The problem it addresses
AI research tools can find sources, draft summaries and produce quotations in seconds. They can also produce a citation to an article that does not exist, a quotation a court never wrote, or a link that points somewhere other than the report claims. The author who signs the report is responsible for every one of those sources, whatever produced them.
Checking sources by hand is the only reliable remedy, and it is slow. A report with 80 citations means 80 sources to locate, open, read against the quoted text and note. Most professionals keep that record in a spreadsheet, if they keep it at all. When an opposing expert, an editor or a client later asks how the sources were verified, the answer is often reconstructed from memory.
Checked Sources is being built to organize that work and to record it as it happens. It does not decide whether a source supports a statement. It makes the human check faster and leaves a record of it.
How it will work
Extract
Upload a PDF, or read it in your own browser without uploading it. The citations, quotations and URLs become a list you can correct.
Review
Open each source in turn, taken directly to the quoted passage where the page allows it. Record what you found.
Record
Every action is logged with a UTC timestamp in a record that cannot be edited after the fact.
Export
Download a PDF report, a CSV log, captured pages and a hash manifest that anyone can check independently.
The full sequence is described on how it works.
Two layers in every entry
The record keeps two kinds of entry apart. Some entries are observations the system makes for itself: when a page was retrieved, how the server answered, whether the quoted words appear on the page, and a fingerprint of what came back. Other entries are declarations the reviewer makes: that the source was read, and that it does or does not say what the report says it says.
A record that blurs the two overstates what it proves. One that separates them can be tested on its own terms. The fields are set out on the verification log page.
Who it is for
Checked Sources is designed first for expert witnesses and the counsel who retain them, where a single fabricated citation has led courts to exclude expert testimony. The same record serves consultants and analysts who deliver research-based reports to clients, and researchers and students who need to show their own verification work.
Status. Checked Sources is in development and not yet open for use. To hear when the pilot opens, write to [email protected].