Source Credibility Evaluation Protocol Agent Skill

Design a source evaluation protocol using lateral reading and credibility checks for digital information.

Context cost
5.7k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 22.7 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design a source evaluation protocol using lateral reading and credibility checks for digital information. Use when students need to evaluate websites, online sources, or social media claims.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

critical-thinkingdigital-literacydocumentationlateral-readingsiftsource-evaluation

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md22.7 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: source-credibility-evaluation-protocol disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "literacy-critical-thinking/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" skill_name: "Source Credibility Evaluation Protocol" domain: "literacy-critical-thinking" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Wineburg & McGrew (2017) — Lateral reading: reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information" - "Wineburg & McGrew (2019) — Lateral reading and the nature of expertise" - "Breakstone et al. (2021) — Students' civic online reasoning: a national portrait" - "Caulfield (2019) — SIFT: the four moves (Stop, Investigate, Find better coverage, Trace claims)" - "Hobbs (2010) — Digital and media literacy: a plan of action" input_schema: required: - field: "source_type" type: "string" - field: "evaluation_context" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" optional: - field: "specific_source" type: "string" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" - field: "subject_area" type: "string" - field: "common_mistakes" type: "array" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "evaluation_protocol" type: "object" - field: "teacher_modelling" type: "string" - field: "red_flags_green_flags" type: "object" - field: "student_checklist" type: "string" chains_well_with: - "critical-thinking-task-designer" - "media-literacy-deconstruction-protocol" - "reading-comprehension-strategy-selector" - "socratic-questioning-sequence-generator" - "ai-hallucination-fact-check-protocol" teacher_time: "3 minutes" tags: ["source-evaluation", "lateral-reading", "SIFT", "digital-literacy", "critical-thinking"] ---
71# Source Credibility Evaluation Protocol
72
73## What This Skill Does
74
75Generates a structured lateral reading protocol for evaluating a specific type of source — teaching students to check what OTHER sources say about a source rather than analysing the source itself in isolation. This approach directly follows the research finding that professional fact-checkers outperform both students and university professors at source evaluation because they read laterally (opening new tabs to check who's behind a source) rather than vertically (reading the source itself more carefully for "clues" about reliability). The output includes a step-by-step protocol, a teacher modelling script, source-type-specific red and green flags, and a student checklist. AI is specifically valuable here because effective source evaluation requires both general principles (lateral reading, claim tracing) and source-type-specific knowledge (what makes a news article credible is different from what makes a scientific study credible) — a combination that is difficult to teach without domain expertise.
76
77## Evidence Foundation
78
79Wineburg & McGrew (2017, 2019) conducted landmark studies showing that professional fact-checkers evaluate sources fundamentally differently from students and even university professors. Fact-checkers use "lateral reading" — instead of staying on a source and looking for clues about its reliability, they immediately open new tabs to check what other sources say about the source's author, publisher, and claims. Students and professors, by contrast, use "vertical reading" — they stay on the page and look for surface credibility markers (professional design, .org domain, author credentials listed on the page) that are easily manipulated. Lateral readers took an average of 93 seconds to reach a correct evaluation; vertical readers took over 5 minutes and were more often wrong. Breakstone et al. (2021) found that the vast majority of US high school students cannot reliably evaluate online sources — they are easily deceived by professional-looking design and on-page credentials. Caulfield (2019) operationalised the research into the SIFT method: Stop (pause before engaging), Investigate the source (who's behind it?), Find better coverage (what do other sources say?), Trace claims (find the original source). This framework makes lateral reading teachable. Hobbs (2010) established that digital and media literacy requires structured instruction — students do not develop source evaluation skills naturally through internet use.
80
81## Input Schema
82
83The teacher must provide:
84- **Source type:** What kind of source. *e.g. "Website" / "News article" / "Social media post (Instagram infographic)" / "YouTube video" / "Wikipedia article" / "Scientific study abstract"*
85- **Evaluation context:** Why students are evaluating this. *e.g. "Students are researching climate change for a Geography essay and need to find reliable sources" / "A student shared a TikTok video claiming X and I want the class to evaluate it"*
86- **Student level:** Year group. *e.g. "Year 9"*
87
88Optional (injected by context engine if available):
89- **Specific source:** Description of the actual source being evaluated
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,303 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈770
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,905
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.8%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 28% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

5.7k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 22.7 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md22.7 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Source Credibility Evaluation Protocol · 5.7k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol ] || { mv .claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/source-credibility-evaluation-protocol

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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