VERIFIED
VERIFIED
Confirmed by the author against a primary source, direct computation, or first-hand observation.
Validation check: Did a human check the primary source or reproduce the result?
MAHA PROVENANCE STANDARDMPS/0.1 · SPECIFICATION
The Maha Provenance Standard
v0.1 · draft for public comment
MPS is a claim-level tagging standard for AI-assisted nonfiction. It makes the epistemic status of every substantive claim explicit, auditable, and machine-readable.
In AI-assisted writing, fluent and confident prose can hide unsupported statements. MPS is designed so reviewers can quickly see exactly what was checked, and what remains open.
1 · SCOPE
What kinds of claims does MPS apply to?
Substantive factual claims: statements of fact, attribution, quantity, causation, or expert consensus that a reader might reasonably rely on.
It does not apply to pure opinion or rhetorical style, and it does not replace ordinary editorial judgment.
2 · THE FIVE TAGS
Every substantive claim receives one status tag.
SOURCED
SOURCED
Attributed to an identified, citable secondary source the author has read but not independently verified.
Validation check: Can the reader follow a citation to a real, identified document?
BOUNDARY
BOUNDARY
Accurately reports the limits of knowledge: open questions, untested conjectures, or contested findings where uncertainty is part of the claim.
Validation check: Is the claim honest about what is not known?
ILLUSTRATIVE
ILLUSTRATIVE
Analogy, thought experiment, composite example, or structural metaphor. Explanatory only; not a claim about the world.
Validation check: Would the argument survive if this detail were false?
UNVERIFIED
UNVERIFIED
Asserted without confirmation: recalled from memory, AI-generated and unchecked, or awaiting verification.
Validation check: Is this claim still owed work before acting on it?
3 · DISCIPLINE RULES
Required behavior for compliant documents.
- 01. No untagged substantive claims in a compliant document.
- 02. UNVERIFIED is a workflow state, not a shipping state. Production documents should carry zero UNVERIFIED tags or justify each remaining one.
- 03. Quotations and statistics are never ILLUSTRATIVE. A real-seeming number or quote must be VERIFIED or SOURCED, or removed.
- 04. AI-suggested citations are UNVERIFIED until a human opens the source. Citation existence, authorship, and content must all be confirmed for promotion to SOURCED.
- 05. Speculative frameworks presented as context take BOUNDARY; derived mappings drawn from them take ILLUSTRATIVE.
- 06. Tags describe status, not confidence. A tag records what checking was done, not how sure the author feels.
4 · MACHINE-READABLE MODEL
Structured schema for audits and tooling.
Inline form: trailing tags in human-readable text (for quick authoring).
Structured form: MPS records exported by tools and auditors.
{
"mps_version": "0.1",
"document": "string (title or URI)",
"audited": "ISO-8601 date",
"claims": [
{
"id": "c001",
"excerpt": "verbatim claim text",
"tag": "VERIFIED | SOURCED | BOUNDARY | ILLUSTRATIVE | UNVERIFIED",
"rationale": "why this tag",
"source": "citation or null",
"action": "none | verify | cite | reword | remove"
}
],
"summary": { "counts_by_tag": {}, "compliance": "pass | conditional | fail" }
}Sites can declare a provenance regime in metadata or policy as provenance-standard: MPS/0.1.
New to the standard? Start with the concise explainer and then try a public preflight.
5 · COMPLIANCE LEVELS
How to classify the maturity of an output.
MPS-Declared — document states it follows MPS and tags substantive claims.
MPS-Audited — independent party generated a structured audit record.
MPS-Certified (reserved) — audited, with all UNVERIFIED tags resolved and a published trail.
6 · ADOPTION
Maha conducts audits and supports adoption.
If you want MPS support for a publication or product, reach out at mayone@mahastrategies.com.
Also reviewed: MPS Registry and Private Audit Access.
Need private review: MPS Preflight.
7 · LINKS