provenance

name: provenance description: > Optionally record the prompts/intent behind generated artifacts — notebooks, paclet functions/code, wiki articles, and work items. Maintains an append-only ledger at Wiki/Prompts.md and embeds a back-pointer in each artifact so provenance travels with the file. Off by default; gated by a per-project toggle in CLAUDE.md. Use when the user says "track prompts", "record the prompt", "where did this come from", "turn provenance on/off", "show the prompt ledger", or the /provenance command. Other skills (new-notebook, update-wiki, work, next-session) follow this skill's format when the toggle is on.

Prompt Provenance

Record what was asked to produce a generated artifact. The plugin already records who generated code (git Co-Authored-By trailer) and what changed (Wiki/Status.md, Work ## Progress). Provenance fills the remaining gap: the originating prompt/intent behind each artifact.

This mirrors the existing ## Recover convention (see add-resource): plain markdown, git-tracked, machine-readable, no database. It is optional — nothing here runs unless the project toggle is on.

The toggle (check this first)

Provenance is opt-in per project, declared in the project's CLAUDE.md:

## Provenance

Prompt tracking: **off**
<!-- When on, generated artifacts record their originating prompt/intent in
     Wiki/Prompts.md and carry an embedded back-pointer. See the `provenance` skill. -->

Before recording anything, check the toggle:

grep -qiE 'prompt tracking:[[:space:]]*\*{0,2}on' CLAUDE.md && echo on || echo off

• off (default, or section absent): do nothing. Never create Wiki/Prompts.md, never embed back-pointers. Stay silent — do not nag the user to turn it on.
• on: record provenance for each artifact you generate, per the rules below.

To flip the toggle, edit the Prompt tracking: line in CLAUDE.md (and seed Wiki/Prompts.md the first time it goes on — see Turning it on).

The canonical record

One small set of fields, reused in the ledger and in every embedded back-pointer:

Fidelity: default to a concise one-line intent. Add the verbatim prompt when the request is short, reproducibility matters, or the user asks for it. Do not paste long conversational text into the ledger.

The central ledger — Wiki/Prompts.md

Append-only, newest at the bottom (matching the Work ## Progress convention). One ### block per generation event:

# Prompt Ledger

Append-only record of the prompts/intent behind generated artifacts.
Toggle in CLAUDE.md (`Prompt tracking`). See the `provenance` skill for the format.

### 2026-05-29 — NotebooksLLM/RicciCurvature.nb
- **Intent:** Explore Ollivier–Ricci curvature on graphs with pastel plots
- **Prompt:** "make a notebook about ollivier ricci curvature on graphs"
- **Generator:** new-notebook · claude-opus-4-8
- **Source:** NotebooksLLM/RicciCurvature.md

Omit lines that don't apply (e.g. no Source: for a .wl file; drop Prompt: when you're only keeping the distilled intent). Register the ledger once in Wiki/Index.md under a ## Prompts section:

## Prompts

- [Prompt Ledger](Prompts.md) — prompts/intent behind generated artifacts

Embedded back-pointers (so provenance travels with the file)

In addition to the ledger entry, embed provenance inside each artifact so it survives when the file is shared standalone.

Notebooks

Write a leading HTML comment into the NotebooksLLM/*.md source. HTML comments are dropped by the {"Markdown","Notebook"} importer, so they never become cells:

<!-- provenance:
     intent: Explore Ollivier–Ricci curvature on graphs
     prompt: "make a notebook about ollivier ricci curvature on graphs"
     generator: new-notebook
     model: claude-opus-4-8
     date: 2026-05-29 -->
# Ollivier–Ricci Curvature

Scripts/generate_notebooks.wls parses that block and injects it into the generated .nb as Notebook[cells, TaggingRules -> {"Provenance" -> <|...|>}] — Wolfram's native, non-rendering metadata slot. You do not write TaggingRules by hand; the script does it. When the comment is absent, the .nb is generated exactly as before (no TaggingRules). See new-notebook.

To read it back from a notebook:

"Provenance" /. (TaggingRules /. Options[Import["NotebooksLLM/Name.nb"], TaggingRules])

Paclet functions / code (Kernel/*.wl, Code/*.wl)

A header comment above the file or the function:

(* Provenance: 2026-05-29 · intent: Wasserstein-1 distance on graphs
   ledger: Wiki/Prompts.md *)

Wiki articles (Concepts / Definitions / Theorems)

A ## Provenance section at the bottom of the article, mirroring ## Recover:

## Provenance
- Intent: ...
- Generated: 2026-05-29 · update-wiki · claude-opus-4-8
- Ledger: Wiki/Prompts.md

Work items (Work/<bucket>/<Name>.md)

Capture the originating request in the Spec and each session's prompt in Progress:

• In ## Spec: an Origin: line with the verbatim request that prompted the item.
• In each ## Progress block: a **Prompt:** line with the session's request.

Turning it on

When the user asks to enable provenance:

1. Set Prompt tracking: **on** in the project's CLAUDE.md (add the ## Provenance section if absent).
2. Create Wiki/Prompts.md with the header shown above (if it doesn't exist).
3. Add the ## Prompts entry to Wiki/Index.md.

To disable, set Prompt tracking: **off**. Leave existing entries in place — they are part of the git history.

Backfilling

When the user wants to record provenance for something just produced (or an older artifact), append a ledger entry and add the matching embedded back-pointer using the rules above. Distil the intent from the conversation; include the verbatim prompt only if it's short or requested.

How other skills use this

These skills check the toggle and, when on, record provenance in this format:

• new-notebook — writes the leading HTML comment into the notebook source and appends a ledger entry. The script propagates the comment to TaggingRules.
• update-wiki — appends a ## Provenance section to newly generated articles and a ledger entry.
• work / next-session — record Origin: in the Spec and **Prompt:** in each Progress block; mirror to the ledger when on.

This skill is the single source of truth for the format — the others reference it rather than redefining it.