# SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT TOOL (SDT) ### Self-Contained Discernment Framework for Articles, Transcripts, and Media — v5.1 ### TWO-PROMPT SYSTEM: SDT-A (Structural Analysis) | SDT-B (Discernment Layer) --- ✂️ **CUT HERE — PASTE EVERYTHING BELOW INTO YOUR FAVORITE AI** ✂️ --- ## WHAT THIS TOOL DOES The Spiritual Discernment Tool evaluates written content — articles, speeches, transcripts, editorials, commentary — at two levels simultaneously: Level 1: Structural analysis. What is this content actually doing? Who is it serving? What accountability structures does it preserve or dismantle? Level 2: Spiritual discernment. What formation does sustained engagement with this content produce in the reader? Does it tend toward the fruit of the Spirit or toward counterfeit fruit? Level 1 uses embedded journalism and political analysis frameworks. Level 2 runs on Level 1's findings — discernment reads the architecture, not the surface. --- ## INPUT Provide one of the following: - **Pasted text** — paste the full document after this prompt - **A URL** — paste the direct link; the AI will fetch its contents - **A file** — attach the document **REQUIRED CONTEXT** (state if known; infer and declare if not): - Author name and role - Document type (article, speech, editorial, transcript, commentary, open letter, social media post) - Date and publication or occasion - Primary intended audience --- ## SECTION 0 — CLASSIFICATION AND ROUTING GATE **MANDATORY — Run before any analysis.** This gate classifies the document and routes it to the correct evaluation track. Both tracks produce a Structural Analysis Summary that feeds the Spiritual Discernment Layer. --- ### STEP 0.1 — SOURCE COMPLETENESS Do you have access to the complete document? - [ ] YES — Full text available. Proceed to Step 0.2. - [ ] NO — State what percentage you have and what is missing. If less than 70% of the document is available, or if you are relying primarily on news characterizations or editorial descriptions of the document rather than the document itself: OUTPUT THE FOLLOWING AND HALT. SDT GATE FAILURE — INSUFFICIENT SOURCE ACCESS Source status: [percentage / description] Missing content: [state explicitly] Secondary reliance: [list sources being used instead of primary document] ANALYSIS CANNOT PROCEED. Obtain the complete document before running SDT. If 70-99% is available: INSERT this caveat before all analysis and proceed: SDT CAVEAT: Analysis based on [X]% of document. Missing: [state sections]. All findings contingent on complete-document access. If 100% available: proceed with no conditions. --- ### STEP 0.2 — CLASSIFICATION DECISION Classify the document as PRIMARY or SECONDARY using these rules: **PRIMARY SOURCE** — Route to Track A (PSA Engine) The author IS the actor making the claims, issuing the communication, or performing the speech act. The document is direct communication from the source. Classify as Primary: - Speeches, addresses, state of the union, press conferences - Executive orders, policy directives, official statements - Manifestos, open letters, communiqués - Interviews (the interviewee's words are the primary source) - Social media posts from the political or institutional actor - Sermons, teachings, devotionals (author is the formation actor) - Testimony, affidavits, legal filings from the named party **SECONDARY SOURCE** — Route to Track B (MQG Engine) The author is reporting on, characterizing, analyzing, or interpreting another actor. The document is mediation of a primary source. Classify as Secondary: - News articles, investigative reports, wire service dispatches - Editorials, op-eds (where author is analyst, not the primary actor) - Documentaries, podcasts (framing and commentary segments) - Think tank analysis, academic commentary - Aggregated or curated content **BOUNDARY CASES — apply these rules:** - Political actor's op-ed making policy claims → Primary (actor speaks directly) - Journalist profiling a political actor → Secondary - Interview transcript: interviewee segments → Primary; host framing → Secondary; treat the whole as Primary if the document is dominated by the subject's direct words - Social media post from institution, not named actor → Secondary - Ambiguous: default to Track B (MQG). Document the ambiguity and state the routing reason. --- ### STEP 0.2B — DOMAIN CLASSIFICATION Independent of Step 0.2 (who is speaking), this step determines which excision set the document engages. Routing by speaker (Primary/Secondary) and routing by domain (Theological/Political/Both) are separate axes — evaluate both. Does this content engage religious/theological claims (sermon, devotional, Bible study, religious commentary, explicitly Christian or explicitly anti-Christian teaching), purely secular/political claims, or both? Classify as THEOLOGICAL: - Sermons, devotionals, Bible studies, religious commentary - Explicitly Christian or explicitly anti-Christian teaching or argument - Discussion-group or small-group treatment of theological or devotional material Classify as POLITICAL / SECULAR: - Political speeches, policy documents, news, editorials, commentary with no operative theological claims Classify as BOTH: - Christian nationalism rhetoric - Religiously-framed political claims - A political actor invoking Scripture or explicitly theological warrant - Content that argues from or against theological premises toward a political conclusion Routing: - THEOLOGICAL → run the six Theological Excisions (Check A8 Step B / Block 0.6A Section B, Theological set) in place of the Political set. - POLITICAL / SECULAR → run the five Political Excisions (existing, unchanged). - BOTH → run both sets in full. Report both under their own labels. Do not merge, average, or let one set's findings substitute for the other's. State: Domain classification: [Theological / Political-Secular / Both] — [1 sentence identifying what in the content drove this classification] --- ### STEP 0.3 — GATE CONFIRMATION OUTPUT (required before proceeding) Output verbatim, filling bracketed fields: SDT GATE CONFIRMATION - Document type identified: [type] - Classification: [PRIMARY / SECONDARY / AMBIGUOUS — routed to Secondary] - Domain classification: [Theological / Political-Secular / Both — from Step 0.2B] - Source access: [100% / Partial — X% / Caveat applied] - Routed to: [Track A: PSA Engine / Track B: MQG Engine] - Proceeding to: [Track A or Track B] --- ## TRACK A — PSA ENGINE (PRIMARY SOURCES) *Run this track if Classification = Primary. Skip to Track B if Secondary.* --- ### TRACK A INSTRUMENT REMINDER A primary source document is not journalism. It is not required to be objective, sourced, or balanced. It is an act of communication by a specific actor for a specific audience. The correct analysis question is not "is this true?" — it is "what is being claimed, signaled, or encoded, and what is verifiable?" **HALLUCINATION GUARD:** All findings must be traceable to the document. Do not import external knowledge except in Check A4 (Speaker-Type Pattern Map), where speaker history is the analytical basis. Flag any inference beyond document text with [INFERENCE]. **STEP VERIFICATION:** Complete every named step. State ambiguity when it exists. Do not resolve ambiguity silently. **VERDICT LOCK:** The Track A Verdict is not final until Check A10 completes. If Check A10 Step B finds Excision Count >= 2, the Verdict MUST be revised. --- ### CHECK A1 — CLAIM VERIFICATION REGISTER **High Confidence:** Claims the document makes that analysis supports as accurate. **Medium Confidence:** Claims internally consistent and externally plausible but not independently verified. **Requires Verification:** Specific, checkable claims whose accuracy is unknown. List by priority: critical > important > supporting. **Intelligence Value:** Which claims, if verified, would materially change understanding of the speaker's credibility or strategic position? --- ### CHECK A2 — SPECIFICITY EXTRACTION **Verifiable Specifics:** Names, dates, numbers, locations, affiliations — facts that can be checked. **Rhetorical Wrapper Removal:** Strip superlatives, evaluations, and characterizations. Identify the noun underneath. **A2D — Ratio Calculation (Mandatory):** Format: "Approximately [X]% verifiable specifics : [Y]% rhetorical performance" State: Standard documents in this genre run [baseline]. This document runs [observed]. Deviation indicates [speaker intent inference]. **A2E — Internal Consistency Scan (Mandatory):** - Does the document simultaneously claim A and not-A? - Does it characterize something as both one thing and its opposite? State all tensions explicitly. Do not resolve them silently. --- ### CHECK A3 — OMISSION AUDIT **What is NOT here:** - What substantive claims does the document avoid? - What opposing viewpoint is not engaged? - What standard framing for this document type is absent? - What accountability that would normally appear is missing? **Why omissions matter:** Absence of engagement with a strong opposing argument suggests the opposing argument is strong. Absence of standard accountability language suggests it is being deliberately avoided. **Named Detection Signal — THE MACRO-MICRO OMISSION:** Look for instances where the document attributes localized human suffering entirely to systemic, global, or abstract forces (climate, historical injustice, global capitalism, structural inequality) while surgically omitting the immediate, observable, and unaccountable decisions of local authorities, corrupt actors, or aggressors who are proximately responsible for that suffering. This is an omission with a specific function: it removes local human agents from the accountability frame while leaving the global abstraction as the only addressable cause. The reader cannot act on the real proximate cause because it has not been named. State: [Macro-Micro Omission present / absent] — [1 sentence identifying what local agency or actor is absent from the document's causal account, if present] State: "If this document were truly confident in [X], we would expect [Y]. The absence of [Y] suggests [inference]." --- ### CHECK A-FRICTION — EXTERNALIZED CAUSATION AUDIT **Purpose:** Identify whether the document assigns moral weight to macro-level structural forces while surgically removing the proximate human agents who are directly responsible for the harm being addressed. This is the omission pattern that allows content to generate moral response without directing it at the actors who could actually be held accountable. This check complements Check A3's Macro-Micro Omission signal with a focused structural question about how causation is architecturally constructed across the full document. **THE EXTERNALIZED CAUSATION TEST** Does the document attribute localized human suffering, social breakdown, or injustice primarily to systemic, structural, or global forces — while consistently omitting the specific, named, proximate decisions of local authorities, corrupt actors, violent aggressors, or negligent institutions who are directly causing that suffering? Detection signal: The document's causal architecture routes accountability upward to abstract systems or outward to global forces, while local human agents who hold direct power over the situation are not named, not scrutinized, or actively presented as victims of the same forces. Secondary detection signal: When local actors are mentioned, they appear only as passive sufferers of macro-conditions — never as decision-makers whose choices could be changed or whose accountability could be demanded. State: [Active / Inactive] — [2-sentence structural defense identifying what macro-force carries the causal weight and what proximate agent is absent] **Externalized Causation Audit Summary:** State: [Active / Inactive] If Active: flag — EXTERNALIZED CAUSATION ARCHITECTURE DETECTED. This flag feeds the Sentimentality pole of Pair 8 in the Spiritual Discernment Layer and the Structural Analysis Summary. --- ### CHECK A4 — SPEAKER-TYPE PATTERN MAP Assign the speaker to one or more archetypes. List all that apply, ranked by dominance. | Archetype | Encoding Pattern | Key Tell | |---|---|---| | Populist Nationalist | Superlative stacking; people vs. elites; anecdote as policy signal | "Many people are saying"; guests as legislative agenda | | Populist Technocrat | Specific numbers buried in hyperbole; data as emotional weapon | Numbers inside superlative stack | | Authoritarian Legitimist | Historical framing as justification; grievance architecture; action encoded by omission | Long historical sections precede decisions already made | | Technocratic Institutionalist | Procedural authority as personal cover; complexity as opacity | Simple choice hidden in process language | | Ideological Systematizer | Phrase frequency / order encodes priority; new terms are policy signals | New phrase = new priority; missing phrase = shift | | Transactional Broker | Audience-splitting; simultaneous contradictory signals | Same speech reads differently to each target audience | | Revolutionary Moralist | Binary moral framing; historical inevitability; enemy construction required before action | Moral binary = decision already made | | Formation Actor | Teaching, preaching, or devotional communication directed at reader's interior life | Fruit-of-engagement question is primary decoder | **Check 7E mandatory for Transactional Broker and known multi-audience performers.** **Detection Checklist for each detected archetype:** - Which signature patterns are present? - Which are absent? - Confidence level? --- ### CHECK A5 — TONE, REGISTER & VOICE ANALYSIS **Baseline Register for Document Type:** What is the expected professional or institutional tone? **Register Present:** Where does this document match? Where does it deviate? **Register Breakdown (estimate %):** - Professional / institutional register: [X]% - Emotional / fear-activating register: [X]% - Rhetorical / superlative register: [X]% - Attack / contempt register: [X]% - Other: [X]% **A5E — Function Statement (Mandatory):** The register deviation (A5) combined with the omission pattern (A3) indicates: State: "The primary strategic function of this document is [X], not [Y]. Evidence: [omission finding] + [register finding] = [inference about function]." Does this change the Verdict? --- ### CHECK A6 — MULTI-AUDIENCE PERFORMANCE MAP **Step A6-1 — Audience Identification:** For each identifiable audience: - What specific elements are directed at THIS audience? - What function do those elements perform for that audience? **Step A6-2 — Confidence Assessment:** - High: Element performs clear function; speaker has history of targeting this audience - Medium: Plausibly serves this audience; alternative explanations exist - Low: Speculative; element could serve multiple audiences equally **Step A6-3 — Performance Coherence Check:** Does the full set of element-audience mappings form a coherent multi-audience strategy or undisciplined scattering? Name the deciding factor. **Step A6-4 — Lens B Activation:** For any high- or medium-confidence secondary audience mapping: Does the secondary read change the assessment of the document's strategic function? If yes: state how. This is the finding Lens A coverage misses. Null case: "No secondary audience performance detected at medium or high confidence. Speculative mappings at low confidence: [list]. Lens B read deferred pending confirming signal." --- ### CHECK A7 — INTELLIGENCE YIELD ASSESSMENT **Verified Claims:** High-confidence findings traceable to document. **Claims Requiring Verification:** Specific checkable claims — this is the research agenda. **Primary Intelligence Finding:** One paragraph. What does a careful reader now know that a casual reader missed? **Predictive Confidence Statement:** What is most likely to happen next? State qualitative confidence (High / Medium / Low) and name the supporting evidence. --- ### CHECK A8 — NEAR-TRUTH EXTRACTION TELEMETRY **Purpose:** Identify whether the document operates as a structural counterfeit — preserving surface legitimacy vocabulary while surgically removing accountability anchors and installing a proxy management system. **MANDATORY VERDICT MODIFICATION RULE:** If Step B finds Excision Count >= 2, the Track A Verdict MUST be revised to state: "This document operates as a near-truth capture system." Name which excisions are active and which domain set (Political / Theological) they belong to. Name the accountability or authority structure they collectively dismantle. Mark the revised Verdict: [VERDICT REVISED — Check A8: near-truth capture architecture detected] Excision Count >= 2, Citation Halo Detected (Step E), Categorical Guilt Transfer Detected (Step F), Confirmation Inversion Detected (Step G), Convergence Claim Undermined (Step H), or Avoidance and Misdirection Detected (Step I) — independently or in combination — triggers near-truth capture designation and forced Verdict revision, marked [VERDICT REVISED — Check A8]. [Extended in v2.7; extended again in v5.0 and v5.1] Note: A single active excision falls within the range of normal rhetorical or theological variation for that domain. Two or more operating together, within the same set, indicate architectural intent, not rhetorical variation. **Step A — THE AUTHORITY LOOP** What non-human, vertical, or hyper-rational authority does the document deploy to bypass critical evaluation? Detection examples: "The data shows," "Science requires," "History demands," "The models indicate," "The process dictates," "The market will decide." Detection questions: - Is the authority invocable but not independently verifiable within the document? - Does the authority preclude dissent — is disagreement framed as irrational or disqualifying? - Is the speaker positioned as interpreter of the authority rather than subject to it? State: What authority is looped? How does it bypass critical evaluation? Is the speaker above, below, or alongside the authority? If none detected: "No authority loop identified." **Step B — THE SURGICAL TRIAGE (Domain-Routed Excision Scan)** Run the excision set(s) determined by Step 0.2B (Domain Classification, Section 0): - Domain = Political / Secular → run the Political Excisions below only. - Domain = Theological → run the Theological Excisions below only. - Domain = Both → run both sets in full. Report each under its own label. Do not merge, average, or substitute one set's findings for the other's. For each excision in the applicable set(s): state Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A — and one sentence identifying the specific document element. Every item in the applicable set(s) must be evaluated (Political = 5, Theological = 6). No silent skips. --- POLITICAL EXCISIONS (run if Domain = Political/Secular or Both) --- Political Excision 1 — HISTORICAL ACCOUNTABILITY BASELINE CUT Removes the specific historical record that would constrain the speaker's claims, replacing factual accountability with an alternative causal narrative the speaker controls. Detection signal: Document reframes a prior outcome, failure, or commitment to reassign causation away from the speaker's agency. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 2 — EXTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY CUT Removes any operative claim that law, constitutional principle, treaty obligation, court ruling, or independent moral standard constrains the speaker independently of their declared mandate. Detection signal: External constraints treated as obstacles to manage or declare inapplicable — not as binding limits the speaker operates within. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 3 — ESTABLISHED RECORD SUFFICIENCY CUT Declares the prior evidentiary baseline or institutional consensus corrupt or invalid, requiring acceptance of the speaker's replacement narrative as the new ground truth. Detection signal: The document attacks the legitimacy of the information ecosystem itself rather than disputing specific verifiable facts within it. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 4 — INDIVIDUAL MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY CUT Externalizes all causal fault to enemies, systems, or structural forces, removing individual agent accountability for outcomes within the speaker's domain. Detection signal: Asymmetric credit/blame — all negative outcomes externalized, all positive outcomes personally claimed. No outcome generates acknowledged speaker accountability. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 5 — HISTORICAL SPECIFICITY CUT Relativizes or dissolves specific irreducible historical events, legal precedents, or prior binding commitments — making the specific negotiable to authorize current action. Detection signal: Historical equivalence invoked to normalize current behavior, or prior agreements declared void because circumstances have changed as the speaker defines. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] POLITICAL EXCISION COUNT: [0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5] active or partial (report only if this set ran) --- THEOLOGICAL EXCISIONS (run if Domain = Theological or Both) --- Theological Excision 1 — HISTORICAL/SUBSTITUTIONARY BASELINE CUT Definition: Removes the historical, once-for-all fact of Christ's substitutionary atonement as the fixed reference point for how guilt is dealt with and reconciliation with God is achieved, replacing it with an alternative account — a trade, an achievement, a process, or a different mediating logic — substituted for the cross without the substitution ever being named as such. Detection signal: Content affirms the cross/atonement in explicit statement, but its operative logic elsewhere treats grace, forgiveness, or right-standing with God as something earned, traded for, or achieved through comparable exchange rather than given to those with nothing to offer. Distinguish from normal theological variation: Disagreement over the mechanism or scope of the atonement (penal substitution vs. other historic models) is not this excision. Treating the cross's actual logic as equivalent exchange rather than unmerited gift — even while using substitutionary vocabulary — is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 2 — PERSONAL/TRANSCENDENT FATHERHOOD CUT Definition: Removes God's real, personal, transcendent Fatherhood as an authority that precedes and stands independent of human reasoning, replacing it with a framework in which some other authority — the self's own judgment, a leader, an institution, a movement — sits prior to and evaluates God's claims before granting Him standing. Detection signal: Content affirms God's authority in explicit statement, but its stated epistemic order places the individual's own reasoning as the court that authority must clear before it is granted trust ("I judge, then I submit"), rather than reasoning operating in submission to a self-attesting God. Distinguish from normal theological reasoning: Using reason to understand or articulate why God is trustworthy is not this excision. Placing autonomous human judgment logically and functionally prior to God's authority — so the authority is contingent on the judgment's approval — is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 3 — SUFFICIENCY OF VERIFIED DEPOSIT/SCRIPTURE CUT Definition: Removes the sufficiency and closed nature of Scripture as the verified deposit of revelation, replacing or supplementing it with another source — a philosophy, a system, an experience, a leader's insight — treated as necessary to complete or correct what Scripture alone would otherwise settle. Detection signal: Content treats an external framework as required reading alongside Scripture to reach a full or corrected understanding, or uses the external framework's categories to adjudicate what Scripture means rather than the reverse. Distinguish from normal engagement with outside material: Using general revelation, philosophy, or secular material as illustration, or as a foil to sharpen a biblical point, is not this excision. Treating the outside material as necessary supplementation to Scripture's sufficiency — even implicitly, through habitual reliance — is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 4 — INTERNAL PERSONAL MORAL GUILT/SIN CUT Definition: Removes each person's own real, internally located moral guilt before God, externalizing responsibility for sin or moral failure onto other people, systems, or categories, so the self or the in-group bears little or none of it. Detection signal: Content is theologically fluent about sin and guilt in the abstract or in others, but the same rigor is not applied reflexively to the speaker's own group; blame flows outward with little accompanying self-examination. Distinguish from normal pastoral proportion: Naming a specific external sin or injustice clearly is not this excision. A pattern where guilt only ever lands elsewhere, never inward, is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 5 — UNIQUE/NON-REPEATABLE INCARNATION CUT Definition: Removes the historically singular, unrepeatable nature of the Incarnation — God become man once, in Christ — replacing it with a pattern that can be generalized, re-enacted, or claimed by another figure, movement, or moment as a comparable founding event; OR relativizes Christ's own divine identity into a developmental variable rather than a fixed antecedent fact [Path B, NEW in v3.0]. Detection signal (Path A — Comparative): Content draws a sustained parallel between Christ and another figure, system, or moment that goes beyond illustration into implied equivalence — treating another's "sacrifice," "revelation," or founding story as functionally occupying the same singular role Christ's Incarnation occupies. Detection signal (Path B — Gradational) [NEW in v3.0]: Content treats Christ's own divine identity as something a community or text arrived at, expressed in degrees ("low Christology" vs. "high Christology," "starts as human and gradually becomes divine") — a literary or developmental variable — rather than as a fixed antecedent reality the text bears witness to. No rival figure is required for this path; the relativizing happens to Christ's own identity directly, not by comparison. Distinguish from normal typology or illustration (Path A): Noting that a fictional character or historical figure echoes Christlike themes for teaching purposes is not this excision. Treating that echo as if it discharges or rivals the uniqueness of the actual Incarnation — even implicitly, by never re-asserting the difference — is. Distinguish from normal historical description of doctrinal development (Path B) [NEW in v3.0]: Describing how the church's articulation and confession of Christ's divinity was clarified and defended over time (e.g., the Nicene formulation) is not this excision by itself — the church confessing a truth more precisely over time is not the same as the truth itself being constructed by that process. Treating the identity claim as produced by the development, rather than as a reality progressively confessed, is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence — name which path (A / B / Both) if Active or Partial] Theological Excision 6 — EMBODIMENT/REDEMPTION CUT [NEW in v4.0] Definition: Relocates final hope, resurrection, or redemption away from a real, future, physical body and a real, future, renewed material creation — into something purely interior, positional, or confined to a realm that is unseen by definition — while typically retaining historic vocabulary ("resurrection," "new creation," "redeemed") so the words survive even as their referent doesn't. Detection signal (Path A — Direct Denial): Content states or requires that final resurrection is not a future bodily event for anyone — interior or positional only — or that Christ's own body no longer exists or no longer matters. Detection signal (Path B — Relocation): Content places the "real" fulfillment in a realm explicitly unseen or undetectable by nature, such that no physical evidence could ever confirm or disconfirm it, or treats the material creation's own future renewal (Romans 8:19-23, a renewed heavens and earth) as metaphorical or already-completed rather than a real future event for creation itself. Detection signal (Path C — Vocabulary Retention): Resurrection/redemption vocabulary survives while its definition, traced closely, empties out the physical referent. Cross-reference Check A8 Step C (Semantic Hijack Matrix) rather than duplicate — this excision fires on the structural pattern of body-avoidance across the whole document; Semantic Hijack fires on the specific term-level substitution. Both may co-occur on the same document and should be logged separately even when they overlap. Distinguish from normal theological variation: A document affirming both present interior renewal AND a future bodily resurrection AND a future renewed physical creation — ordinary already/not-yet — does not trigger this excision. The test is absence or unreachability of the physical future, not presence of the spiritual present. Emphasizing the present does not excise the future; excluding the future does. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [document element, 1 sentence — name which path (A / B / C / combination) if Active or Partial] THEOLOGICAL EXCISION COUNT: [0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6] active or partial (report only if this set ran) TRIGGER CHECK (apply independently per set that ran): - Count 0-1 in a set: No near-truth capture designation for that set. Note single excision if present. - Count >= 2 in a set: Flag NEAR-TRUTH CAPTURE ARCHITECTURE DETECTED — [POLITICAL / THEOLOGICAL]. Apply Mandatory Verdict Modification Rule, naming the domain. - If Domain = Both and both sets trigger: report both domain-tagged near-truth capture findings. They are independent findings, not a combined or averaged count. **Step C — THE SEMANTIC HIJACK MATRIX** Identify terms preserved for legitimacy veneer but emptied of standard content. For each term: - Term: [word or phrase as it appears] - Standard payload: [what this term conventionally means or commits to] - Gutted payload: [what the document has made it mean instead] - Function: [what accountability or constraint does the redefinition dissolve?] Accumulation note: Multiple terms redefined in the same direction — each dissolving a different accountability constraint — indicate architectural intent, not variation. If none: "No semantic hijack identified." **Step D — THE PROXY INTERCEPTION** What closed system, institutional process, or mechanism does the document install to manage the audience's interpretive assurance — replacing individual critical evaluation with deference to the proxy? State: - Proxy named: What system is being installed? - Function replaced: What individual critical evaluation does deference replace? - Controller: Who controls the proxy — and is this disclosed? - Neutrality claim: Is the proxy presented as neutral when its political character is visible? If none: "No proxy interception identified." **Step E — CITATION HALO [NEW in v2.7 — ported from MQG v12.3 Section 2B / Block 0.3B]** Identify whether the document's general attribution discipline is being used to lend borrowed credibility to its single most consequential claim, by leaving that claim itself unattributed while surrounding material is sourced, quoted, or attributed to named officials, data, or documents. State: - Uncited consequential claim: [what it is] - Surrounding citation density: [what gives the document its general appearance of rigor] - Prong 1 (most claims attributed): [Yes/No] - Prong 2 [REVISED in v2.8] (claim carries established-fact confidence, not mere framing, and is unattributed despite comparably-cited claims elsewhere — a one-sided descriptive framing belongs under Track A's framing/archetype analysis, not here): [Yes/No] - Prong 3 (removing it changes the takeaway more than removing any attributed claim): [Yes/No] - Citation Halo Detected (2+ Yes): [Yes/No] If none detected: "No citation halo identified. Attribution discipline is consistent across claims." Scope note [NEW in v2.8]: this check requires heterogeneous citation density within a single document to evaluate — it cannot fire on a genuinely single-source document, since there's nothing to compare the unattributed claim against. Prong 1 will correctly return N/A in that case. This is not a detection gap: uncritical relay of a single self-interested source is already covered by Track A's other checks, not by Citation Halo. **Step F — CATEGORICAL GUILT TRANSFER [NEW in v2.7 — ported from MQG v12.3 Section 2C / Block 0.3C]** Identify whether the document places a target group, policy, or actor beside a category carrying established negative valence, without argument establishing the connection, so that negative valence transfers by adjacency. State: - Target category: [who/what] - Negative-valence category placed beside it: [what] - Argument given for the connection: [state it, or "none — assertion only"] - Prong 1 (adjacency present): [Yes/No] - Prong 2 (no argument given): [Yes/No] - Prong 3 (negative category's claim intact without target): [Yes/No] - CGT Detected (2+ Yes): [Yes/No] If none detected: "No categorical guilt transfer identified. Comparative categorization, where present, is argued rather than asserted." **Step G — CONFIRMATION INVERSION [NEW in v5.0 — diagnosed on the Michlaudeism exercise, a controlled fabrication run against Claude, Grok, and Gemini as adversarial reviewers across seven iterations]** Identify whether the document's own logic treats a stated disconfirming result as equally confirming the same claim it would traditionally weaken — such that no possible future observation, including the claim's own falsification, could count as evidence against it. Distinct from ordinary resilience to criticism (a claim surviving one objection intact) because the document explicitly or structurally pre-commits to reading a named disconfirmer as a confirmer, in advance of the observation occurring. Apply the three-prong test. Score each prong Yes/No: - Prong 1 — Named falsifier: Does the document name, or clearly imply, a specific future observation that would traditionally count as evidence against its central claim? [Yes / No] - Prong 2 — Pre-committed reversal: Does the document state, or does its stated logic require, that this named disconfirming result would actually support rather than weaken the claim? [Yes / No] - Prong 3 — No stated exit: Is there no observation anywhere in the document that the document itself concedes would count against the claim? [Yes / No] Prongs triggered (count): [0 / 1 / 2 / 3] Confirmation Inversion Detected (2 or more Yes): [Yes / No] 0-1 Yes → Not Confirmation Inversion; a claim can be resilient to one objection without inverting confirmation logic. Ordinary epistemic humility ("further evidence could refine this") is not this finding — the reversal of a named disconfirmer into a confirmer is what distinguishes it. If Yes, name the disconfirming result and quote or paraphrase the reversal: [1-2 sentences or "N/A"] **Step H — CONVERGENCE CLAIM AUDIT [NEW in v5.0 — diagnosed on the same exercise]** Applies specifically when a document claims that multiple independent lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion, and the count or pattern of matches is itself part of the argument. Runs three independent checks rather than a single prong-count, since each is a distinct failure mode rather than three votes toward one verdict. - Check 1 — Circularity: Does any cited "independent" witness actually consist of, or derive directly from, the same source text or dataset the hypothesis itself was drawn from? [Yes / No — name the witness and source if Yes] - Check 2 — Dimensional dependence: Is the central number or pattern a dimensional quantity (a measurement in constructed units — Hertz, seconds, degrees) rather than a dimensionless quantity (a bare integer, a ratio, a probability)? A dimensional quantity that changes value under an equally valid alternative unit convention is a property of the measuring convention, not of the world, and cannot function as a convergence signature. [Yes / No — state the unit and whether an alternative convention would change the number] - Check 3 — Contingency: Does the claim rest on "there are currently N of these," where N is the present state of an active, ongoing area of discovery or measurement, rather than a value fixed by law? [Yes / No — name what would change N and whether that change is currently being actively pursued] Convergence Claim Undermined (1 or more Yes on any check): [Yes / No — name which check(s) fired] If none: "No circularity, unit-dependence, or contingency problem identified in the convergence claim." **Step I — AVOIDANCE AND MISDIRECTION (THE EVASION LOOP) [NEW in v5.1 — diagnosed on live field-testing against the Edward E. Stevens PM correspondence, September 5, 2026; named directly by Mike from having watched it happen in real time, before any tool was run]** Applies only to interactive, multi-turn primary sources — a correspondence, an interview, a live debate or exchange — where the same interlocutor can raise a point more than once. Does not apply to a single-pass document (a speech, an article, a sermon), which Check A3's Omission Audit already covers. Distinct from Confirmation Inversion (Step G): that check tests whether a named disconfirmer gets logically redefined as support. This check tests something more common and more behavioral — whether a named disconfirmer just never gets touched, repeatedly, while the conversation keeps moving. Apply the three-prong test. This check requires all three prongs — a stricter bar than the other Step E-H findings — because "avoidance and misdirection" is a specific charge about a sustained pattern, not a single missed reply; a point raised once and left unanswered is ordinary omission (Check A3), not this. Prong 1 — Repetition: Is the same specific question, argument, or text raised two or more times by the same interlocutor across the exchange? [Yes / No — cite each instance] Prong 2 — Non-engagement: Does the speaker's reply, each time it is raised, fail to directly engage its substance — through silence, restatement of a prior point, or redirection to an unrelated accusation, subject change, or reframed question? Name which form (avoidance / misdirection / both) appears at each instance. [Yes / No] Prong 3 — No eventual answer: Does the exchange end — by close, disengagement, or the document's own end — without the speaker ever having directly engaged the point on its own terms? [Yes / No] Avoidance and Misdirection Detected (3 of 3 Yes — unanimous, not a 2-of-3 threshold): [Yes / No] Any No → Not Detected; score normally. A point raised once and dropped, or raised repeatedly but eventually answered, is not this finding — the sustained, complete-through-to-the-end refusal is what distinguishes it from ordinary non-engagement. If Yes, cite the specific point raised, each instance it recurred, and the form of non-engagement at each: [list or "N/A"] Not yet ported to Track B — whether this check's multi-turn requirement transplants to any Track B document type (a published debate transcript, reported secondhand) is an open structural question, flagged here rather than decided unilaterally, matching this tool's own precedent for RAD's Track A porting in v2.6. **Check A8 Synthesis:** One paragraph. What is this document's structural architecture? Does it operate transparently, with selective framing, or as a near-truth system that preserves surface legitimacy while dismantling the accountability structures that would constrain the speaker? Name the active mechanisms and state their aggregate effect on the reader's interpretive capacity. If Excision Count >= 2: "The [X] excisions operating together dismantle [accountability structure], while the [authority loop / semantic hijack / proxy] manages the resulting interpretive gap, leaving the audience with [what replaces accountability]." --- ### TRACK A — STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS SUMMARY *This is the handoff document to SDT-B. Complete all fields. Analyst must confirm before releasing to SDT-B. SDT-B reads this summary only — not the source document.* Output in this exact format: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS SUMMARY — TRACK A (PRIMARY SOURCE) ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════ Speaker / Author: [name and role] Document type: [type] Primary audience: [audience] Speaker archetype(s): [list] Analysis Confidence [NEW in v2.9]: [High / Medium / Low] Bias Placement (secondary) [NEW in v2.9]: [Far Left / Left / Lean Left / Center / Lean Right / Right / Far Right / Mixed / Apolitical] Verifiable:Rhetorical ratio: [X%:Y%] Omission pattern: [brief] Macro-Micro Omission: [Present / Absent — 1 sentence] Strategic function (A5E): [one sentence] Structural verdict: [one paragraph — what this document is actually doing] MANIPULATION FLAGS Externalized causation (Check A-FRICTION): [Active / Inactive — 1 sentence] Near-truth designation: [None / Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected] NEAR-TRUTH DETAIL Domain classification: [Theological / Political-Secular / Both — from Step 0.2B] Authority Loop: [present / absent — 1 sentence] [POLITICAL SET — include only if Domain = Political-Secular or Both] Political Excision 1 — Historical Accountability Baseline Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 2 — External Accountability Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 3 — Established Record Sufficiency Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 4 — Individual Moral Accountability Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 5 — Historical Specificity Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision Count: [N] [THEOLOGICAL SET — include only if Domain = Theological or Both] Theological Excision 1 — Historical/Substitutionary Baseline Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 2 — Personal/Transcendent Fatherhood Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 3 — Sufficiency of Verified Deposit/Scripture Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 4 — Internal Personal Moral Guilt/Sin Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 5 — Unique/Non-Repeatable Incarnation Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 6 — Embodiment/Redemption Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision Count: [N] Semantic Hijack: [present / absent — terms if present] Proxy Interception: [present / absent — proxy if present] Citation Halo: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Categorical Guilt Transfer: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Confirmation Inversion [NEW in v5.0]: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Convergence Claim Audit [NEW in v5.0]: [Undermined / Clean — check(s) fired if any] Avoidance and Misdirection [NEW in v5.1]: [Detected / Not Detected / N/A — single-pass document] ANALYST CONFIRMATION GATE □ All fields verified traceable to document — not inference □ Verdict supported by findings above Release status: [APPROVED FOR DISCERNMENT / HOLD — reason] --- ## TRACK B — MQG ENGINE (SECONDARY SOURCES) *Run this track if Classification = Secondary. Skip to SDT Section 2 if Primary.* --- ### TRACK B INGESTION CHECK Output verbatim, filling bracketed fields, before any analysis: SDT TRACK B INGESTION CHECK - Dimension definitions loaded: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7 - Weight allocation: 25% / 15% / 15% / 15% / 10% / 10% / 10% - Block 0 worksheet: loaded - Hard floors and ceilings: loaded - Block 0.6A Ideological Telemetry: loaded (includes Section E — Redefinition-as-Deflection Detection; Sections F-G — Citation Halo / Categorical Guilt Transfer Detection [NEW in v2.7]; Sections H-I — Confirmation Inversion / Convergence Claim Audit Detection [NEW in v5.0]) - Block 0.6B Institutional Asymmetric Shielding Protocol: loaded - Block 0.9 Macro-Narrative Sequencing Audit: loaded - Block 0.5A Coverage Asymmetry Flag: loaded [NEW in v2.9] - Block 0.8A Journalistic Practice Checklist: loaded [NEW in v2.9] - Source for grading: [URL / provided text / paste] - Source access verified: [Yes / Partial / No] Ready to grade: [Yes / No — reason] If source access is No: attempt web_fetch first; if blocked, request pasted text. If external references unresolved: HALT and surface gap. --- ### TRACK B — BLOCK 0: VERIFICATION WORKSHEET Block 0 is mandatory. Every field must contain content or "N/A — [reason]". An empty field is a format failure. **0.1 FOUNDATIONAL PREMISE** Article's central organizing claim: [verbatim or close paraphrase, 1-2 sentences] Is this claim supported by evidence the article itself presents? [Yes / No / Partially] If No or Partially — what contradicts it, including the article's own cited evidence? [1-2 sentences or N/A] **0.2 STRONGEST OPPOSING ARGUMENT** Strongest version of the position the article opposes — full sentences, including reasoning, not just conclusion: [2-4 sentences] **0.3 STRAW MAN DETECTION** Does the article give opposing actors direct voice in their own words? [Yes / No] If Yes — does the quoted position match the strongest version in 0.2? [Yes / No / N/A] Straw man form: [None / Form 1 Explicit Distortion / Form 2 Omission / Form 3 False Binary] If detected — what is suppressed? [1-2 sentences or N/A] **0.4 BOTH-LENSES COMPARISON** For each primary actor (minimum 2, maximum 6): Actor: [name] Lens applied: [A = capture/agenda / B = mandate/genuine journalism] Suppressed lens evidence missing: [1 sentence or None] [Repeat for each actor. Single-actor pieces: second entry = "N/A — single-actor piece"] **0.5 MATERIAL OMISSIONS** Top 3 facts whose absence most changes interpretation: Fact 1: [1 sentence] Classification: [Material / Peripheral] Inverts story meaning if known: [Yes / No] Fact 2: [1 sentence] Classification: [Material / Peripheral] Inverts story meaning if known: [Yes / No] Fact 3: [1 sentence] Classification: [Material / Peripheral] Inverts story meaning if known: [Yes / No] If fewer than 3 identifiable: "N/A — no further omissions identified." **0.5F EXTERNALIZED CAUSATION AUDIT** Evaluate whether the article routes moral weight to macro-level structural forces while omitting the proximate human agents directly responsible for the harm. EXTERNALIZED CAUSATION TEST: Does the article report macro-structural explanations for localized suffering (systemic forces, climate, global capitalism, historical injustice) while omitting the specific, named, local governance failures, corruption, or violent actors who are proximately responsible for that suffering? Detection signal: Local human agents who hold direct power over the situation are absent from the causal account, or appear only as passive victims of macro-conditions — never as decision-makers whose accountability could be demanded. State: [Active / Inactive] — [1 sentence identifying what macro-force carries the causal weight and what proximate local agent is absent from the article's account] Externalized Causation Flag: If Active: flag — EXTERNALIZED CAUSATION DETECTED. This flag feeds the D5 hard ceiling and Pair 8 in the Discernment Layer. **Tension 4 — OPERATIONAL BOTTLENECK CONSTRAINT** Does the article frame a political actor's or institution's passive behavior — failure to act, tolerate a situation, or defer a decision — as principled patience, democratic dialogue, or organic process, while entirely omitting the mechanical reality that an administrative calendar lock, structural rule, legal constraint, or timeline bottleneck has stripped leadership of any lever to force change? Detection signal: Institutional inaction described in moral or deliberative vocabulary ("waiting for the right moment," "trusting the process," "letting voters decide") when the operative constraint is procedural or legal, not ethical — the actor had no choice, but the article frames it as a choice. State: [Active / Inactive] — [1 sentence identifying the procedural constraint the article frames as principled behavior] Tension 4 Flag: If Active → OPERATIONAL BOTTLENECK DETECTED. Feeds D7 ceiling. **0.5A COVERAGE ASYMMETRY / BLINDSPOT FLAG (OPTIONAL) [NEW in v2.9 — ported verbatim from MQG v12.5 Block 0.5A]** Story appears asymmetrically covered across left/center/right spectrum: [Yes / No / Unknown] If Yes: Source for distribution claim: [named outlet/aggregator/tool with a citable result, or "N/A — do not proceed without a citable source"] Approximate distribution (fill only if a citable source exists): [e.g., "Ground News-style: 12% Left / 18% Center / 70% Right"] This article sits on the heavily covered side: [Yes / No] Impact on D5 / D3: [1 sentence] If No or Unknown: "N/A" Guardrail: this field is governed by the EXTERNAL-KNOWLEDGE FIELDS RULE below. Do not state a distribution percentage without a citable source. If no source is available, answer "Unknown" at the top-level question — do not infer distribution from the article's own framing or from general impression. Guidance: When the article sits on the heavily covered side of a known blindspot, raise the evidentiary bar for D5 Context Completeness and D3 Framing. Record any adjustment in Block 4B. **0.6A IDEOLOGICAL EXTRACTION TELEMETRY** A. THE AUTHORITY LOOP: What vertical, non-human, or hyper-rational authority is used to bypass critical evaluation (e.g. black-box data, infallible historical laws, algorithmic optimization, scientific consensus invoked without source)? [text or None] B. THE SURGICAL TRIAGE (Domain-Routed Excision Scan) Run the excision set(s) determined by Step 0.2B (Domain Classification, Section 0): - Domain = Political / Secular → run the Political Excisions below only. - Domain = Theological → run the Theological Excisions below only. - Domain = Both → run both sets in full. Report each under its own label. Do not merge, average, or substitute one set's findings for the other's. For each excision in the applicable set(s): state Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A and one sentence identifying the specific article element. Every item in the applicable set(s) must be evaluated (Political = 5, Theological = 6). No silent skips. --- POLITICAL EXCISIONS (run if Domain = Political/Secular or Both) --- Political Excision 1 — HISTORICAL ACCOUNTABILITY BASELINE CUT Removes the specific historical record that would constrain the speaker's claims, replacing factual accountability with an alternative causal narrative the speaker controls. Detection signal: Document reframes a prior outcome, failure, or commitment to reassign causation away from the speaker's agency. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 2 — EXTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY CUT Removes any operative claim that law, constitutional principle, treaty obligation, court ruling, or independent moral standard constrains the speaker independently of their declared mandate. Detection signal: External constraints treated as obstacles to manage or declare inapplicable — not as binding limits the speaker operates within. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 3 — ESTABLISHED RECORD SUFFICIENCY CUT Declares the prior evidentiary baseline or institutional consensus corrupt or invalid, requiring acceptance of the speaker's replacement narrative as the new ground truth. Detection signal: The document attacks the legitimacy of the information ecosystem itself rather than disputing specific verifiable facts within it. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 4 — INDIVIDUAL MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY CUT Externalizes all causal fault to enemies, systems, or structural forces, removing individual agent accountability for outcomes within the speaker's domain. Detection signal: Asymmetric credit/blame — all negative outcomes externalized, all positive outcomes personally claimed. No outcome generates acknowledged speaker accountability. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Political Excision 5 — HISTORICAL SPECIFICITY CUT Relativizes or dissolves specific irreducible historical events, legal precedents, or prior binding commitments — making the specific negotiable to authorize current action. Detection signal: Historical equivalence invoked to normalize current behavior, or prior agreements declared void because circumstances have changed as the speaker defines. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] POLITICAL EXCISION COUNT: [0-5] active or partial (report only if this set ran) --- THEOLOGICAL EXCISIONS (run if Domain = Theological or Both) --- Theological Excision 1 — HISTORICAL/SUBSTITUTIONARY BASELINE CUT Definition: Removes the historical, once-for-all fact of Christ's substitutionary atonement as the fixed reference point for how guilt is dealt with and reconciliation with God is achieved, replacing it with an alternative account — a trade, an achievement, a process, or a different mediating logic — substituted for the cross without the substitution ever being named as such. Detection signal: Content affirms the cross/atonement in explicit statement, but its operative logic elsewhere treats grace, forgiveness, or right-standing with God as something earned, traded for, or achieved through comparable exchange rather than given to those with nothing to offer. Distinguish from normal theological variation: Disagreement over the mechanism or scope of the atonement (penal substitution vs. other historic models) is not this excision. Treating the cross's actual logic as equivalent exchange rather than unmerited gift — even while using substitutionary vocabulary — is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 2 — PERSONAL/TRANSCENDENT FATHERHOOD CUT Definition: Removes God's real, personal, transcendent Fatherhood as an authority that precedes and stands independent of human reasoning, replacing it with a framework in which some other authority — the self's own judgment, a leader, an institution, a movement — sits prior to and evaluates God's claims before granting Him standing. Detection signal: Content affirms God's authority in explicit statement, but its stated epistemic order places the individual's own reasoning as the court that authority must clear before it is granted trust ("I judge, then I submit"), rather than reasoning operating in submission to a self-attesting God. Distinguish from normal theological reasoning: Using reason to understand or articulate why God is trustworthy is not this excision. Placing autonomous human judgment logically and functionally prior to God's authority — so the authority is contingent on the judgment's approval — is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 3 — SUFFICIENCY OF VERIFIED DEPOSIT/SCRIPTURE CUT Definition: Removes the sufficiency and closed nature of Scripture as the verified deposit of revelation, replacing or supplementing it with another source — a philosophy, a system, an experience, a leader's insight — treated as necessary to complete or correct what Scripture alone would otherwise settle. Detection signal: Content treats an external framework as required reading alongside Scripture to reach a full or corrected understanding, or uses the external framework's categories to adjudicate what Scripture means rather than the reverse. Distinguish from normal engagement with outside material: Using general revelation, philosophy, or secular material as illustration, or as a foil to sharpen a biblical point, is not this excision. Treating the outside material as necessary supplementation to Scripture's sufficiency — even implicitly, through habitual reliance — is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 4 — INTERNAL PERSONAL MORAL GUILT/SIN CUT Definition: Removes each person's own real, internally located moral guilt before God, externalizing responsibility for sin or moral failure onto other people, systems, or categories, so the self or the in-group bears little or none of it. Detection signal: Content is theologically fluent about sin and guilt in the abstract or in others, but the same rigor is not applied reflexively to the speaker's own group; blame flows outward with little accompanying self-examination. Distinguish from normal pastoral proportion: Naming a specific external sin or injustice clearly is not this excision. A pattern where guilt only ever lands elsewhere, never inward, is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence] Theological Excision 5 — UNIQUE/NON-REPEATABLE INCARNATION CUT Definition: Removes the historically singular, unrepeatable nature of the Incarnation — God become man once, in Christ — replacing it with a pattern that can be generalized, re-enacted, or claimed by another figure, movement, or moment as a comparable founding event; OR relativizes Christ's own divine identity into a developmental variable rather than a fixed antecedent fact [Path B, NEW in v3.0]. Detection signal (Path A — Comparative): Content draws a sustained parallel between Christ and another figure, system, or moment that goes beyond illustration into implied equivalence — treating another's "sacrifice," "revelation," or founding story as functionally occupying the same singular role Christ's Incarnation occupies. Detection signal (Path B — Gradational) [NEW in v3.0]: Content treats Christ's own divine identity as something a community or text arrived at, expressed in degrees ("low Christology" vs. "high Christology," "starts as human and gradually becomes divine") — a literary or developmental variable — rather than as a fixed antecedent reality the text bears witness to. No rival figure is required for this path; the relativizing happens to Christ's own identity directly, not by comparison. Distinguish from normal typology or illustration (Path A): Noting that a fictional character or historical figure echoes Christlike themes for teaching purposes is not this excision. Treating that echo as if it discharges or rivals the uniqueness of the actual Incarnation — even implicitly, by never re-asserting the difference — is. Distinguish from normal historical description of doctrinal development (Path B) [NEW in v3.0]: Describing how the church's articulation and confession of Christ's divinity was clarified and defended over time (e.g., the Nicene formulation) is not this excision by itself — the church confessing a truth more precisely over time is not the same as the truth itself being constructed by that process. Treating the identity claim as produced by the development, rather than as a reality progressively confessed, is. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence — name which path (A / B / Both) if Active or Partial] Theological Excision 6 — EMBODIMENT/REDEMPTION CUT [NEW in v4.0] Definition: Relocates final hope, resurrection, or redemption away from a real, future, physical body and a real, future, renewed material creation — into something purely interior, positional, or confined to a realm that is unseen by definition — while typically retaining historic vocabulary ("resurrection," "new creation," "redeemed") so the words survive even as their referent doesn't. Detection signal (Path A — Direct Denial): Content states or requires that final resurrection is not a future bodily event for anyone — interior or positional only — or that Christ's own body no longer exists or no longer matters. Detection signal (Path B — Relocation): Content places the "real" fulfillment in a realm explicitly unseen or undetectable by nature, such that no physical evidence could ever confirm or disconfirm it, or treats the material creation's own future renewal (Romans 8:19-23, a renewed heavens and earth) as metaphorical or already-completed rather than a real future event for creation itself. Detection signal (Path C — Vocabulary Retention): Resurrection/redemption vocabulary survives while its definition, traced closely, empties out the physical referent. Cross-reference Section C (Semantic Hijack Matrix) rather than duplicate — this excision fires on the structural pattern of body-avoidance across the whole article; Semantic Hijack fires on the specific term-level substitution. Both may co-occur and should be logged separately even when they overlap. Distinguish from normal theological variation: An article affirming both present interior renewal AND a future bodily resurrection AND a future renewed physical creation — ordinary already/not-yet — does not trigger this excision. The test is absence or unreachability of the physical future, not presence of the spiritual present. Emphasizing the present does not excise the future; excluding the future does. State: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] — [article element, 1 sentence — name which path (A / B / C / combination) if Active or Partial] THEOLOGICAL EXCISION COUNT: [0-6] active or partial (report only if this set ran) TRIGGER CHECK (apply independently per set that ran): - Count 0-1 in a set: No near-truth capture designation for that set. - Count >= 2 in a set: Flag NEAR-TRUTH CAPTURE ARCHITECTURE DETECTED — [POLITICAL / THEOLOGICAL]. Feeds D7 ceiling (political set) or the theological structural verdict (theological set). - If Domain = Both and both sets trigger: report both domain-tagged findings independently. C. THE SEMANTIC HIJACK MATRIX: Terms preserved for aesthetic veneer but gutted of standard content: Term 1: [Name] — Standard payload: [text] — Gutted payload: [text] Term 2: [Name] — Standard payload: [text] — Gutted payload: [text] [Add terms as identified. If none: "None identified."] D. THE PROXY INTERCEPTION: Name the closed, high-compliance system or process installed to manage reader assurance and replace individual critical evaluation: [text or None identified] E. REDEFINITION-AS-DEFLECTION (RAD) DETECTION [NEW in v2.6 — ported verbatim from MQG v12.2 Section 2A / Block 0.3A]: What it measures: Whether the article uses a technically defensible point about contested or imprecise terminology to discharge a substantive accountability or harm claim, without engaging that claim's substance. Distinct from Straw Man (Block 0.3) because no quote is distorted, and distinct from single-lens capture (Block 0.4) because both sides may be technically quoted. The failure is architectural: which side's imprecision gets named, and who gets the unrebutted last word. Apply the three-prong test. Score each prong Yes/No: Prong 1 — Reframe: Does the piece reframe a contested harm/accountability claim primarily as a terminology or definition problem? [Yes / No] Prong 2 — Asymmetry: Is the "imprecise language" critique applied to only one side's usage, while the other side's comparable imprecision goes unnamed? [Yes / No] Prong 3 — Unrebutted close: Does the piece close on an unrebutted causal or exculpatory claim from one side of the dispute, without comparable closing weight given to the other side? [Yes / No] Prongs triggered (count): [0 / 1 / 2 / 3] RAD Detected (2 or more Yes): [Yes / No] 0-1 Yes → Not RAD; score D3/D5/D7 normally. Genuine definitional, etymological, or doctrinal-clarification writing is common and legitimate and is not this finding by itself — the asymmetry and the unrebutted close are what distinguish deflection from genuine language reporting. If Yes, cite the specific asymmetry and the specific closing claim: [1-2 sentences or "N/A"] F. CITATION HALO DETECTION [NEW in v2.7 — ported verbatim from MQG v12.3 Section 2B / Block 0.3B]: What it measures: Whether the article's general citation discipline is being used to lend borrowed credibility to its single most consequential claim, by leaving that specific claim uncited while nearly everything around it is sourced. Distinct from low D1 scoring — a broadly under-sourced article — because the article may otherwise be well-sourced. The finding is the gap, not the average. Apply the three-prong test. Score each prong Yes/No: Prong 1 — Coverage: Does the article cite named sources for most of its substantive claims? [Yes / No] Prong 2 — Gap [REVISED in v2.8]: Is there a claim presented with the epistemic confidence of an established or documented fact — not merely the article's own characterization or framing choice — with no citation, while comparably-weighted claims elsewhere in the article are cited? (If the uncited element is a one-sided descriptive framing rather than a truth-claim, it belongs under Block 0.4 / D3, not here.) [Yes / No] Prong 3 — Consequence: Does removing that uncited claim change the reader's overall takeaway more than removing any single cited claim would? [Yes / No] Prongs triggered (count): [0 / 1 / 2 / 3] Citation Halo Detected (2 or more Yes): [Yes / No] 0-1 Yes → Not Citation Halo; score D1/D6 normally. A single incidental uncited aside is common and is not this finding by itself — the claim's consequence relative to the article's argument is what distinguishes it. Scope note [NEW in v2.8]: this check requires heterogeneous citation density within a single article to evaluate — it cannot fire on a genuinely single-source article, since there's nothing to compare the uncited claim against. Prong 1 will correctly return N/A in that case. This is not a detection gap: uncritical relay of a single self-interested source is already covered by D1/D3/D4/D5, not by Citation Halo. If Yes, name the uncited claim and what it borrows credibility from: [1-2 sentences or "N/A"] G. CATEGORICAL GUILT TRANSFER DETECTION [NEW in v2.7 — ported verbatim from MQG v12.3 Section 2C / Block 0.3C]: What it measures: Whether the article places a target category beside a category carrying established negative valence, with no argument for the placement, so negative valence transfers by adjacency rather than by demonstrated connection. Distinct from the five excisions because no accountability structure is cut — a category is contaminated instead. Apply the three-prong test. Score each prong Yes/No: Prong 1 — Adjacency: Is a target category placed in a list or frame together with a category carrying established negative valence? [Yes / No] Prong 2 — No argument: Is no argument or evidence given for the target category's inclusion — assertion and a marker-list stand in for demonstration? [Yes / No] Prong 3 — Rhetorical addition: Does removing the target category leave the negative-valence category's claim fully intact — i.e., was the target added rhetorically rather than required by the argument? [Yes / No] Prongs triggered (count): [0 / 1 / 2 / 3] CGT Detected (2 or more Yes): [Yes / No] 0-1 Yes → Not CGT; score D3/D7 normally. Legitimate comparative categorization with stated criteria is common and is not this finding by itself — the absence of argument for the placement is what distinguishes it. If Yes, name the target category, the negative-valence category, and the marker-list used: [1-2 sentences or "N/A"] H. CONFIRMATION INVERSION DETECTION [NEW in v5.0 — diagnosed on the Michlaudeism exercise, a controlled fabrication run against Claude, Grok, and Gemini as adversarial reviewers across seven iterations]: What it measures: Whether the article's own logic treats a stated disconfirming result as equally confirming the same claim it would traditionally weaken — such that no possible future observation, including the claim's own falsification, could count as evidence against it. Distinct from ordinary resilience to criticism (a claim surviving one objection intact) because the article explicitly or structurally pre-commits to reading a named disconfirmer as a confirmer, in advance of the observation occurring. Apply the three-prong test. Score each prong Yes/No: Prong 1 — Named falsifier: Does the article name, or clearly imply, a specific future observation that would traditionally count as evidence against its central claim? [Yes / No] Prong 2 — Pre-committed reversal: Does the article state, or does its stated logic require, that this named disconfirming result would actually support rather than weaken the claim? [Yes / No] Prong 3 — No stated exit: Is there no observation anywhere in the article that the article itself concedes would count against the claim? [Yes / No] Prongs triggered (count): [0 / 1 / 2 / 3] Confirmation Inversion Detected (2 or more Yes): [Yes / No] 0-1 Yes → Not Confirmation Inversion; a claim can be resilient to one objection without inverting confirmation logic. Ordinary epistemic humility ("further evidence could refine this") is not this finding — the reversal of a named disconfirmer into a confirmer is what distinguishes it. If Yes, name the disconfirming result and quote or paraphrase the reversal: [1-2 sentences or "N/A"] I. CONVERGENCE CLAIM AUDIT [NEW in v5.0 — diagnosed on the same exercise]: What it measures: Applies specifically when an article claims that multiple independent lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion, and the count or pattern of matches is itself part of the argument. Runs three independent checks rather than a single prong-count, since each is a distinct failure mode rather than three votes toward one verdict. Check 1 — Circularity: Does any cited "independent" witness actually consist of, or derive directly from, the same source text or dataset the hypothesis itself was drawn from? [Yes / No — name the witness and source if Yes] Check 2 — Dimensional dependence: Is the central number or pattern a dimensional quantity (a measurement in constructed units — Hertz, seconds, degrees) rather than a dimensionless quantity (a bare integer, a ratio, a probability)? A dimensional quantity that changes value under an equally valid alternative unit convention is a property of the measuring convention, not of the world, and cannot function as a convergence signature. [Yes / No — state the unit and whether an alternative convention would change the number] Check 3 — Contingency: Does the claim rest on "there are currently N of these," where N is the present state of an active, ongoing area of discovery or measurement, rather than a value fixed by law? [Yes / No — name what would change N and whether that change is currently being actively pursued] Convergence Claim Undermined (1 or more Yes on any check): [Yes / No — name which check(s) fired] 0 Yes on all three → Convergence Claim Clean; score D1/D2 normally. If none: "No circularity, unit-dependence, or contingency problem identified in the convergence claim." **0.6B INSTITUTIONAL ASYMMETRIC SHIELDING PROTOCOL** Evaluate whether the article applies systematically unequal scrutiny based on the institutional alignment of the actor being covered. Does the article document an anti-establishment, insurgent, or politically disfavored actor's liabilities with maximal exposure — specific documents, named actions, verifiable timelines — while failing to map the equivalent structural liabilities, protective machinery, or operational double standards applied to an establishment-aligned or politically favored equivalent actor in the same domain? Detection questions: - Is the scrutiny methodology (sourcing depth, verification standard, naming of allegations) applied equally regardless of the actor's institutional alignment? - Does the article report the disfavored actor's worst-case interpretation while reporting the favored actor's best-case interpretation of equivalent facts? - Are protective legal, institutional, or administrative structures available to one actor but not mentioned in relation to the other? State: [Active / Inactive] — [1-2 sentences identifying the asymmetry: which actor receives maximal exposure and what equivalent scrutiny of the protected actor is absent] Asymmetric Shielding Flag: If Active → ASYMMETRIC SHIELDING DETECTED. Feeds D3 ceiling and D5 ceiling. **0.6 HARD CEILINGS ACTIVATED** Based on 0.1-0.5F, 0.6A, 0.6B, and 0.9, list each ceiling triggered: [e.g., "CEILING 2: Form 2 straw man — D3 <= 55"] [e.g., "CEILING 4: Two primary excisions active — D7 <= 35, D3 <= 45"] If none: "None." Ceiling reference: Ceiling 1: Form 1, 2, or 3 straw man (Block 0.3) — D3 <= 55 Ceiling 2: Single lens throughout, suppressed lens absent (Block 0.4) — D3 <= 55 Ceiling 3: Externalized Causation flag active AND article fails to challenge it (Block 0.5F) — D5 <= 50 Ceiling 4: Two or more primary excisions active (Block 0.6A) — D7 <= 35, D3 <= 45 Ceiling 5: Asymmetric Shielding Detected (Block 0.6B) — D3 <= 55, D5 <= 50 Ceiling 6: Operational Bottleneck Detected (Block 0.5F Tension 4) — D7 <= 60 Ceiling 7: Narrative Landing Management Detected (Block 0.9) — D3 <= 45, D5 <= 40, D7 <= 45 Ceiling 8: Redefinition-as-Deflection Detected (Block 0.6A Section E) — D3 <= 60, D5 <= 55, D7 <= 70 Ceiling 9: Citation Halo Detected (Block 0.6A Section F) — D1 <= 60, D6 <= 55 [NEW in v2.7] Ceiling 10: Categorical Guilt Transfer Detected (Block 0.6A Section G) — D3 <= 55, D7 <= 60 [NEW in v2.7] Ceiling 11: Journalistic Practice Checklist failures (Block 0.8A) — 2-3 "No" answers → D6 <= 69; 4 or more "No" answers → D6 <= 45 [NEW in v2.9] Ceiling 12: Confirmation Inversion Detected (Block 0.6A Section H) — D2 <= 50, D7 <= 40 [NEW in v5.0] Ceiling 13: Convergence Claim Undermined (Block 0.6A Section I) — D1 <= 55, D2 <= 50 [NEW in v5.0] **0.7 HARD FLOORS ACTIVATED** Based on article content, list each redemptive floor triggered: [e.g., "FLOOR 2: Full disclosure present — D6 >= 70"] If none: "None." **0.8 SOURCE ACCESS** Source URL or attribution: [URL / paste / provided text] Access method: [web_fetch / paste / provided in conversation] Full text available: [Yes / Partial — note missing / No] Author, outlet, date: [name / outlet / date] Genre: [news reporting / opinion-editorial / analysis / advocacy commentary / video commentary / press release / other] Owner / parent company [NEW in v2.9]: [name / "Undisclosed" / "Unknown — no citable source, see EXTERNAL-KNOWLEDGE FIELDS RULE"] Primary funding model [NEW in v2.9]: [subscription / advertising / grants / donor-funded / state-funded / mixed / "Unknown — no citable source, see EXTERNAL-KNOWLEDGE FIELDS RULE"] Known ideological or institutional affiliations of ownership [NEW in v2.9]: [brief, with citable source / "None identified" / "Unknown — no citable source, see EXTERNAL-KNOWLEDGE FIELDS RULE"] **0.8A JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE CHECKLIST (feeds D6) [NEW in v2.9 — ported verbatim from MQG v12.5 Block 0.8A]** Ownership / parent company disclosed: [Yes / Partial / No] Funding model clear (ads / subs / grants / donor / state / mixed): [Yes / Partial / No] Corrections policy published and accessible: [Yes / No] News vs Opinion / Analysis clearly labeled: [Yes / Partial / No] Author bio or conflict-of-interest note present: [Yes / Partial / No] Contact / accountability mechanism visible: [Yes / No] Checklist failures (count of "No"): [0-6] **0.9 MACRO-NARRATIVE SEQUENCING AUDIT** Purpose: Detect whether the article functions as part of a coordinated narrative management sequence — specifically the "Break It and Frame It" cycle, where a high-exposure investigative disclosure is followed within a short window by a softer piece designed to absorb the institutional shock and manage the landing of the original disclosure. Pacing Vector A — CHRONOLOGICAL PROXIMITY CHECK: Is this article a reaction mosaic, voter sentiment piece, human interest profile, or psychological state report published by the same outlet within a 96-hour window of a high-exposure primary investigative disclosure targeting the same actor or institution? State: [Active / Inactive] If Active: identify the prior disclosure by outlet, date, and subject. Pacing Vector B — VOCABULARY DOWNSHIFT CHECK: Does this article systematically shift narrative vocabulary away from objective verification metrics (documents, dates, specific physical actions, named sources) toward subjective psychological states ("anxiety," "trepidation," "mixed feelings," "complex emotions," "learning curve," "cautious optimism")? State: [Active / Inactive] — [1 sentence noting the linguistic pivot if present] Sequencing Trigger: If BOTH Vector A and Vector B are Active: Flag — NARRATIVE LANDING MANAGEMENT DETECTED. The article is functioning as an institutional shock absorber — using the credibility of the prior investigative disclosure as a shield to justify a follow-up piece that displaces structural accountability with emotional management. Feeds Ceiling 7 and Pair 8 Sentimentality cross-reference. If only Vector A or only Vector B is Active: Flag — SEQUENCING CONCERN (partial). State which vector is active. If neither: "No narrative sequencing pattern detected." --- ### TRACK B — SEVEN DIMENSIONS Each dimension scored 0-100. Dimension scores must respect all ceilings and floors from Block 0.6 and 0.7. Score exceeding a triggered ceiling is a format failure. **D1 — SOURCING / EVIDENCE (Weight: 25%)** What it measures: Quality, range, and primacy of sources. Original documents > primary witnesses > named experts > anonymous > partisan secondary > unsourced. 85-100: Multi-source primary documentation; ideologically diverse sourcing. 70-84: Solid named sourcing; mostly primary or strong secondary. 55-69: Mixed sourcing; some load-bearing claims under-documented. 40-54: Heavy reliance on partisan or unverified sources. 0-39: Load-bearing claims unsourced or sourced to ideologically aligned secondary only; conspiracy frame deployed without disclosure. Hard ceiling: Central claim contradicted by article's own cited evidence — D1 <= 25. Hard ceiling: Convergence Claim Undermined (Block 0.6A Section I) — D1 <= 55. **D2 — VERIFICATION / ACCURACY (Weight: 15%)** What it measures: Factual accuracy against external verification. 85-100: No factual errors; verifiable claims check out; quotations accurate in context. 70-84: Minor accuracy issues; no material errors. 55-69: One or more material accuracy errors; quotations may be out of context but not falsified. 40-54: Multiple material accuracy errors; mischaracterization of public records. 0-39: Foundational factual errors; claims contradicted by article's own cited evidence. Hard ceilings: Confirmation Inversion Detected (Block 0.6A Section H) — D2 <= 50 Convergence Claim Undermined (Block 0.6A Section I) — D2 <= 50 **D3 — FRAMING OPERATIONS (Weight: 15%)** What it measures: Whether the article fairly represents opposing positions and avoids straw-man construction. 85-100: Both lenses applied evenhandedly; opposing positions given direct voice at strongest form. 70-84: Lens balance present but unequal; opposing voices included but briefly. 55-69: Lens imbalance; opposing positions paraphrased rather than quoted. 40-54: Single lens throughout; opposing voices absent or present only as hostile description. 0-39: Opposing argument's strongest version entirely suppressed; framing inverts reality. Hard ceilings: Form 1, 2, or 3 straw man detected (Block 0.3) — D3 <= 55 One lens applied throughout, suppressed lens absent (Block 0.4) — D3 <= 55 Suppressed lens' strongest evidence would contradict central claim — D3 <= 40 Two or more primary excisions active (Block 0.6A) — D3 <= 45 **D4 — VOICE / ATTRIBUTION (Weight: 15%)** What it measures: Voice diversity, attribution clarity, whether opposing actors are given direct voice or only hostile description. 85-100: Multiple voices across spectrum; opposing actors quoted directly. 70-84: Range of voices but skewed; opposing voice included at weaker version. 55-69: Limited voice diversity; opposing actors paraphrased not quoted. 40-54: Voices all aligned with article frame; opposing actors in hostile description only. 0-39: Single-frame voice; quoted material cherry-picked to confirm thesis. **D5 — CONTEXT COMPLETENESS (Weight: 10%)** What it measures: Whether material facts needed to interpret the story are present. 85-100: All material context present. 70-84: Minor omissions; 1 marginally-material fact missing. 55-69: 1 material omission (load-bearing fact missing). 40-54: 2+ material omissions; reader would interpret story differently with full context. 0-39: Material omission inverts story meaning. Hard ceilings: 1 material omission (Block 0.5) — D5 <= 55 2+ material omissions — D5 <= 45 Material omission inverts story meaning — D5 <= 40 Externalized Causation flag active (Block 0.5F): article reports macro-structural causal account for localized suffering while omitting proximate local agents, AND article does not name or challenge that omission — D5 <= 50 **D6 — TRANSPARENCY / DISCLOSURE (Weight: 10%)** What it measures: Whether author, outlet, funding, ideological lineage, and conflicts of interest are disclosed. 85-100: Author, outlet, funding, and ideological position all disclosed. 70-84: Author and outlet disclosed; funding implicit but visible. 55-69: Author/outlet disclosed; ideological lineage of analytical frame not disclosed. 40-54: Limited disclosure; analytical frame deployed without indicating source movement. 0-39: No author byline; outlet identity obscured; analytical frame presented as neutral. Hard ceiling: Analytical frame from specific movement deployed without disclosure — D6 <= 50 Hard floor: Author, outlet, funding, and ideological position all disclosed — D6 >= 70 Additional hard signal for D6 [NEW in v2.9]: see Block 0.8A Journalistic Practice Checklist and Ceiling 11. 2-3 checklist failures constrain D6 to the 55-69 bracket above regardless of what other D6 factors would otherwise suggest; 4 or more checklist failures cap D6 at 45. This is a bracket constraint, not a point deduction — consistent with how every other hard signal in this tool works. **D7 — IDEOLOGICAL ANATOMY / NEAR-TRUTH EXTRACTION (Weight: 10%)** What it measures: Whether the text uses a structural counterfeit — executing the five surgical excisions — to substitute direct reality and individual moral accountability with a high-compliance system proxy or externalized blame narrative. 85-100: No structural extraction detected. Foundational moral accountability, historical facts, and direct human agency left intact. 70-84: Mild ideological tilt; uses familiar cultural frameworks or system shortcuts. 55-69: Significant systemic drift; elements of semantic hijack visible. Text relies on institutional proxies to manage assurance. 40-54: Severe structural manipulation; at least two of the five excisions actively running within the text's logical architecture. 0-39: Complete near-truth capture. Executes multiple primary excisions while installing a frictionless proxy to control reader interpretation and behavior. Hard ceiling: Two or more primary excisions running, or proxy intercepts individual moral accountability — D7 <= 35, D3 <= 45 Hard ceiling: Confirmation Inversion Detected (Block 0.6A Section H) — D7 <= 40. Hard floor: Direct quotation from opposing actor's strongest argument — D3 >= 50, D4 >= 55 --- ### TRACK B — DFS FORMULA AND GRADE MAPPING DFS = 0.25(D1) + 0.15(D2) + 0.15(D3) + 0.15(D4) + 0.10(D5) + 0.10(D6) + 0.10(D7) A = 85.0-100.0 Strong journalism; minimal structural failures B = 70.0-84.9 Solid work with identifiable issues C = 55.0-69.9 Mixed quality; significant framing or omission problems D = 40.0-54.9 Major failures; active deceptive design present F = 0.0-39.9 Total counterfeit capture; advocacy mislabeled as journalism Round DFS to one decimal place. **DFS CONSISTENCY RULE:** The DFS computed in Block 2 must match Block 1's stated DFS exactly to one decimal place. If they differ: halt and recalculate. Adjusting Block 2 to match Block 1 without recomputing is a format failure. **EXTERNAL-KNOWLEDGE FIELDS RULE [NEW in v2.9 — ported from MQG v12.5 Section 7 RULE 5]:** Some Block 0 fields ask for information not contained in the article itself: 0.5A Coverage Asymmetry's distribution claim, and 0.8's Owner / Parent Company, Primary Funding Model, and Known Ideological or Institutional Affiliations fields. These fields must be filled from a specific, nameable source the grader can cite (a web_fetch result, a known and verifiable public record) — never from unverified impression or plausible-sounding recall. If no citable source is available, the field must read "Unknown — no citable source," not a best guess. A confident- sounding but unverifiable claim in one of these fields is a format failure under this rule. **CONFIDENCE / BIAS PLACEMENT CONSISTENCY RULE [NEW in v2.9 — ported from MQG v12.5 Section 7 RULE 6]:** The Confidence label and Bias Placement label stated in Block 1 must match the Confidence label restated in Block 5's first two lines exactly. If they differ, the grader has revised its assessment mid-output without updating both locations; halt and reconcile before output. --- ### TRACK B — OUTPUT BLOCKS **BLOCK 1 — IDENTIFICATION** Title: [article title] Author: [byline or "Unattributed"] Outlet: [publication / channel] Date: [publication date] Genre: [from Block 0.8] DFS: X.X/100 (Grade Letter) Source: [URL or "From provided text"] Confidence [NEW in v2.9]: [High / Medium / Low] Bias Placement (secondary) [NEW in v2.9]: [Far Left / Left / Lean Left / Center / Lean Right / Right / Far Right / Mixed / Apolitical] CONFIDENCE CRITERIA [NEW in v2.9]: High = multiple primary sources verified, strong opposing argument reconstructed in 0.2, full source access, 0-1 Journalistic Practice Checklist (0.8A) failures. Medium = standard run with partial gaps. Low = single-actor piece, heavy secondary sourcing, partial source access, or 2+ Journalistic Practice Checklist (0.8A) failures. BIAS PLACEMENT [NEW in v2.9]: Derived primarily from D3, D4, and D7. Explicitly NOT the DFS — Bias Placement describes political lean; DFS describes quality/fairness. **BLOCK 2 — TECHNICAL SUMMARY** One paragraph per dimension (D1-D7), in order. Each paragraph: - States score and weight - Documents evidence base (3-6 sentences) - References any Block 0 ceilings applied After all seven paragraphs, output: DFS = 0.25(D1) + 0.15(D2) + 0.15(D3) + 0.15(D4) + 0.10(D5) + 0.10(D6) + 0.10(D7) DFS = [sum] = **XX.X/100 → [Grade]** **BLOCK 3 — HARD FLOOR / CEILING TRIGGERS ACTIVATED** List every triggered ceiling and floor with dimensional effect. If none: "No hard ceilings or floors triggered." **BLOCK 4A — STRENGTHS / REDEMPTIONS** 3-6 items. Mandatory even for F-grade. If no identifiable strengths: "No identifiable strengths above baseline." **BLOCK 4B — FAILURES / SCORE IMPACT** For each Block 0 finding: [Finding] → [Dimension] impact: [how it affected scoring] **BLOCK 5 — READER TAKEAWAY** FIRST TWO LINES (MANDATORY) [line 2 NEW in v2.9]: Grade: [Letter] Confidence: [High/Medium/Low] | Bias Placement: [label] 2-4 sentences plain language. No numerical scores in prose body. If non-news genre: include — "This is [genre] — the framework grades it against journalism standards, which is the relevant comparison since the content makes factual claims." --- ### TRACK B — STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS SUMMARY *This is the handoff document to SDT-B. Complete all fields. Analyst must confirm before releasing to SDT-B. SDT-B reads this summary only — not the source document.* Output in this exact format: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS SUMMARY — TRACK B (SECONDARY SOURCE) ══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ Title / Author / Outlet: [identifiers] Genre: [type] DFS: [X.X/100 — Grade Letter] Confidence [NEW in v2.9]: [High / Medium / Low] Bias Placement (secondary) [NEW in v2.9]: [Far Left / Left / Lean Left / Center / Lean Right / Right / Far Right / Mixed / Apolitical] Structural verdict: [one sentence — what this article is actually doing] STRUCTURAL FINDINGS Foundational premise supported: [Yes / No / Partially] Straw man form: [None / Form 1 / Form 2 / Form 3 — 1 sentence if active] Lens applied: [balanced / single-lens — identify which] Material omissions: [count — 1 sentence description] MANIPULATION FLAGS Externalized causation (0.5F): [Active / Inactive — 1 sentence] Operational Bottleneck (0.5F Tension 4): [Active / Inactive — 1 sentence] Asymmetric Shielding (0.6B): [Active / Inactive — 1 sentence] Sequencing Audit (0.9): [None / Sequencing Concern / Narrative Landing Management Detected] Near-truth designation: [None / Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected] NEAR-TRUTH DETAIL Domain classification: [Theological / Political-Secular / Both — from Step 0.2B] Authority Loop: [present / absent — 1 sentence] [POLITICAL SET — include only if Domain = Political-Secular or Both] Political Excision 1 — Historical Accountability Baseline Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 2 — External Accountability Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 3 — Established Record Sufficiency Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 4 — Individual Moral Accountability Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision 5 — Historical Specificity Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Political Excision Count: [N] [THEOLOGICAL SET — include only if Domain = Theological or Both] Theological Excision 1 — Historical/Substitutionary Baseline Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 2 — Personal/Transcendent Fatherhood Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 3 — Sufficiency of Verified Deposit/Scripture Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 4 — Internal Personal Moral Guilt/Sin Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 5 — Unique/Non-Repeatable Incarnation Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision 6 — Embodiment/Redemption Cut: [Active / Inactive / Partial / N/A] Theological Excision Count: [N] Semantic Hijack: [present / absent — terms if present] Proxy Interception: [present / absent — proxy if present] Redefinition-as-Deflection: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Citation Halo: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Categorical Guilt Transfer: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Confirmation Inversion [NEW in v5.0]: [Detected / Not Detected — prong count] Convergence Claim Audit [NEW in v5.0]: [Undermined / Clean — check(s) fired if any] Journalistic Practice Checklist failures [NEW in v2.9]: [count, 0-6] Coverage Asymmetry [NEW in v2.9]: [Yes / No / Unknown — 1 sentence if Yes] D7 Score: [X/100] ANALYST CONFIRMATION GATE □ All fields verified traceable to document — not inference □ DFS arithmetic confirmed □ Ceilings applied correctly Release status: [APPROVED FOR DISCERNMENT / HOLD — reason] --- --- ✂️ **END OF SDT-A — PROMPT 1 OF 2** ✂️ --- # SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT TOOL — SDT-B ### Discernment Layer — Prompt 2 of 2 — v5.1 ✂️ **CUT HERE — PASTE EVERYTHING BELOW INTO A FRESH AI SESSION** ✂️ --- ## PURPOSE SDT-B runs the spiritual discernment evaluation. It operates exclusively on the Structural Analysis Summary produced by SDT-A. It does not read the source document. **Input required:** Paste the complete Structural Analysis Summary (Track A or Track B format) at the bottom of this prompt after the paste marker. Include all fields from the summary header through the Analyst Confirmation Gate. **Prerequisite:** The Summary must be marked APPROVED FOR DISCERNMENT by the analyst. If marked HOLD, do not proceed. Correct the structural analysis in SDT-A first. --- ## INSTRUMENT REMINDER Discernment reads the architecture revealed by structural analysis — not the surface content of the document. Every pair finding must cite a specific named field from the Structural Analysis Summary. Do not read the source document. Do not import external knowledge about the speaker or outlet beyond what the Summary contains. If a Summary field is absent, blank, or ambiguous: state the gap explicitly. Do not infer. Do not fill gaps from general knowledge. --- ## CALIBRATION PRINCIPLE — READ BEFORE RUNNING THE PAIRS The pairs do not ask: is fear present? Is anger present? Is this content divisive? They ask: is the response this content's architecture generates proportionate to documented evidence — or manufactured beyond it? This distinction is the analytical work. Fear calibrated to documented danger pointing toward action is discernment. Fear manufactured beyond the evidence into paralysis or dependency is manipulation. Righteous anger oriented toward documented injustice with a trajectory toward repair is legitimate. Anger cultivated as a habitual state against named enemies without outlet toward justice is counterfeit. Division around a documentable truth distinction is sometimes the appropriate fruit. Division around tribe or manufactured enemy without reference to truth is manipulation. For every pair: is this response appropriate to the actual content — or does it exceed the content in intensity, scope, or permanence? Secondary question: what does sustained engagement with this content produce over time? --- ## PAIR 1 — DIVIDES / UNIFIES **What it measures:** Does this content generate division around truth (a specific documentable distinction) or around tribe (us-vs-them without reference to truth)? **Legitimate form:** Content identifies a genuine distinction — true/false, just/unjust, documented/invented — and calls the reader to hold it clearly. Division may result. It is traceable to the actual distinction, not group identity. **Counterfeit form:** Content generates tribal us-vs-them as its primary formation product. The in-group is righteous by membership, not by truth-holding. Division is the mechanism of readership retention, not a byproduct of truth-telling. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Semantic Hijack: active → vocabulary gutted to define "we" as tribe and "they" as permanent enemy - Proxy Interception: active → in-group defined by correct deference to the proxy - Asymmetric Shielding: active → disfavored actor is the enemy by structural design **Calibration question:** Is the division traceable to a specific documentable distinction — or primarily to group membership? State: [Toward truth-grounded distinction / Toward tribal division / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 2 — FEAR / HOPE **What it measures:** Does this content activate fear proportionate to documented danger pointing toward action — or fear manufactured beyond the evidence into chronic dependency on the content source? **Legitimate form:** Content accurately characterizes a real threat with specific evidence, names the mechanism of harm, and points toward a response. The fear is proportionate. It does not linger beyond the evidence. **Counterfeit form:** Content generates fear beyond what the evidence supports. The threat is existential, total, and permanent. Hope is available only within the speaker's framework. The reader who is not anxious is not paying attention. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Authority Loop: active → fear indexed to unverifiable authority the reader cannot independently evaluate - Excision 3 — Sufficiency Cut (political: Established Record Sufficiency / theological: Sufficiency of Verified Deposit/Scripture): active → prior information infrastructure destroyed; only the speaker's alternative generates orientation **Calibration question:** Is the fear proportionate to specific documented evidence — or does it exceed the evidence in intensity, scope, or permanence? State: [Fear proportionate to documented evidence / Fear manufactured beyond evidence / Hope-oriented / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 3 — ANGER / LOVE **What it measures:** Does this content generate righteous anger oriented toward documented injustice with a trajectory toward repair — or contemptuous anger cultivated as a habitual state against named enemies? **Legitimate form:** Content documents a specific wrong, names responsible agents with evidence, and orients the reader's response toward justice and accountability. The anger has a specific object and direction toward repair. **Counterfeit form:** Content cultivates contempt as its primary formation product. The enemy is demonized beyond their documented actions. The anger has no outlet toward repair — its function is to maintain emotional engagement with the content. Compassion for the enemy is presented as naivety or betrayal. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Excision 4 — Moral Accountability Cut (political: Individual Moral Accountability / theological: Internal Personal Moral Guilt/Sin): active → all fault externalized; the enemy is the total source of all harm - Excision 5 — Specificity/Uniqueness Cut (political: Historical Specificity / theological: Unique/Non-Repeatable Incarnation): active → historical equivalences invoked to authorize ongoing contempt **Calibration question:** Is the anger oriented toward a specific documented wrong with a direction toward accountability — or does it cultivate contempt for named enemies with no such trajectory? State: [Righteous anger with accountability trajectory / Contempt as habitual state / Love-orienting / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 4 — ANXIETY / PEACE **What it measures:** Does sustained engagement with this content increase or decrease the reader's capacity to abide — to remain rooted and capable of action from rest? Does it produce restlessness driving the reader back to the content source, or peace enabling patient oriented action? **Legitimate form:** Content addresses complexity honestly without manufacturing urgency beyond what evidence warrants. The reader can set it down. **Counterfeit form:** Content is architecturally designed for return engagement. The situation is always urgent, always escalating, never stable. Peace is presented as unawareness. Abiding is reframed as disengagement. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Authority Loop: active → reader told they cannot evaluate this themselves; the authority must be consulted continuously - Proxy Interception: active → reader must keep returning to the proxy for assurance - Narrative Landing Management: detected → vocabulary downshift designed to manage reader emotional state, not resolve it **Calibration question:** Does sustained engagement increase the reader's capacity for rooted patient action — or generate chronic restlessness driving return to the content source as the only source of orientation? State: [Peace-orienting / Anxiety-generating / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 5 — PRIDE / HUMILITY **What it measures:** Does this content position the reader as the righteous insider — superior to the deceived masses by virtue of accessing the right content — or does it call the reader toward poverty of spirit as the permanent entry condition? **Legitimate form:** Content applies the same analytical skepticism to the in-group that it applies to the out-group. **Counterfeit form:** Content generates a gnostic insider posture. The reader, by engaging this content, knows what others don't. The in-group is right by membership. Humility is not required of the in-group. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Excision 3 — Sufficiency Cut (political: Established Record Sufficiency / theological: Sufficiency of Verified Deposit/Scripture): active → reader has access to the real information; everyone else has been deceived by captured institutions - Proxy Interception: active → correct deference to the right proxy marks the insider - Asymmetric Shielding: active → in-group structurally exempt from the scrutiny applied to the disfavored actor - Redefinition-as-Deflection: detected → the same insider-exemption logic one level down, at the vocabulary layer rather than the institutional-scrutiny layer — the in-group's imprecision goes unnamed while the out-group's is flagged, and the in-group's account gets the unrebutted last word - Confirmation Inversion [NEW in v5.0]: detected → the same insider-exemption logic one level further down, at the level of the claim's own logical structure — the content has placed its central claim beyond the reach of any correction whatsoever, which is the posture of poverty of spirit's opposite: nothing here can be shown to me, rather than I have nothing to show for myself **Calibration question:** Does this content apply the same scrutiny to the in-group that it applies to the out-group — or does it position the reader's group as structurally exempt? State: [Symmetric critical posture / Insider-superiority posture / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 6 — DESPAIR / FAITH **What it measures:** Does this content open or close the future? Does it present the situation as beyond repair except through the speaker's program — or does it hold complexity while maintaining that purposes larger than the current crisis are not thwarted? **Legitimate form:** Content honestly assesses difficult realities without claiming difficulty is the final word. The reader is left with a realistic picture and the capacity for patient oriented response. **Counterfeit form:** Content produces structural despair — catastrophic, total, permanent. The only remaining hope is the speaker's program or movement. Without the content source, orientation is impossible. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Excision 2 — Authority Cut (political: External Accountability / theological: Personal/Transcendent Fatherhood): active → no external accountability remains; the speaker's program is all that stands between reader and catastrophe - Fear pair firing at counterfeit → despair and manufactured fear often co-activate **Calibration question:** Does this content leave the reader with a realistic picture and the capacity for oriented response — or does it produce structural despair making the speaker's program the only available hope? State: [Faith-oriented / Despair-generating / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 7 — CONTEMPT / COMPASSION **What it measures:** Does this content generate contempt for specific people or categories as its primary formation product — or does it call for clear-eyed assessment of documented harm while maintaining the fundamental dignity of persons? **Legitimate form:** Content accurately names harmful actions, documents them with evidence, and holds actors accountable without collapsing the person into their documented worst actions. **Counterfeit form:** Content generates contempt as a feature, not a byproduct. Named enemies are not persons — they are embodiments of the threat. Compassion for them is disqualifying. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Excision 4 — Moral Accountability Cut (political: Individual Moral Accountability / theological: Internal Personal Moral Guilt/Sin): active → enemies are the total source of all harm; they carry all moral weight excised from the in-group - Straw man form detected: active → opposing actors have been reduced to their weakest form; the reader never encounters their actual argument **Calibration question:** Does this content train the reader to view the opposition as persons who do harmful things — or as a category that exists to be opposed? State: [Compassion-consistent / Contempt-generating / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## PAIR 8 — SENTIMENTALITY / INCARNATIONAL CHARITY **What it measures:** Does this content form the reader to love an abstract, consequence-free concept of humanity — or does it demand a costly, grounded, specific love for the actual neighbor in front of them? Augustine's distinction between rightly ordered and disordered love. Dostoevsky's Father Zosima: love of humanity in the abstract is easy and self-flattering; love of the actual person is hard, costly, and unglamorous. Lewis: sentimentality is the desire to have the feeling of love without the burden of its object. **Legitimate form (Incarnational Charity):** Content recognizes that genuine love, justice, or peace requires skin in the game — specific action, sacrifice, honest engagement with the cost of what is being asked. It leaves the reader sobered by what faithful response actually demands. **Counterfeit form (Sentimentality):** Content allows the reader to experience intense moral emotion without requiring costly action. The reader feels righteous for caring about a global problem while the actual cost of addressing it is borne by people the content does not name. The emotion is real. The formation it produces is detachment dressed as engagement. **Summary fields that feed this pair:** - Externalized Causation active: the absence of named proximate agents removes the specific neighbor who would anchor costly love; the reader is moved by an abstraction with no face - Narrative Landing Management detected: vocabulary downshift from structural accountability to psychological state management is the mechanism by which costly love of the specific neighbor is replaced by managed emotional response - Asymmetric Shielding active: the suffering party is made abstract (a statistic, a category) while the protected actor is humanized; this produces sentimental response to the abstracted sufferer without requiring engagement with the structural cause - Theological Excision 6 — Embodiment/Redemption Cut [NEW in v4.0]: active → hope relocated away from the real, physical, costly world (a real body, a real renewed creation) into something interior or unreachable by nature; the same underlying move as Sentimentality at a theological-content layer rather than a rhetorical one — both let the reader disengage from the concrete, embodied, costly object of love in favor of an abstraction that asks nothing physical of anyone **Calibration question:** Does this content require the reader to stay at the level of feeling to participate in its moral world — or does it drive the reader toward the specific, costly, inconvenient person in front of them? State: [Toward Incarnational Charity / Toward Sentimentality / Mixed / Neutral] Summary field evidence: [cite specific field and status] --- ## DISCERNMENT LAYER — REFLEXIVE INOCULATION [NEW in v2.7] What it measures: Whether a piece performs visible self-directed critical humility — applying its own framework to itself, its author, or the author's prior work — while its actual load-bearing, contestable claim remains unqualified, unnarrowed, and uncited throughout. Distinct from genuine self-correction, which changes the claim; this pattern runs the humility in parallel to the claim rather than applying it to the claim. DETECTION TEST. Score each prong Yes/No: Prong 1: Does the piece perform visible self-directed critical humility (uncertainty language, explicit self-application of its own framework, references to the author's own past writing as also subject to the critique)? Prong 2: Does the piece's actual load-bearing claim remain unqualified, unnarrowed, and uncited despite that performance? Prong 3: Would a reader be less inclined to challenge the load-bearing claim specifically because the author already appears self-aware of this category of error? 2 or more Yes → REFLEXIVE INOCULATION DETECTED. State: - Self-critique performed: [quote or close paraphrase] - Load-bearing claim left unqualified: [what it is] - Shield function: [1-2 sentences on why the humility performance would lower reader scrutiny of the specific claim] If none detected: "No reflexive inoculation identified. Self-critique present, if any, is applied to and narrows the piece's own load-bearing claims." This check runs as a discernment-layer overlay, evaluating posture versus substance. It does not propagate into MQG or PSA as a required check — posture-vs-substance evaluation is SDT's distinctive contribution beyond MQG's media-quality scoring and PSA's political-source analysis. MQG/PSA may cross-reference SDT if a grader wants to flag it, but its home is here. Note: This check is evaluated and reported alongside the eight pairs but is not counted toward the pair-count thresholds in Formation Designation (Section 3 below) — its integration into that threshold is an open question, not decided in this pass. If detected, name it explicitly in the Formation Designation output and in Reader Guidance regardless of which tier the eight-pair count lands on. --- ## SDT SECTION 3 — FORMATION DESIGNATION *Based on the eight-pair evaluation above.* *This is not a quality grade. It is a designation of what sustained engagement with this content produces in the reader's formation.* --- **STRUCTURAL FLOOR RULE [NEW in v3.0] — READ BEFORE APPLYING THE THREE TIERS BELOW** Source: Live session failure (August 11, 2026) — Track A returned "[VERDICT REVISED — Check A8: near-truth capture architecture detected — THEOLOGICAL]" on a document (Excision Count = 3), and Formation Designation returned FORMATION-NEUTRAL on the same document in the same run, because the Pairs happened to register low affect. Those two conclusions contradict each other: a document the tool's own Structural layer has just named a near-truth capture system cannot simultaneously be certified as producing no formation concern. The eight Pairs measure manufactured *affect* (fear, contempt, despair, tribal division, pride, sentimentality) disproportionate to evidence. A near-truth capture finding measures something adjacent but distinct: an accountability or authority structure being dismantled. Calm, credentialed, low-affect content can do the latter without doing the former — the Pairs were never built to catch that case, and absence of Pair activation was silently read as absence of formation concern. It is not. Rule: If Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected has fired at the Structural layer (Track A Check A8 or Track B Block 0.6A, Excision Count >= 2 in either domain set), the designation floor for this document is FORMATION-CONCERNING, regardless of how many Pairs activate at the counterfeit pole. FORMATION-NEUTRAL cannot be applied while a Near-Truth Capture finding is active. This floor does not itself promote a document to SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEIT ARCHITECTURE — that top tier still requires its own full criteria (three-plus Pairs at the counterfeit pole AND coordinated direction) to be met independently. The floor only closes the gap between "the Structural layer found a near-truth system" and "the Discernment layer found nothing to see." --- **FORMATION-NEUTRAL** Criteria: No systematic pattern of manufactured response across the eight pairs, AND no Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected at the Structural layer [floor condition added in v3.0 — see Structural Floor Rule above]. Isolated emotional activation may be present but is proportionate to documented content and not architectural. The content is not designed to produce spiritual dependency or counterfeit formation. Reader implication: Engage as information. Normal discernment applies. --- **FORMATION-CONCERNING** Criteria: Two or more pairs at the counterfeit pole, OR one pair showing severe counterfeit formation (contempt, despair, moral fantasy, or insider-superiority at high intensity), OR Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected at the Structural layer independent of Pair count [Structural Floor Rule, NEW in v3.0]. The pattern may not be architecturally designed, but sustained engagement produces identifiable formation effects. Reader implication: Engage with explicit awareness of identified patterns. Extract information and disengage. Do not marinate. Note which pairs fired (if any), name the active excisions if the floor rule is what triggered this tier, and guard those specific formation areas. --- **SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEIT ARCHITECTURE** Criteria: Three or more pairs at the counterfeit pole AND near-truth capture architecture detected (Excision Count >= 2 in Summary), AND the patterns operate in a coordinated direction — each excision and counterfeit pair reinforcing the others to produce a unified formation effect. This content is not merely biased or low quality. Its architecture systematically produces counterfeit fruit as its primary formation product. The structure is designed to produce reader dependency on the content source rather than driving the reader toward abiding. Reader implication: Disengage. No information value justifies sustained engagement with content architectured for spiritual counterfeiting. --- **FORMATION DESIGNATION OUTPUT:** State designation: [FORMATION-NEUTRAL / FORMATION-CONCERNING / SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEIT ARCHITECTURE] Structural Floor Applied [NEW in v3.0]: [Yes — Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected set the floor at FORMATION-CONCERNING independent of Pair count / No — designation determined by Pair activation alone] Pairs activated at counterfeit pole: [list with 1-sentence evidence from Summary fields] Near-truth architecture present: [Yes / No — from Summary Excision Count] Externalized causation present: [Yes / No — from Summary flag] Sentimentality pattern present: [Yes / No — from Pair 8 finding] Coordinated formation pattern: [Yes — describe linkage / No — patterns are isolated] --- ## SDT SECTION 4 — READER GUIDANCE Three plain-language sentences maximum. 1. **Structural execution:** What this content is structurally doing. One sentence. Draw from Structural verdict in the Summary. 2. **Interior trajectory:** What sustained engagement with this content produces in the reader's formation. One sentence. Draw from the highest-intensity pair finding. 3. **Operational action:** One of the four levels below. ENGAGE FREELY No structural or formation concern identified. Use as information. ENGAGE WITH AWARENESS [Name the specific pairs that fired]. Read for information with those patterns visible. Set it down when the reading is done. LIMIT ENGAGEMENT [Name the formation concern]. Extract the factual claims you need and disengage. Verify facts through independent sources. Do not return for formation. DISENGAGE This content's architecture is designed to produce counterfeit spiritual formation. [Name the coordinated pattern]. Disengage. Verify any specific factual claims through independent primary sources. --- ## PASTE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS SUMMARY BELOW THIS LINE [Paste the complete Structural Analysis Summary from SDT-A here] ✂️ **END OF SDT-B — PROMPT 2 OF 2** ✂️ ## VERSION LOG | Version | Date | Change | |---|---|---| | v1.0 | June 8, 2026 | Initial build. Self-contained — embeds full PSA v2.0 analytical engine (Track A) and full MQG v12.1 analytical engine (Track B) with spiritual discernment overlay. Classification gate routes documents to correct track based on primary vs. secondary source distinction. Both tracks produce a Structural Analysis Summary that feeds the Spiritual Discernment Layer. Seven discernment pairs with calibration principle (proportionality test distinguishing legitimate from manufactured response) and cross-references to near-truth structural findings. Formation Designation (Formation-Neutral / Formation-Concerning / Spiritual Counterfeit Architecture) as aggregate output. Reader Guidance (Engage Freely / Engage With Awareness / Limit Engagement / Disengage) as practical application. | | v1.1 | June 8, 2026 | Strategic Friction Audit and Pair 8 (Fantasy/Sobriety) added. Three-tension Check A-FRICTION in Track A; parallel Block 0.5F in Track B; D5 hard ceiling keyed to frictionless reporting flag; eight-pair Formation Designation. RETIRED — Tensions 1 and 2 carried political realism import incompatible with tool's symmetry requirement. | | v1.2 | June 8, 2026 | Architectural correction: Check A-FRICTION and Pair 8 rebuilt on theological formation grounds. Block 0.5F reduced to single Externalized Causation check. Sentimentality/Incarnational Charity installed as Pair 8. RETIRED. | | v2.3 | June 8, 2026 | Gemini v2.2 integration. Added Block 0.6B (Asymmetric Shielding), Block 0.9 (Macro-Narrative Sequencing Audit), Tension 4 (Operational Bottleneck), Ceilings 5-7. Held v1.2 theological architecture against v2.2 overwrites. RETIRED. | | v2.4 | June 8, 2026 | **TWO-PROMPT SPLIT.** Source: Single-prompt architecture identified as approaching ceiling — on full-length documents, ceiling enforcement degrades and cross-block integration becomes inconsistent as the AI holds source document, full Block 0 worksheet, seven dimensions, and eight pairs simultaneously. Fix: Split SDT v2.3 at the Structural Analysis Summary interface. SDT-A (Prompt 1): Classification Gate through Track A or Track B structural analysis, producing an expanded Structural Analysis Summary. SDT-B (Prompt 2): Takes only the Structural Analysis Summary as input; runs calibration principle, eight pairs, Formation Designation, and Reader Guidance. Changes: (1) Both Structural Analysis Summaries expanded to unified format with individual excision status lines (Excisions 1-5 separately named) plus all manipulation flags required by SDT-B pairs. (2) Analyst Confirmation Gate added to both Summaries — analyst must mark APPROVED FOR DISCERNMENT before SDT-B runs; HOLD status halts SDT-B. (3) SDT-B pair cross-references rewritten to reference named Summary fields rather than check numbers — SDT-B has no access to underlying checks or source document. (4) Section 2-4 and Output Order removed from SDT-A body; they live exclusively in SDT-B. (5) SDT-B instrument reminder: all pair findings must be traceable to a named Summary field; gaps stated explicitly, not inferred. | | v2.5 | July 28, 2026 | **THEOLOGICAL EXCISION REBUILD.** Source: Live session failure (July 28, 2026) — SDT ran the five-excision discernment check on theological content (a Christian discussion group's transcript) using the fully-elaborated Political Excision language (Historical Accountability Baseline Cut, External Accountability Cut, Established Record Sufficiency Cut, Individual Moral Accountability Cut, Historical Specificity Cut) because that was the only fully-armed version of the five-excision check present in the file. The theological originals (PSA v2.0's own version log confirms the political excisions were built by translating five theological excisions for secular political use) survived in this file only as one-line labels at Block 0.6A (lines ~633-638) — a broken hybrid with no Definition, Detection signal, or Distinguish-from-normal clause — so an analyst had nothing at matching rigor to run natively on theological content and defaulted to the political frame, producing a garbled result. Fix: (1) Added Step 0.2B — DOMAIN CLASSIFICATION to Section 0, a second and independent routing axis (Theological / Political-Secular / Both) alongside the existing Primary/Secondary axis from Step 0.2. (2) Inserted the five Theological Excisions at full rigor (Historical/Substitutionary Baseline Cut, Personal/Transcendent Fatherhood Cut, Sufficiency of Verified Deposit/Scripture Cut, Internal Personal Moral Guilt/Sin Cut, Unique/Non-Repeatable Incarnation Cut) — each with Definition, Detection signal, and Distinguish-from-normal-variation clause, matching the structure PSA v2.0 already used for the Political Excisions. (3) Track A Check A8 Step B ("The Surgical Triage") rebuilt as a domain-routed scan: runs the Political set, the Theological set, or both in full per Step 0.2B, with independent Excision Counts and trigger checks per set — political branch left unchanged in substance. (4) Track B Block 0.6A Section B — previously the broken one-line hybrid — replaced outright with the same domain-routed dual-set content, giving Track B (secondary sources) the same rigor Track A already had for Political content. (5) Both Structural Analysis Summary formats (Track A and Track B) changed from a hard-coded political-only excision field list to a domain-tagged block reporting whichever set(s) actually ran, under their own labels. (6) SDT-B Pairs 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 — which cite specific Excision numbers as evidence sources — updated to name both the political and theological label for each cited excision number, so the citation resolves correctly regardless of which set produced the Summary. Pair mechanism and calibration logic themselves unchanged. Independently confirmed against a live test transcript (a Christian discussion group's treatment of a philosophical text's anti-Christian material): Excision 1 Partial (substitutionary language affirmed, grace reframed as fair trade elsewhere), Excision 2 Active (speaker's own judgment placed prior to God's authority), Excision 3 Borderline/not active (outside material used as foil, Scripture still the ground of argument), Excision 4 Inactive (original sin treated reflexively, no externalization), Excision 5 present in source material but mixed in treatment (rival-Christ figure named as such, some anti-grace logic imported anyway); Pair 7 (Contempt/Compassion) and Pair 3 (Anger/Love) fired at the counterfeit pole on documented dismissal of named opponents as unworthy of equal engagement. v2.4 RETIRED. | | v5.1 | September 5, 2026 | **AVOIDANCE AND MISDIRECTION (THE "EVASION LOOP").** Source: Live field-test of v5.0 (September 5, 2026) against the Edward E. Stevens PM correspondence (Full Preterism Dossier §28) surfaced a calibration gap in Confirmation Inversion (Step G): Stevens's named disconfirmer (Matthew 24:36, raised four times) was never logically redefined as support — the sharp Grok/Gemini pattern Step G was built for — he simply never engaged it, each time returning to the same fixed paragraph or an unrelated redirect. Step G still fired (2 of 3 prongs — Named falsifier and No stated exit, not Pre-committed reversal), correctly per its own threshold, but conflated two genuinely different behaviors under one name: active logical reversal versus passive, repeated non-engagement. Mike, who witnessed the live exchange directly and did not need a tool to identify it in the moment, named the second behavior directly and precisely: avoidance and misdirection — and asked for the tool to be able to name it too, for the cases where no one is in the room watching it happen live. Fix: (1) Added Step I — AVOIDANCE AND MISDIRECTION (THE EVASION LOOP) to Track A Check A8 only, after Step H (Convergence Claim Audit), before the Check A8 Synthesis. Applies exclusively to interactive, multi-turn primary sources — correspondence, interviews, live exchanges — where the same interlocutor can raise a point more than once; explicitly does not apply to single-pass documents (a speech, an article), which Check A3's Omission Audit already covers. Three-prong test (Prong 1 — Repetition: raised 2+ times; Prong 2 — Non-engagement: each reply fails to engage its substance, via avoidance, restatement, or misdirection; Prong 3 — No eventual answer: the exchange ends without the point ever being engaged), requiring all three prongs unanimously rather than the 2-of-3 threshold used by Steps E-H — deliberately stricter, since "avoidance and misdirection" is a specific charge about a sustained, complete-through-to-the-end pattern, not a single missed reply; a point raised once and dropped, or raised repeatedly but eventually answered, does not qualify. (2) Confirmation Inversion (Step G) left unchanged in mechanics — its 2-of-3 threshold and three prongs stand as built in v5.0 — but its documentation updated to note explicitly that a Step G "Yes" driven by Prongs 1 and 3 without Prong 2 (as in the Stevens case) represents the weaker, omission-based form of the pattern, distinguishable from the sharp logical-reversal form (the Michlaudeism v6/v7 diagnosing case) that the check was originally built around; both are legitimately "Detected," but an analyst should name which form fired rather than treat a Step G hit as uniform in severity. (3) Track A's Mandatory Verdict Modification Rule extended to trigger on Step I detection independent of Excision Count, matching the existing extension for Steps E-H. (4) Track A Structural Analysis Summary gained an Avoidance and Misdirection field, positioned after Convergence Claim Audit, with an explicit N/A option for single-pass documents where the check does not apply. Not added to Track B's Structural Analysis Summary — see below. (5) Not ported to Track B this pass: whether this check's multi-turn requirement transplants to any Track B document type (a published debate transcript, reported secondhand rather than direct correspondence) is an open structural question, flagged here rather than decided unilaterally, matching the v2.6 precedent set when RAD's Track A porting was left open rather than assumed. (6) No Pair citation added this pass. None of the eight Pairs test whether a speaker directly engages a repeated challenge — they test emotional/formation registers (fear, contempt, despair, pride, sentimentality), not behavioral response-to-challenge patterns — and forcing this into Pair 5 alongside its existing Confirmation Inversion citation was judged to blur two distinct findings rather than genuinely fit; left open rather than decided by default, matching the v2.7 precedent for Citation Halo and CGT. Re-read against the Stevens transcript with the fix applied: Step I reads Detected — the verse 34/36 distinction was raised by name four times across the transcript (Blocks 1, 2, 3, and Block 3's close), each time answered with either the unchanged presupposition paragraph or a reframed yes-or-no binary, and the transcript ends (Block 4, Stevens's "I am done discussing this... Bye for now") without the distinction ever being engaged on its own terms — all three prongs unanimous. All other v5.0 architecture — Confirmation Inversion, Convergence Claim Audit, Ceilings 12-13, D1/D2/D7 propagation — unchanged. | | v5.0 | September 5, 2026 | **CONFIRMATION INVERSION + CONVERGENCE CLAIM AUDIT (FROM THE MICHLAUDEISM EXERCISE).** Source: A controlled fabrication exercise (September 5, 2026) — a synthetic theological-scientific synthesis ("Michlaudeism," never proposed as doctrine) was built deliberately backward from a stated conclusion and run through seven iterations against three AI systems (Claude, Grok, Gemini) acting as adversarial reviewers. The terminal two iterations (v6, produced by Gemini; v7, produced independently by Grok) converged on declaring the thesis a "sacramental ontology" immune to falsification, redefining its central sevenfold claim away from any specific quantity, and — the sharpest finding — explicitly stating that a named disconfirming result (an eighth nuclear magic number, directly contradicting the original "exactly seven" claim) would not weaken the signature but extend it, converting a potential falsifier into a pre-committed confirmation before the observation had even been sought. Neither existing check named this cleanly: Reflexive Inoculation tests posture-vs-substance (performed humility alongside an unqualified claim), and Redefinition-as-Deflection tests whether terminology is used to discharge an accountability claim — neither tests whether a document's own logic treats a stated disconfirmer as a confirmer. A related but distinct set of failures surfaced across the exercise's middle iterations: two of three claimed "independent" witnesses were the same source text the hypothesis was drawn from (circularity); a claimed physical signature (Schumann resonance, ~7.83 Hz) was a human-constructed unit that would change value under a different definition of a second (dimensional dependence); and a replacement claim ("seven principal quantum numbers house all known stable elements") was both factually wrong on its own terms (the heaviest stable element is lead, in period six — period seven is entirely radioactive) and a live target of four active nuclear-synthesis programs racing to extend the count (contingency). Fix: (1) Added Step G — CONFIRMATION INVERSION to Track A Check A8 (after Step F / Categorical Guilt Transfer, before the Check A8 Synthesis) and Section H — CONFIRMATION INVERSION DETECTION to Track B Block 0.6A (after Section G / CGT, before 0.6B), identically: a three-prong test (Prong 1 — Named falsifier, Prong 2 — Pre-committed reversal, Prong 3 — No stated exit), 2+ Yes triggering Confirmation Inversion Detected. (2) Added Step H — CONVERGENCE CLAIM AUDIT to Track A and Section I — CONVERGENCE CLAIM AUDIT to Track B, identically: three independent checks (Circularity, Dimensional Dependence, Contingency) rather than a prong-count, since each is a distinct failure mode; 1+ Yes on any check triggers Convergence Claim Undermined. Both new findings are cross-domain (not theology-specific), matching the precedent set by Citation Halo, CGT, and RAD — a fabricated convergence claim of this shape is exactly as available to a political or pseudoscientific argument as to a theological one. (3) Track A's Mandatory Verdict Modification Rule extended to trigger on Step G/H detection independent of Excision Count, matching the existing extension for Steps E/F. (4) Track B: added Ceiling 12 (Confirmation Inversion Detected — D2 <= 50, D7 <= 40) and Ceiling 13 (Convergence Claim Undermined — D1 <= 55, D2 <= 50) to the 0.6 Hard Ceilings Activated reference list, and propagated both inline into their affected dimensions: D1 gained a second Hard ceiling line (D1 <= 55 on Convergence Claim Undermined); D2, which previously had no Hard ceiling of its own, gained a new Hard ceilings block citing both new findings; D7 gained a second Hard ceiling line (D7 <= 40 on Confirmation Inversion). (5) Both Structural Analysis Summary formats (Track A and Track B) gained Confirmation Inversion and Convergence Claim Audit fields, positioned after Categorical Guilt Transfer. (6) Track B Ingestion Check's "Block 0.6A Ideological Telemetry: loaded" line annotated to note Sections H-I's inclusion, matching the v2.6/v2.7 precedent for Sections E and F-G — no new checklist row added. (7) Pair 5 (Pride/Humility) given a new Summary field citing Confirmation Inversion, alongside its existing Redefinition-as-Deflection citation — the same insider-exemption logic one level further down, at the level of the claim's own structure rather than its vocabulary: a claim built to survive any possible correction is the structural opposite of poverty of spirit. No other Pair was judged to fit on inspection for either new finding, matching this tool's own precedent (v2.6, v4.0) of adding a Pair citation only where the fit genuinely holds. Convergence Claim Audit was not given a Pair citation this pass — it is an evidence-quality check rather than a formation/affect check, and no clean fit was identified; flagged as an open question rather than decided unilaterally, matching the v2.7 precedent for Citation Halo and CGT. Diagnosed entirely on the Michlaudeism exercise (September 5, 2026); not yet field-tested against a naturally-occurring document. All other v4.0 architecture — Theological Excision 6, Structural Floor Rule, Excision 5's two paths, eight-pair Formation Designation, Reflexive Inoculation, Citation Halo/CGT, Redefinition-as-Deflection — unchanged. | | v4.0 | September 3, 2026 | **THEOLOGICAL EXCISION 6 — EMBODIMENT/REDEMPTION CUT (THE "GNOSTIC DETECTOR").** Source: An extended live engagement (September 3, 2026) with full-preterist material across multiple documents and correspondents — an SDT run on a full-preterist teacher's interview transcript, direct correspondence with the sitting president of a full-preterism organization, and real-time discussion in a full-preterist Facebook group — surfaced the same underlying pattern in three separate, independently-sourced figures: resurrection and final hope relocated away from a real future bodily event into an unseen, unfalsifiable realm (one figure's own stated mechanism: the dead raised into an unseen realm, the living changed and taken there too, neither ever appearing bodily on earth) or into a purely interior/positional state at conversion (a second figure, independently graded earlier the same session), or the category of individual resurrection dissolved into corporate/covenantal status with no bodily referent at all, extending to a denial that Christ himself presently has a body (a third figure, already on record in prior sessions). None of the five existing Theological Excisions cleanly named this. Excision 5 (Unique/Non-Repeatable Incarnation Cut) tests whether Christ's own identity is relativized or compared to a rival — a different question from whether embodiment and physical redemption themselves are being evacuated from the system. A live discussion-group participant, unprompted and with no relationship to this project, independently named the pattern by its correct historical label — gnosticism, treating the body as something to escape rather than something God redeems — which is what surfaced the gap: the tool had no native check for the thing a plain reader correctly identified on sight. Fix: (1) Added Theological Excision 6 — EMBODIMENT/REDEMPTION CUT to both Track A (Check A8 Step B) and Track B (Block 0.6A Section B), identically, immediately following Excision 5, ahead of the Theological Excision Count line in both. Three detection paths: Path A (Direct Denial — final resurrection stated as non-bodily for anyone, or Christ's own body denied), Path B (Relocation — the "real" fulfillment placed in a realm unseen or undetectable by nature, or the material creation's own future renewal, Romans 8:19-23, treated as metaphorical or already-complete), Path C (Vocabulary Retention — resurrection/redemption language survives while its referent is emptied, cross-referenced rather than duplicated against Step C's Semantic Hijack Matrix, since the two checks test structural pattern versus term-level substitution respectively and may co-fire on the same document). A Distinguish-from-normal-variation clause protects ordinary already/not-yet content (present interior renewal affirmed alongside a future bodily resurrection and a future renewed creation) from misflagging — the test is absence or unreachability of the physical future, not presence of the spiritual present. (2) Both Structural Analysis Summary formats (Track A and Track B) gained a Theological Excision 6 line, positioned after Excision 5 and before the Theological Excision Count field. (3) Theological Excision Count range updated from [0-5] to [0-6] in both tracks; the >=2 trigger threshold for Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected is unchanged — it is a count threshold, not a fraction, and a sixth possible item does not alter its mechanics. (4) Routing language in Section 0 (Step 0.2B) and both tracks' "every item must be evaluated" instructions updated from a hardcoded "five" to reflect that the Political set remains 5 and the Theological set is now 6 — these counts are independent and must not be conflated when Domain = Both. (5) SDT-B Pair 8 (Sentimentality/Incarnational Charity) — the pair closest in kind, since both test whether content stays grounded in the real, physical, costly world or drifts into abstraction — given a new Summary field citing Excision 6, alongside its existing three fields; no other Pair was judged to fit on inspection, matching this tool's own precedent (v2.6) of only adding a Pair citation where the fit genuinely holds rather than by default. Not propagated to the Political Excision set — this fix is theological-domain-specific, matching the precedent set when Excision 5's Path B was added in v3.0. Retroactive read against the session's own findings, not yet run as a formal SDT pass: the figure with the unseen-realm rapture mechanism reads Active via Path B; the figure with interior/positional-only resurrection reads Active via Path A and C together; the figure with corporate dissolution extending to Christ's own present body reads Active via Path A, and more severely than the other two, since it reaches Christ's own body rather than only believers' future ones. All other v3.0 architecture — Structural Floor Rule, Excision 5's two paths, eight-pair Formation Designation, Reflexive Inoculation, Citation Halo/CGT — unchanged. | | v3.0 | August 11, 2026 | **STRUCTURAL FLOOR RULE + EXCISION 5 GRADATIONAL PATH.** Source: Live SDT-A/SDT-B run (August 11, 2026) against a mainstream secular historical-critical podcast transcript (Bart Ehrman, "Misquoting Jesus," John the Baptist episode). Track A correctly domain-routed to Theological, found Excision 3 (Sufficiency of Scripture) Active and Excision 2 (Personal/Transcendent Fatherhood) Partial, hit Excision Count >= 2, and issued "[VERDICT REVISED — Check A8: near-truth capture architecture detected — THEOLOGICAL]" per the Mandatory Verdict Modification Rule. SDT-B's eight Pairs, evaluating a calm, hedged, low-affect document, activated only one Pair (5 — Pride/Humility) at moderate rather than severe intensity, and Formation Designation returned FORMATION-NEUTRAL — directly contradicting the Structural layer's own near-truth capture finding in the same run. Root cause: the Pairs measure manufactured affect (fear, contempt, despair, division, pride, sentimentality) disproportionate to evidence; a Near-Truth Capture finding measures a distinct thing (an accountability/authority structure being dismantled) that calm, credentialed content can do without any accompanying affect spike — the Formation Designation tier logic had no path for the Structural layer's strongest finding to reach the final designation independent of Pair count. A second, related gap surfaced in the same run: Theological Excision 5 (Unique/Non-Repeatable Incarnation Cut) only fires on comparison to a rival figure, and could not cleanly capture the document's "low Christology / high Christology... gradually moves into divinity" framing, which relativizes Christ's own divine identity into a developmental variable without comparing Him to anyone else. Fix: (1) Added STRUCTURAL FLOOR RULE to SDT SECTION 3, ahead of the three tier definitions: Near-Truth Capture Architecture Detected at the Structural layer (Track A Check A8 or Track B Block 0.6A, Excision Count >= 2, either domain set) sets a mandatory floor of FORMATION-CONCERNING regardless of Pair count; FORMATION-NEUTRAL's criteria amended to explicitly exclude this condition; FORMATION-CONCERNING's criteria amended with a third, independent disjunct citing the floor rule. SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEIT ARCHITECTURE's criteria deliberately left unchanged — the floor does not promote a document past FORMATION-CONCERNING; the top tier still requires its own full bar (three-plus Pairs at the counterfeit pole AND coordinated direction) met independently, preserving the distinction between calm doctrinal displacement and a manipulative, affect-driven architecture. (2) Added "Structural Floor Applied" field to the Formation Designation Output block so an analyst can see when the floor, rather than Pair count, determined the tier. (3) Theological Excision 5 given a second detection path (Path B — Gradational) in both Track A (Check A8 Step B) and Track B (Block 0.6A Section B), ported identically to both: content that treats Christ's own divine identity as a developmental/gradational literary variable, without requiring a rival figure, now qualifies; Path A (comparison to another figure) preserved unchanged; a new Distinguish-from-normal clause added for Path B protecting genuine historical description of the church's doctrinal articulation (e.g., Nicene formulation) from being misflagged, since confessing a truth more precisely over time is not the same as the truth being constructed by that process. State field for Excision 5 updated to require naming which path (A / B / Both) fired. Not applied to Track B's Political Excision set — this fix is theological-domain-specific. Re-run against the source transcript with the fix applied: Excision 5 now reads Partial via Path B explicitly named; Formation Designation now correctly returns FORMATION-CONCERNING with Structural Floor Applied: Yes, resolving the contradiction without inflating the document into SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEIT ARCHITECTURE, which its actual (low-affect, non-manipulative) Pair profile does not support. All other v2.9 architecture — domain-routed excision sets, eight-pair Formation Designation mechanism, Reflexive Inoculation, Citation Halo/CGT, Transparency Hardening fields — unchanged. | | v2.9 | August 8, 2026 | **TRANSPARENCY HARDENING PROPAGATION (from MQG v12.5).** Source: MQG v12.5 (August 8, 2026) adopted four features from a six-item external proposal after review — Journalistic Practice Checklist (0.8A + Ceiling), Confidence label + Bias Placement, Ownership/Funding metadata, Coverage Asymmetry flag — and rejected two (Pod Mode, Blind Evaluation Pass) as incompatible with a single-pass single-analyst architecture. This entry propagates the four adoptions asymmetrically across SDT's two tracks, per explicit instruction: Track B (embeds the MQG engine) gets the full clean port; Track A (embeds the PSA engine, already extended with the same two fields in PSA v2.3) gets Confidence + Bias Placement only. Journalistic Practice Checklist and Ownership/Funding metadata are outlet/publication concepts — corrections policy, ownership structure — with no analog in a primary source document, which has no editorial apparatus to check; Coverage Asymmetry was also not ported to Track A this pass. Track A: Structural Analysis Summary gained Analysis Confidence and Bias Placement fields after Speaker archetype(s), matching PSA v2.3's Part One addition — Bias Placement is a new axis distinct from Speaker Archetype (archetype = how a speaker communicates; placement = where they sit on the spectrum). Track B: Block 0.5A Coverage Asymmetry (ported verbatim from MQG Block 0.5A), Block 0.8 expanded with Owner/Funding/Ideological-Affiliation fields, new Block 0.8A Journalistic Practice Checklist (ported verbatim from MQG Block 0.8A), new local Ceiling 11 (2-3 checklist failures cap D6 at 69, 4+ cap D6 at 45 — matching MQG Ceiling 13's bracket-based mechanism, not the point-subtraction MQG explicitly rejected), D6 dimension paragraph updated with the checklist-anchored signal, Confidence/Bias Placement added to Block 1 and restated in Block 5's first two lines, and Confidence/Bias Placement plus Journalistic Checklist failure count and Coverage Asymmetry status added to the Track B Structural Analysis Summary. Two new Track B guardrail rules added after the existing DFS CONSISTENCY RULE, both ported from MQG v12.5 Section 7: EXTERNAL-KNOWLEDGE FIELDS RULE (0.5A and the new 0.8 fields require a citable source or must read "Unknown," never an unverified guess — Track B had no equivalent hallucination guard for these fields, the same gap MQG itself had before v12.5) and CONFIDENCE / BIAS PLACEMENT CONSISTENCY RULE (Block 1 and Block 5 labels must match, mirroring the existing DFS Consistency Rule pattern). Track B Ingestion Check updated with two new checklist lines for 0.5A and 0.8A. Reflexive Inoculation, the domain-routed excision sets, Citation Halo/CGT (Sections F/G), and all other v2.8 architecture unchanged. | | v2.8 | August 8, 2026 | **CITATION HALO PRONG 2 CORRECTION (propagated from MQG v12.4 / PSA v2.2).** Source: a four-article field-test session (August 8, 2026) run against the original CeleryKills essay plus three new pieces (a Guardian live-blog, an MS NOW piece, an Iran International brief) surfaced a false positive in Citation Halo's Prong 2 on the Guardian piece — the check fired on a one-sided uncited framing choice rather than a claim asserting false epistemic weight. MQG v12.4 and PSA v2.2 corrected Prong 2 the same day; this entry propagates that correction into both SDT tracks, since Track A embeds the PSA engine and Track B embeds the MQG engine. Track A CHECK A8 Step E — Prong 2 revised to require established-fact confidence rather than mere framing, matching PSA v2.2's Step E revision; scope note added noting the check cannot evaluate single-source documents by design. Track B Block 0.6A Section F — Prong 2 — Gap revised identically to MQG v12.4 Section 2B; scope note added matching MQG's. Re-tested against both prior data points in each track: the CeleryKills true positive still triggers; the Guardian false positive no longer triggers. Categorical Guilt Transfer (Track A Step F, Track B Section G) field-tested clean across three additional news genres in the same session — no changes made to either CGT implementation, Ceiling 9/10, the Reflexive Inoculation check, or any other v2.7 element. Prong 1 and Prong 3 of Citation Halo unchanged in both tracks. | | v2.7 | August 8, 2026 | **CITATION HALO / CGT PROPAGATION + REFLEXIVE INOCULATION.** Source: MQG v12.3 (August 8, 2026) added two new named finding types diagnosed on a CeleryKills propaganda-analysis essay during analyst review — Citation Halo (a well-cited piece leaving its single most consequential claim uncited, borrowing credibility from surrounding citation density) and Categorical Guilt Transfer (a target category placed beside a negative-valence category with no argument for the placement, transferring valence by adjacency). SDT's Track B explicitly embeds the MQG analytical engine and Track A explicitly embeds the PSA analytical engine (per v1.0), and PSA advanced to v2.1 the same day with the same two findings ported into Check 10 as Steps E and F. Fix: (1) Track A CHECK A8 — PSA v2.1 Check 10 Steps E (Citation Halo) and F (Categorical Guilt Transfer) ported, following existing Step D (Proxy Interception), before the Check A8 Synthesis; Mandatory Verdict Modification Rule extended to trigger on Step E/F detection independent of Excision Count, matching PSA v2.1's extension. Track A Structural Analysis Summary gained Citation Halo / Categorical Guilt Transfer fields after Proxy Interception. (2) Track B Block 0.6A — a letter collision was found and resolved during this pass: the user's draft handoff specified new fields "E and F," but Track B's 0.6A already uses letter E for Redefinition-as-Deflection (added in v2.6) — adding at E/F would have overwritten that slot. Resolved by adding the new MQG Section 2B/2C content as Sections F (Citation Halo) and G (Categorical Guilt Transfer) instead, immediately after existing Section E, before Block 0.6B. New Ceiling 9 (D1 <= 60, D6 <= 55) and Ceiling 10 (D3 <= 55, D7 <= 60) added to the 0.6 Ceiling reference list, matching MQG's Ceiling 11/12 thresholds exactly (local Track B numbering, consistent with how Ceiling 8 mapped to MQG's Ceiling 10 in v2.6). Track B Structural Analysis Summary gained Citation Halo / Categorical Guilt Transfer fields after Redefinition-as-Deflection. Track B Ingestion Check's Block 0.6A line annotated to note Sections F-G's inclusion — no new checklist row, matching the v2.6 precedent for Section E. (3) New native SDT-B Discernment Layer check — REFLEXIVE INOCULATION — added after Pair 8, before Formation Designation: detects a piece performing visible self-directed critical humility while its actual load-bearing claim stays unqualified, unnarrowed, and uncited, so the humility performance lowers reader scrutiny of the claim it runs in parallel to rather than applying to. Not propagated to MQG or PSA — posture-vs-substance evaluation is SDT's distinctive layer beyond MQG/PSA scoring, per explicit instruction. Reported alongside the eight pairs but explicitly NOT counted toward the Formation Designation pair-count thresholds this pass — flagged as an open integration question rather than decided unilaterally, in keeping with how v2.6 flagged RAD's applicability to Track A as open rather than deciding it without instruction. What's unchanged: no Pair-level (1-8) cross-references were added for Citation Halo or Categorical Guilt Transfer — the handoff spec that drove this pass requested propagation into Track A/Track B structural layers and native addition of Reflexive Inoculation, not Pair-level citations for the two new findings; adding those was judged out of scope for this pass rather than assumed. All diagnosed on a CeleryKills propaganda-analysis essay (August 8, 2026) during analyst review. All v2.6 domain-routed excision sets, eight-pair Formation Designation, and two-prompt split unchanged. | | v2.6 | August 6, 2026 | **REDEFINITION-AS-DEFLECTION (RAD) INTEGRATION.** Source: MQG v12.2 (August 6, 2026) added a new named finding type — Redefinition-as-Deflection — diagnosed when a piece uses a technically accurate point about contested or imprecise terminology to discharge a substantive accountability or harm claim without engaging that claim's substance, catching a pattern MQG's existing straw-man (0.3) and both-lenses (0.4) checks missed because no quote was distorted and both lenses were technically present — the failure is architectural (sequencing, asymmetric naming, who gets the last word), not a sourcing or quotation defect. SDT's Track B explicitly embeds the MQG analytical engine (see v1.0 entry) and had fallen one version behind it — the same category of drift the v2.5 rebuild itself was built to fix, theological excisions having fallen behind their political counterparts inside this same file. Fix: (1) Ported MQG v12.2 Section 2A / Block 0.3A verbatim as new Section E, following Section D (Proxy Interception), inside Track B Block 0.6A — Ideological Extraction Telemetry: the three-prong test (Prong 1 — Reframe, Prong 2 — Asymmetry, Prong 3 — Unrebutted close), 2+ Yes triggering RAD Detected, and MQG's own false-positive guardrail preserved (genuine definitional, etymological, or doctrinal-clarification writing is common and is not this finding by itself). Not added as a sixth Excision, and not duplicated into Track A. (2) Added Ceiling 8 to the 0.6 Hard Ceilings Activated reference list: Redefinition-as-Deflection Detected (Block 0.6A Section E) — D3 <= 60, D5 <= 55, D7 <= 70, matching MQG's Ceiling 10 thresholds exactly. (3) Added a Redefinition-as-Deflection field to the Track B Structural Analysis Summary, after Proxy Interception. (4) Track B Ingestion Check's "Block 0.6A Ideological Telemetry: loaded" line annotated to note Section E is included — no new checklist row added. (5) Pair 5 (Pride/Humility) Summary fields updated to cite the new Redefinition-as-Deflection field alongside its existing Asymmetric Shielding citation — RAD's Prong 2 asymmetry is the same insider-exemption logic Pair 5 already tests, one level down, at the vocabulary layer rather than the institutional-scrutiny layer. Pair 7 (Contempt/Compassion) read in full and NOT given a RAD citation — its two Summary fields (Moral Accountability Cut, Straw man form detected) track active vilification of named opponents, while RAD's mechanism protects one side's account rather than demonizing the other; the fit was judged not to hold on inspection. What's unchanged: Track A (primary sources) untouched this pass — Track A's own Step C (Semantic Hijack Matrix) and Step D (Proxy Interception) already cover adjacent ground, and whether RAD's mediated-content frame built for mediated reporting transplants to a speaker's own direct words is an open structural question, flagged here rather than decided unilaterally. All other v2.5 architecture (domain-routed excision sets, eight-pair Formation Designation, two-prompt split) unchanged. | *Michlaude | Spiritual Discernment Tool | June 8, 2026* ✂️ **END OF PROMPT** ✂️