Notes You Can Still Cite a Week Later
Keep source, page and authorship on every line of notes, so nothing reaches your draft unattributable.
What it is for
A line format for research notes taken while summarising several sources at once: claim, source and page, plus a marker for whether the line is a machine summary, your own quote, or your own thinking. Use it during reading, not after. It prevents the draft where you cannot tell your sentences from the tool's, and cannot find the page a number came from.
The skill
Never let a summary become a paragraph in your draft without
carrying its source with it. Do this while you read. Afterwards is
when sources go missing.
Every line you keep gets three parts, on one line:
<the claim, in your own words> | <source, page> | <S / Q / M>
What the letter means:
S = a summary line you accepted from the tool
Q = an exact quote you copied yourself
M = your own thinking — yours, not the source's
Keep the M lines in the same document as the rest. Putting your own
thinking in a separate file is how you lose track of which ideas
were yours, and how someone else's phrasing ends up in your draft
under your name.
Rules:
- Rewrite every S line in your own words before you keep it. If
you cannot rewrite it, you did not understand it — go read the
passage.
- Never keep an S line for a number, a date, or a definition.
Those become Q lines with a page, every time.
- When two sources say the same thing, keep two lines. Collapsing
them into one is how a single origin becomes "widely reported".
- When a source hedges — may, suggests, in a small sample — the
hedge is part of the claim. Carry it word for word.
At the end, re-sort the lines by claim instead of by source.
Anything with only one line under it is a single-source claim, and
your draft has to say so out loud.
What this prevents: a finished draft in which you can no longer
tell which sentences you wrote, which the tool wrote, and which
belong to a paper you now have to go and find again.
How to install it
1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template. 2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona. 3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.