader should not encounter a categorical headline followed by a carefully qualified body.
What this produces
Return assessment with question, cutoff, category, concise answer, decisive claim/source IDs, reasoning, strongest challenge, limits, unresolved questions, change conditions, and draft revision. Use qualitative confidence only when explained through evidence quality; numeric confidence requires an actual calibrated method.
When publication must pause
Hold any conclusion that exceeds the verified claims or omits material contrary evidence. A supported statement about an allegation must not become a finding of culpability. Publish insufficient evidence when that is the honest answer and the article can explain the useful limits without padding. Routine cleared assessments can proceed automatically; the verdict itself does not override publication controls.
Sources behind this skill
Assessment discipline draws on IFCN commitments and AFP methodology. Categories and artifact fields are Follow.fyi conventions.