When two sources disagree
Adding a source with fact, instruction or playbook authority triggers a contradiction check against everything already approved. Anything found is recorded on the source as a claim, a counter-claim, a severity and a reason, and the source is parked in needs_review instead of going live. Connect does not pick a winner — a person edits one of the two documents.
What is compared, and what is not#
The new text is checked against the workspace's existing approved material: the enabled typed entries in categories that carry authority, and the active sources marked verified_fact or owner_instruction. Both sides are quoted as untrusted data, so an instruction sitting inside either document is compared, never obeyed.
- Direct factual contradictions count — two statements that cannot both be true of the same current product or policy.
- Materially incompatible business instructions count — two directions that cannot both be followed.
- An omission does not count. A new document being silent about something is not a conflict.
- Different wording does not count, nor does one document simply carrying more detail than another.
- A compatible difference of scope does not count — a rule for one region beside a rule for another is two rules, not a contradiction.
What is recorded#
| Field | Contents |
|---|---|
| New claim | The sentence from the source being added |
| Existing claim | The sentence from approved material it contradicts |
| Severity | high, medium or low. High means both cannot safely be true at once. |
| Reason | Why the two are incompatible, in the checker's words |
Up to twenty are kept on the record and shown on the source. The source's status becomes needs_review, its passages exist but are excluded from every answer, and the ingest is logged as a warning rather than a success. Nothing about the existing material changes: the incumbent keeps answering, and the newcomer waits.
It fails closed, on purpose#
If the contradiction check cannot run at all — the model is unreachable, the key is exhausted, anything — the source does not sail through. A single conflict of medium severity is recorded instead, saying in its reason that the automated scan was unavailable and a person must review before activation. Silence is treated as a finding, not as a pass.
The same instinct governs review. Warnings from the injection scan can be approved by a person, deliberately, with a note. Conflicts cannot be waved through the same way: activation is refused while a conflict stands, and the message says so. The only route to active is to change one of the two documents so the contradiction is gone.
Deciding, when two documents both look right#
Read both claims as they are recorded, not as you remember the documents.
Result About half of what looks like a contradiction is two true statements about different things — a price band and a promotional rate, a standard lead time and an expedited one.
If they are genuinely different cases, make that explicit in the text of one of them.
Result Re-index, and the check runs again on the new wording. A qualifying clause is usually the whole fix.
If one is simply out of date, retire it — disable a typed entry, or delete the superseded source.
Result The conflict disappears with the claim it was made against, and the new source can be activated.
Record the decision where the next person will find it.
Result The review note on the source is the natural place. Six months later, 'why does the bank say ninety days when the old contract said sixty' is a question the note answers and the documents do not.
Questions#
Could the checker be wrong?
Yes, in both directions. It can flag two statements that are compatible in a way the text does not make explicit, and it can miss a contradiction expressed obliquely. It is a net, not a proof. The design accounts for that by making a false positive cheap — a person reads two sentences and clears it — rather than by trusting it to be right.
Why not let Connect resolve it by preferring the newer document?
Because newness is not authority. The newer file is often a draft, an export or a supplier's version of a document the business has amended. Choosing between two claims about what a business promises is a decision with consequences, and the whole authority model exists to keep those decisions with the people who bear them.
Does a conflict affect answers that were already sent?
No. Those were sent under the material that was active at the time, and their citations still name it. What the conflict changes is the future: the new source contributes nothing until it is resolved, so answers continue on the old basis until somebody acts.