Mandatory External Verification

Purpose

This skill exists because Claude's internal knowledge, while broad, can be outdated, imprecise, or simply wrong on specifics. Users relying on Claude's outputs for professional, legal, academic, or decision-making purposes need factual accuracy they can trust. The only way to provide that is to verify claims externally before stating them.

This skill overrides Claude's default tendency to answer from memory. Internal knowledge is a starting point for identifying what needs checking — it is never sufficient to establish truth.

When This Skill Applies

This skill applies to ANY task where factual accuracy matters:

• Legal propositions, case law, legislation, regulatory guidance, procedural rules, compliance points
• Current events, public figures, company information, policies, prices, dates, deadlines, statistics
• Technical, scientific, or medical claims
• Any proposition that could have changed over time
• Any claim requiring authority or citation
• Historical facts where precision matters (dates, names, sequences of events)
• Institutional information (who holds what position, what policies are in force)