factchk

factchk is a skill for Claude Code from LilMGenius/paperthin. It costs 136 tokens per session (628 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A fact-checking step for claims about what is real, plausible, impossible, new, or already established. It compares those claims with external sources in both directions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before shipping writing or other artifacts that make reality-based claims. It verifies, corrects, or flags claims when sources cannot be reached.
Why use it?
It reduces errors caused by assuming something is obvious or unrealistic without checking reliable evidence.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the paperthin plugin — 28 skills shipped together

not rated 1.1krepo +68 today A scan Socket: passSnyk: warnSkillSpector: pass 136 tokens original MIT

Good fit Use it before shipping writing or other artifacts that make reality-based claims. It verifies, corrects, or flags claims when sources cannot be reached.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/factchk
About the project

Paperthin is a collection of low-level design patterns that coding agents can apply as repeatable checks and actions during software work. It is for people using agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or other supported tools, and its catalogue entries package the patterns as skills, an instruction, and a plugin.

LilMGenius/paperthin · 1,077 stars · on GitHub · paperthin.ai

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add LilMGenius/paperthin --skill factchk
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/LilMGenius/paperthin

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install paperthin, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 28 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for factchk

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/factchk.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/factchk)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/factchk"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/lilmgenius/paperthin/factchk.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 136 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 628 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 6 Jul 2026
  • Snyk warn 6 Jul 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00136 $0.00628
Opus 5 $0.00068 $0.00314
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00126
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00063

Measured 7d ago against content hash 17ff29bec3af, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

factchk scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 7d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/depth/factchk/SKILL.md · 29 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 29 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Check what's asserted as real against reality — in both directions — before it ships.

Goal

The author's "plausible / absurd / novel" is the least reliable line in any artifact. Human priors fail both ways — they exclude the real (desert frogs exist) and normalize the impossible (weightless crates). factchk scans claims presented as reality-grounded, verifies each against external sources in both directions, and fixes or flags. Its scope is a claim about the world — whether what's asserted as real is real — not the soundness of a validation or the survival of a whole plan.

Workflow

  1. Scan for reality-grounded assertions — anything leaning on "this is plausible / realistic / absurd / novel / impossible because X," including the claim you are about to write, not only those already on the page.
  2. Verify each against external sources (web search, open references) in both directions: could the "absurd" be real? could the "obvious" or "novel" be false or long-established? If you cannot reach a source, flag — never assert from intuition.
  3. Fix or flag: a mechanically-clear error (a wrong date, a misattributed source, a falsified number) → correct it with a cited source; a judgment call (a contested or interpretive claim) → surface it, don't silently rewrite.
  4. Report each claim, its verdict, the source, and — for a failed claim — which direction it failed.

Rules

  • Target claims asserted as reality-grounded, never deliberate fiction ("in our world, boxes float" is a declared choice). When it is unclear whether a claim is an in-world choice or a real-world assertion, flag, don't fix — the hardest call in the skill.
  • Flagging only the unrealistic catches half the errors.
  • The trigger is metacognition, not knowledge: you can't know every domain, so the moment you are about to assert a checkable fact from a feeling, verify it instead of trusting the feeling.
  • A pass that finds nothing changes nothing.

Verification

Read the full file on GitHub · 29 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 29 lines · 136 tokens per session scan A 17ff29bec3af

Subscribe to this mod's changes

factchk is a skill published in the GitHub repository LilMGenius/paperthin (1,077 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 136 tokens to every session and 628 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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