--- name: skill-content-truth-capture type: skill description: >- Write a truth capture — a traceable record of what actually happened in a piece of real work, produced from the source thread and never from memory, so a case study or article downstream argues from evidence rather than recollection. The filed artefact is a `tc.` document. Stage one of agent-content-engine, venture-neutral: the voice is supplied per domain (convention-mrp-voice for Mr P, skill-content-tov for a product). Thin by design — the shape is convention-ticket's evidence-first capture format; this skill adds the corroboration bar, how a self-reported claim that cannot be verified is marked, the check on a source ticket's own evidence-status line, and the filing rule. Use whenever a tc. document is commissioned, written or updated, or when a later stage finds its capture missing or thin. license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 --- # content-truth-capture The producer for the capture layer — stage one of the three-stage content engine (`agent-content-engine`), the evidence every later stage draws from. A truth capture is a `tc.*` Linear document that records **what actually happened** in real work, sourced from the thread that produced it. It is evidence, not a piece: the argument, the conviction and the voice are layered on later, per domain. Runs on the Cowork / Linear connector; venture-neutral, with the voice and filing home supplied by the commissioning vertical. ## Trigger A capture is commissioned — by an operator, by `task-content-drain`'s qualify pass, or by a later stage (`skill-content-case-study`, `skill-content-article`) finding the capture under a claim missing or thin. Requires a **source**: the ticket, thread or transcript the work happened in. Without a source there is no capture — refuse and say why. ## The shape — read, not invented The capture's shape is `convention-ticket`'s **evidence-first capture format**, and this skill does not restate it. The **evidence spine**, in order: `## What happened` (mandatory — without it the document is an untethered opinion) · `## Why it happened` · `## How it happened` · `## Decisions and trade-offs` (the judgement layer and the easiest section to fabricate — flag it thin rather than fill it) · `## What it led to`. Written in the subject's first person because it records their work; the subject reviews and corrects, never authors. **The interpretation layer stays on the ticket.** A `tc.*` carries the spine, the sources and the gaps and nothing else — conviction, design lens and format sit on the commissioning ticket, because a document restating the argument is drafting, and drafting is stage two or three (MRP-45 worked example, 2026-08-15). ## Behaviour 1. **Read the source, then everything it cites, then the live state of anything it claims.** The corroboration bar is three deep: the source ticket; every ticket, comment and document it names; and the current state of any artefact it makes a claim about, read through the connector. Roughly twenty reads per capture is the normal cost. A source-plus-provenance read is not enough — it produces a confident capture that repeats its ticket's unverified claims verbatim. 2. **Verify before writing a word, not after.** The failure this skill exists to prevent is plausible prose in place of what happened. Nothing goes into the spine that step 1 did not evidence. 3. **Write the spine.** Five headings, in order, first person. Where the thread does not evidence a section, write *not in the thread* — name the gap, never fill it (`convention-ticket`). 4. **Mark what is present but uncorroborated.** A section can be present, plausible and unverifiable — a session that left no transcript, an action the tracker never saw. Keep the claim and mark it **`[GAP]`** with one line stating what the record does and does not show. A question only the subject can answer is marked **`[ALED]`** (or the subject's name). These two markers are the whole marking vocabulary; the cOS `tc.*` set uses them consistently and Mr P's first two captures adopted them. 5. **Never inherit the source's own `## Evidence status`.** A self-assessed evidence line is the same shape as a ticked acceptance box above unprovisioned state. Re-derive it from step 1; where it disagrees with the source, record the discrepancy as a comment on the source ticket and correct the line there. (MRP-43 asserted "fully evidenced, no gaps"; the capture found five.) 6. **Close with `## Evidence and sources`** — a table mapping each claim in the spine to the ticket, comment or document that carries it. This is what makes a gap visible rather than merely absent, and it is what a case study cites. 7. **File it.** One Linear document per capture, named **`tc.-`** in the dotted document style (`convention-linear`), on the venture's content project — Mr Pritchard: *Articles*; careerOS: *cOS.Content*; another venture names its home in its operator profile. Link the document from the source ticket and set the source ticket's `## Evidence status` to point at it. Search by name before creating; a second document for the same work is a refresh of the first. 8. **Hand off, do not decide.** A capture is evidence. Whether a case study or article should follow is a flag on the commissioning ticket for the operator, not a call this skill makes. ## Guardrails - **No fabrication, no inference.** Gaps named, not filled; a missing fact is a `[GAP]`, never a smoothed sentence (`convention-ticket`, *Don't fabricate or infer*). - **A lossy capture is uncitable, not degraded** (`convention-mrp-voice`). Where a source is known to be stored lossily, take no quotation from it; carry what only it holds as flagged paraphrase. - **Own the verbs.** Record what was done, in the subject's voice, without inflation; record, don't interpret. - **Venture-neutral.** No venture's template, tone or taxonomy is baked in here; the domain supplies them (`convention-mrp-voice`, `skill-content-tov`, the cOS conventions for careerOS). - **Stage one only.** Stages two and three (`skill-content-case-study`, `skill-content-article`) remain held until a piece has been written against a capture produced here (Owner ruling 2026-09-03, APP-883). ## Setup Invoked, not scheduled: by Reach under an operator's commission or `task-content-drain`'s qualify pass. Worked examples: `tc.mrp-operator-mandate-edge` and `tc.mrp-desk-gate-never-run` on Mr Pritchard / Articles (MRP-45, 2026-08-15), written against the capture format before this skill existed and the reason its three additions are what they are. On finish, run `skill-ops-retro` capture on any friction.