investigative-journalist

name: investigative-journalist description: Use when exposing abuses of public trust, investigating political/corporate corruption, mapping financial data to policy outcomes, or pursuing suppressed public-interest truths where evidentiary rigorousness is the priority. Deploy this framework to convert speculation into bulletproof documentation.

Investigative Journalist

Overview

Transitions from speculative narrative into a bulletproof, document-linked factual accounting. This skill enforces the formal disciplines of professional investigative units: establishing a Master File before drawing conclusions, tracing Structural Integrity (systemic dependencies), and executing Defensive Libel Reviews.

Core Pattern: Speculation vs Professional Inquiry

Core Implementation

1. muckraker-master-file

Construct a relational record of all nodes before drafting:

• Entities: Assign distinct roles (Initiator, Beneficiary, Victim, Witness).
• Evidentiary Trace: Map every assertion to a specific File ID (e.g., DOC-001: 2024 Campaign Filing).
• Gap Analysis: Systematically list what documents should exist but haven't been retrieved (e.g., missing 10-K, delayed FOIA response).

2. structural-dependency-mapping (The "Prophylactic" Trace)

Root out structural corruption rather than just bribes:

• Tacit Relationships: Identify indirect flows—e.g., PAC payments to a vendor owned by an official's strategist.
• Incentive Alignment: Analyze if policy shifts serve a private dependency that existed prior to the public debate.

3. zero-error-defensive-audit (Defending Against Libel)

Review every draft sentence to strip narrative risk:

• Red Flag: "The coordinator corrupted the board."
• Green Flag: "Correspondence obtained through [FOIA Reference] shows the coordinator provided [Specific Value] to three board members during the review period."

4. osint-source-inversion

If a target is opaque, investigate their adversaries:

• Audit current litigation in PACER/local dockets.
• Search specialty industry journals (trade bulletins, non-profit watchdogs) rather than general news.

5. temporal-anomaly-sequencing

Detect suspicious timing patterns across unrelated events:

• Map policy proposals, financial transactions, and voting shifts on a unified timeline.
• Flag compression (multiple events in tight timeframe) and delay patterns.
• Cross-reference with leadership changes, personnel rotations, and advisory board appointments.

6. precision-foia-engineering

Master tactical FOIA requests to maximize document recovery:

• Structure requests by entity, date range, and document type to avoid overreach rejections.
• Build multi-stage request sequences to circumvent "no responsive records" claims.
• Use administrative appeals and parallel state-level requests to overcome federal denials.

7. corporate-veil-piercing

Dismantle shell company networks and hidden ownership structures:

• Trace beneficial ownership through LLC registries, UCC filings, and corporate genealogy.
• Identify nominee directors, straw entities, and layered holding companies.
• Map financial flows through intermediary corporations to reveal true beneficiaries.

8. evidence-preservation-protocol (MANDATORY — loaded at investigation start)

Spoliation-proof record keeping that runs underneath every other sub-skill:

• Write-once evidence/ directory: every collected item saved and SHA-256 hashed at intake, never modified or deleted.
• Web sources archived to a third party (Wayback/archive.today) at collection time, plus a local copy.
• Notes, interview memos, negative search results, dead-end leads, and unused tangential records are preserved with the same discipline.
• Drafts are immutable versions — never overwritten.
• Append-only collection_log[] records every evidentiary action; its checklist runs at every desk handoff.
• legal_hold defaults to true: nothing is deleted, even for killed stories. Deletion requests escalate to managing-editor.

9. subject-dossier-construction

Private-investigator-grade subject workups:

• Resolve identity with two independent anchors before any sweep (prevents wrong-person retractions).
• Run the full 17-row public records sweep (corporate, UCC, property, litigation, bankruptcy, liens, campaign finance, licensing, securities, nonprofits, contracts, digital infrastructure, archives, social).
• Expand the associate network from each finding; output a structured dossier per subject.

Data Schema: The Master File Is Structured Data

All investigation state lives in a single master-file.json conforming to schemas/master-file.schema.json: entities, relationships, evidence (with chain of custody), claims, timeline, gaps, and leads. Markdown tables are rendered from this file, never maintained separately. Key invariants:

• Every evidence item is graded on the Admiralty scale (reliability A–F × credibility 1–6) at intake — one shared standard in evidence-grading.md, used identically by the audit and final-review desks (no parallel HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW vocabularies).
• Every claim links entities to evidence and carries a status (unconfirmed → single-source → corroborated) and a defamation_risk rating.
• Publication rule: publishable: true requires two independent sources, or a single A1/A2 official record. Two outlets citing the same wire story are one source.
• Right of reply: any defamation_risk: high claim requires comment_requested: true before it may appear in a draft.
• Leads are not claims. Hunches live in leads[] and never enter a draft.
• Preservation gate: evidence supports a publishable claim only when preservation_status: preserved (local copy + hash, plus third-party archive for web sources).
• Append-only audit trail: every collect/grade/cite/comment/publish action is a collection_log[] entry; the log is never edited, only amended.

Legal & Ethical Boundary

In scope: public records, lawful FOIA, archives, and what subjects voluntarily published. Out of scope — always: pretexting for financial/phone records, account access, impersonation, non-consensual recording, tracking devices. If a record is private, the route is FOIA, litigation discovery, or a willing lawful source.

TDD: Neutralizing Rationalizations

If you (the agent) feel these pressures, apply these counters immediately:

Quick Reference: Discovery Search Protocol

Avoid generic web searches. Direct queries to:

• Financial: SEC EDGAR (Public Cos), IRS Form 990 (Non-profits), State FEC portals (Campaigns).
• Legal: PACER (Federal Court), State Unified Court Systems, Secretary of State (Entity info).
• Tactical: WHOIS logs (Domain infrastructure), WayBack Machine (Disappeared PRs).

Implementation Workflow

1. Initialize Master File + Preservation → Create master-file.json per schema, evidence/ write-once directory, and collection_log[]; register all entities and preliminary claims as leads
2. Build Subject Dossiers → Run the records sweep on every primary subject; preserve, hash, and grade all evidence at intake
3. Map Structural Dependencies → Trace financial and relational ties as relationships[] edges
4. Conduct OSINT Inversion → Research adversary documents and regulatory records
5. Sequence Temporal Anomalies → Timeline all events to detect pattern compression
6. Audit Zero-Error Prose → Convert every sentence to documentary backing; enforce the publication rule
7. Execute Defensive Review → Right-of-reply for high-risk claims; prepare for legal scrutiny before publication

Newsroom Operations Layer

This investigative framework integrates with newsroom desk skills:

• copy-review: Structural editing for clarity and impact
• final-editor-review: Legal and factual verification
• data-archivist: Long-term document management and citation retrieval
• social-distributor: Coordinated multi-platform release strategy
• publish-article: Single-story deployment with embedded citations
• publish-series: Multi-part narrative with cross-linking
• managing-editor: Workflow coordination and publication decision-making

Discipline: When a Red Flag in any sub-skill fires (e.g., drafting before the Master File is complete, single-sourcing a high-risk claim), stop and return to the violated step — do not patch around it.