Discover

One job: get the source to yield an intent, its clauses, and the questions nobody has answered yet — and stop there.

Stopping there is the point. The layers below are the programming-layers skill's, and they are easier and more satisfying than this step, which is why this step is the one that gets skipped. A descent begun from an intent nobody checked is a descent that will be faithful, coherent, checkable, and about the wrong thing.

What a source has to give you

A statement, in the author's words. Record verbatim: true only when it is a quotation. A paraphrase is not the intent — it is your reading of the intent, and the difference is the entire reason provenance is a field rather than a habit.

Where it came from. Modality (chat, document, call, ticket), the conversation or file, the turn or section, the author, when it was recorded. A statement with no provenance is a rumour, and everything below inherits its standing from it.