Provenance

The full paper trail behind a fact or an answer: where it started, when it was fetched, and what changed it on the way. Broader than a citation — a citation names the document the answer came from; provenance covers the whole journey, not just the last place it passed through.

A chain of custody. Not "this figure came from the spreadsheet" but "this figure came from the spreadsheet, which was exported from the accounts system in March, after someone corrected two rows by hand."

Why it matters: when an AI gives a wrong answer, provenance is how you tell the difference between the AI making it up and the AI faithfully repeating something that was already wrong when it arrived. Those two problems have completely different fixes, and without a trail you can't tell which one you've got.

Related: Citation · Grounding