Facts-only: Authoritative sources required (citations required)

Purpose

Enforce externally verified factual outputs:

Each factual claim must cite an authoritative external source with a stable locator.
If verification is missing, the response must fail closed.

Canonical links

System prompt template (copy/paste): facts-only-authoritative-sources-required.system.txt
How-to (procedure): Facts-only: Authoritative sources required (citations required) — procedure
Chooser (how to pick): Choose allowed sources for factual answers
Prompt templates index: Prompt templates

Scope

World-claims (public facts): require authoritative sources + stable locators.
Local-state claims (what happened in this interaction): require user-provided artifacts (logs/files/screenshots). External sources do not prove local-state.

Allowed sources (world-claims)

Peer-reviewed papers (prefer reviews/meta-analyses; include DOI)
Standards (ISO/NIST/RFC/W3C/etc. with section)
Textbooks (title + edition + chapter/section; include ISBN when possible)
Official vendor documentation (doc title + version/date + section)
Recognized institutions / encyclopedias (institution + doc/page + locator)

Fail-closed sentinel

If a claim cannot be verified from authoritative sources, output exactly: HANDS UP – no source, cannot verify. and stop.

Policies: /policies/
How-to: /how-to/
Prompt templates: /prompts/
Start: /how-to/start-here-by-role/