know.

CookbookResearch and civic lifeNo. 48

An investigative story filetimeline, documents and claims to verify

Recipe No. 48 · Research and civic life

For: A reporter looking into how a city contract was awarded

You get: A private file of dates, names, records and claims still to verify

Time: An evening, then fifteen minutes a day

See it in know.sh

The city’s payments and the prime contractor’s own reports as a Sankey, the money they do not account for left as a question. All names and amounts are invented.

Sidewalk contractDocuments obtained

17of 19

City payments to Keystone and its subcontractor reports, to 31 August 2026

Evidence, key section, 1 note, 3 sources, 264 words

What it is. The city’s payment register for the sidewalk contract, and the subcontractor payment reports Keystone filed with each of its five pay applications. Released by the city clerk under request PRR 2026-0418: asked 5 August, received 2 September. Files on the newsroom drive under Sidewalk / Records / Payments.

What it shows.

What it does not show. The $780,000 in no report may be Keystone’s own crews, materials, overhead or profit, or firms it did not report; these records cannot tell them apart. It is not the subcontract, so claim 7 stays open, and the July change order is not in the register yet.

A claim in the file: who said it, what record would prove it, and the record that did. The city, company and people are invented.

know., Claims to verify, 4 · Look up, New, ⋯

Sidewalk contract, Claims to verify

4 of 11

Keystone was registered weeks before the emergency declaration

Question, key section, 1 highlight, 1 note, 2 sources, 238 words

Highlight, Note, Edit

The claim. Keystone Civil Works LLC did not exist until shortly before the city declared the sidewalk emergency on 4 March 2026.

Heard from. Two people independently, neither with documents.

What would prove it. The state business registry entry with its formation date, and the certificate of formation itself.

Status. Confirmed, 16 September: formed 17 December 2025, per the registry entry and the certified copy of the certificate of formation, received 15 September (Documents obtained, 12). Eleven weeks before the declaration, not “weeks”.

What it does not show. Formation date says nothing about who knew about the contract, or when. Do not let the timing carry more weight than it can.

You, 16 September

Editor wants the exact wording: “formed about eleven weeks before”, not “weeks before”. Use that wording in the draft.

A local model on the reporter’s own machine reads the claims and says which are not yet held up by a primary record.

A local model through Ollama, connected to know.sh · reading Claims to verify

You

Using know.sh, read “Claims to verify” on my shelf “Sidewalk contract”. Which claims still rest on a single source, or cite only other sections rather than a record?

A local model through Ollama

Three need more before they can run:

  • Claim 2, “the city manager met Keystone’s owner before the declaration”, has one source and no record: no calendar, email or visitor log is cited.
  • Claim 7, “Keystone subcontracted all of the work”, cites only People and companies, 6. That section cites no record of its own; the subcontract itself is not in Documents obtained.
  • Claim 9, the $412,000 change order, cites the council agenda, which lists the item but not the amount. The minutes for 22 July are not in the file.

Claims 4 and 5 are now confirmed by records. Shall I list what records would close 2, 7 and 9, as a new section in this document?

From your library

  1. Claims to verify, 2: City manager met Keystone’s owner before the declaration
  2. Claims to verify, 7: Keystone subcontracted all of the work
  3. Claims to verify, 9: A $412,000 change order approved in July

How it works

A $6.2 million sidewalk contract went, without bids, to a company nobody had heard of. Six weeks later there are forty records and a notebook. Your assistant files every date, name and document with its source; you write the claims to verify, and each stays a Question until a primary record, not a summary, confirms it.

  1. Have your assistant open the file

    Ask for a shelf with four documents, Timeline, People and companies, Documents obtained and Claims to verify, then give it the public records to file, each entry quoting its record.

  2. Check every entry against the record

    Open each document in the editor with the records beside you and check every date, name and dollar figure. A misread date is exactly the error a correction is made of.

  3. Follow the money with a Sankey

    Ask for a Sankey element on the payment records: what the city paid Keystone, what Keystone reported paying each subcontractor, and the money no report accounts for as a band of its own.

  4. Write the claims to verify yourself

    Each claim is a Question: what you were told, by how many sources, and what record would prove it. It becomes Confirmed only when you hold that record.

Try this prompt

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

I am attaching council minutes, the procurement notice and the state business filing for Keystone Civil Works LLC. Using know.sh, on my shelf “Sidewalk contract”: log each record in “Documents obtained”, add each dated event to “Timeline”, titled date first, and add each person and company to “People and companies”. Give every section its record as a source, and quote rather than paraphrase.

Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model):

Using know.sh, read section 17 of “Documents obtained” on my shelf “Sidewalk contract” and add a Sankey element under “What it shows”, in thousands of dollars: from the contract to what the city has paid Keystone and what is unpaid, then from Keystone to each subcontractor as reported, with the rest as a band labelled “Not in any sub report”. Take every amount from the records.

Made with

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See also