The Six-Hop Evidence Chain: Moving AI from Seeing to Trusting

The six-hop evidence chain moves a claim from what AI can see to what AI dares to cite, covering six stages: discoverable, openable, extractable, verifiable, attributable, and corroborable. If any hop breaks, the claim is only a statement, not evidence.

Who it applies to and prerequisites

It applies to method pages, metric pages, and whitepapers that need generative AI to cite specific conclusions. There are three prerequisites, and missing any one turns the check into a formality.

• Body pages can be crawled, are not blocked by robots, and appear in the sitemap.
• Key claims are numbered one by one and mapped to sources.
• There is a source register that can be maintained over time.

Why do it this way

Citations in generative answers rest on two actions: the content enters the retrieval candidates, and the candidate is treated as a basis. Discoverability and openability decide the first; extractability and verifiability decide the second.

The six hops are not a score but a process of elimination. If any hop fails, the claim is downgraded in the citation chain: without a source it becomes a statement, without attribution it becomes unsourced content, and without corroboration the perception is hard to establish.

Writing the six hops as fixed actions has one benefit: check results are reproducible. If different people check the same claim, they should reach the same conclusion.

Steps

1. Discoverable. Confirm robots allows crawling, the sitemap has an entry, and the site index has an entry point. Criterion: searching the site name plus the title locates the page.
2. Openable. Confirm the URL returns a normal status stably and body text does not depend on login or front-end rendering. Criterion: body text is still readable with scripts disabled.
3. Extractable. Write the conclusion as a sentence under 60 characters that still stands out of context. Criterion: sent alone to someone who has not read the page, that person can restate the subject and the conclusion.
4. Verifiable. Attach an evidence block to each claim, with name, organization, date, location, excerpt, and link. Criterion: all seven items present and the excerpt under 200 characters.
5. Attributable. Confirm the author and publisher identifiers are consistent site-wide and that structured data matches body text. Criterion: exactly one fixed identifier each for author and publisher.
6. Corroborable. Obtain a verifiable real mention off-site, such as an open-source repository, a community share, or a public event. Criterion: the external address opens and is not an advertising post.

Counterexample: complete links, still unverifiable claims

The following is a common counterexample (an illustration, not a real client). The page places a row of reference links below a key conclusion; all links open, but none is labeled as supporting which sentence.

Readers must search the links for the matching passage themselves, so the real hop count exceeds three. Such an evidence chain breaks after the third hop, and the claim is only a paraphrase.

The fix is to split sources down to the claim level: one claim maps to one evidence block, the block states the location and excerpt, and the link reaches the original text.

Evidence and basis

【Claim】A core claim must pass six verification stages, and any broken hop downgrades it to a statement. 【Basis】This site's method page The Six-Hop Evidence Chain (working definition). 【Publisher】GEOA (Xingge, one-person company). 【Date】Published 2026-11-09; review cycle 365 days. 【Location】Section 2, Why do it this way. 【Excerpt】The six hops are not a score but a process of elimination. 【Link】https://geoa.com.cn/method/evidence-chain/ | verified 2026-11-09

This method is empirical, marked L2, has no third-party validation, and does not constitute an industry standard.

Limitations and unsuitable scenarios

• Corroboration depends on real external subjects; without a third party the hop cannot pass, which is a factual limit rather than an execution problem.
• Passing all six hops only means the conditions for citation exist, not that citation will happen.
• Pages that require login or interaction to view do not fit the openable hop.
• Content with a short shelf life, such as policy interpretation, needs a shorter review cycle; otherwise the passed status expires quickly.

Self-check list

FAQ

Must all six hops pass? Yes. If any hop breaks, the claim is downgraded in the citation chain and cannot be used as an external conclusion.

What if there is no external mention? State the gap honestly, mark the claim at most L2, describe it as an empirical method, and do not invent third-party endorsement.

How do the six hops relate to the three-click rule? The six hops are a checklist of stages, and the three-click rule governs the click distance to sources; they are used together.

Related reading

Related sections: glossary index, metric index, method index, checklist index, research index, editorial policy.