Information Provenance & Claim-Source Mappings

Source attribution is frequently lost during multi-agent synthesis pipelines when findings are compressed without preserving claim-source mappings.

The Problem

A web search agent finds data from 5 sources. A document analysis agent extracts findings. A synthesis agent combines everything into a report. By the final report, claims appear without sources because:

• Summarization compressed away source URLs
• Findings were merged without tracking which source said what
• Conflicting values were silently resolved

Solution: Structured Claim-Source Mappings

Require subagents to output structured mappings:

• Source URLs and document names
• Relevant excerpts (not just summaries)
• Publication/collection dates
• Methodological context

The synthesis agent must preserve and merge these mappings when combining findings.

Report Structure

Structure final reports to distinguish:

• Well-established findings: Multiple concordant sources
• Contested findings: Sources disagree, with original characterizations preserved
• Single-source findings: Only one source, flagged for lower confidence

Content-Appropriate Rendering

Render different content types appropriately in synthesis outputs:

• Financial data as tables
• News as prose
• Technical findings as structured lists

Don't convert everything to a uniform format -- it loses the natural structure of different content types.