Introduction

In the DSH plugin ecosystem, agents often produce deliverables full of “confident sentences” that are actually based on guesswork. verify-claims separates the two before others notice.

What This Is

This is a tool for claim-evidence separation in any document: it classifies each verifiable claim, traces it to primary sources or direct measurements, actually fetches links, recounts action-driving numbers, and marks unverified content. The plugin is maintained by ChenneyZhuang and is designed to address expensive failures—confident claims with no source, such as regulatory numbers copied from secondhand news, links that were never opened, or “facts” that survived from old drafts. One fabricated detail can undermine the credibility of the entire document.

Core Features

The plugin performs the following:
1. Lists each verifiable claim (numbers, dates, names, regulatory statements, quotes, links).
2. Orders claims by consequence, prioritizing them over decorative facts.
3. Traces each claim to the strongest available source (primary documents, direct measurements, named secondhand sources).
4. Actually fetches links, recounts numbers, and opens cited documents.
5. Accurately marks content that cannot be verified.

Installation and Activation

Use Git to clone the repository into the skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/ChenneyZhuang/verify-claims ~/.claude/skills/verify-claims

Single SKILL.md, zero dependencies. License: MIT, version: v0.1.0.

Typical Usage

  • Prefer primary sources: For legal, regulatory, pricing, and policy matters, prefer primary documents or direct measurements, and do not rely solely on secondary media.
  • Recount, don’t transcribe: Recompute numbers that people may act on rather than simply transcribing them.
  • Verify citations: Cited passages only count when actually consulted.
  • Mark limitations: Mark paywalled or inaccessible sources as unverified (walled).

Key rules include:
- Primary beats secondary: For regulations, pricing, and similar matters, primary sources outrank secondary media.
- Recount, don’t transcribe: Numbers that people may act on must be recomputed.
- Link existence: The same rule also applies to citations.
- Fast-moving domains: In rapidly changing domains, secondary sources become outdated faster.

Use Cases and Cautions

  • Definition of “verified”: It means traced to a source, not that it is “true”; primary sources can also be wrong.
  • Paywall marking: Paywalled or login-walled sources are marked as unverified (walled) and do not count as verified.
  • Scope of recounting: Recounting verifies arithmetic and provenance, not underlying data collection.
  • Permission check: The plugin runs with the current DSH process permissions; inspect the source code and license before installing.

Conclusion

verify-claims increases the trustworthiness of documents by requiring declared evidence levels rather than pretending to have them. For more details, see the plugin directory or the GitHub repository.