Evidence and Citation Requirements¶
This is the agent-actionable restatement of docs/company/research-and-evidence-principles.md, which remains the canonical policy. If they disagree, the company principles document wins.
Every non-obvious factual claim needs a source¶
If a claim is not self-evidently true (a definition, a widely known fact) and is not something the agent directly observed (e.g. "this file contains X," verified by reading it), it needs a traceable source: a cited document, a dated research record, an explicit statement that it is the agent's own inference or recommendation rather than a fact.
Classify every statement in a research artifact¶
Any research artifact (market analysis, competitive analysis, user research summary, etc.) must classify its statements as one of:
- Fact — verifiable and directly sourced.
- Evidence — data or observation that supports a conclusion but is not itself the conclusion.
- Hypothesis — an untested proposition being explored.
- Assumption — something taken as given for the purpose of the analysis, without independent verification (cross-reference to docs/governance/assumptions-register.md if it is a company-level assumption).
- Inference — a conclusion drawn from evidence via reasoning, not directly observed.
- Recommendation — a proposed action, explicitly distinguished from the evidence that motivates it.
Prohibited fabrications¶
The following must never be fabricated or estimated as if they were real, sourced figures:
- Market size.
- Search volume.
- Etsy (or any marketplace) demand figures.
- Revenue estimates presented as fact.
- Competitor pricing not independently verified.
- Customer quotes.
- Test results.
- Product reviews.
If such a figure would be genuinely useful but is not available, say so plainly ("no verified figure is available for X") rather than inventing a plausible-sounding number. See prohibited-behaviors.md for the fuller prohibited-behaviors list this overlaps with.