The annotated document — method and template
How to brief others on a primary document so that the brief survives being checked — four marks, a template, and a source-tier scale stated out loud.
Why it exists
A summary cannot be audited; a marked-up document can. The discipline is small and it is the whole product: go in the document's order rather than your own, disagree in place at the passage, mark what you could not verify, and count the natural unit rather than estimating it. The moment you reorganize a document into your own argument you have written an opinion piece with extra steps, and the reader was trusting you for fidelity.
What it contains
Why the annotation rather than the summary
The four marks, one per passage, and the obligation each one carries
The mark nobody else publishes, and why it does the most work
A template for a single annotated passage
A source-tier scale stated in the margin and out loud
Built from public standards and general practice. The instruments cited in this artifact are checked against their primary sources on an ongoing basis. Instruments move — several cited here changed inside the last year — so verify against the source before you rely on one. If you find something stale, tell me and I will correct it.
The four marks
Every annotation is exactly one of these, and each passage gets one.
| Mark | Means | The obligation it carries |
|---|---|---|
| Agree | The document is right and the point is load-bearing. | State why it matters, briefly. |
| Disagree | The document overreaches, or is wrong. | State the counter-argument at that passage, not in a closing section. |
| Unverified | A figure or claim the document attributes to a source you did not open. | Name the tier and say so plainly: 'they cite this; I have not read the underlying study.' |
| Not licensed | A conclusion readers commonly draw from this passage that the passage does not support. | Name the overreach and refuse it. This is the mark that does the most work and the one nobody else publishes — the standing example is a supervisory deferral being widely read as an exemption. |
The source-tier scale
Stated in the margin and out loud, so a reader can weigh every claim without taking your word for its provenance.
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| S | Primary, opened and read in full. |
| A | Cited by the document; the underlying source was not opened. |
| C | Secondary reporting of a primary that could not be reached. |
| D | Not used. If it would be D, it does not ship. |
The template, per passage
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| The passage | Quoted verbatim, with its locator. |
| Mark | One of the four. |
| What it says | A plain-terms restatement, with no interpretation yet. |
| What it means | The mechanism, in operational terms. |
| My read | Agreement, disagreement, or the limit of what could be checked. |
| What it does not license | The available overreach, named and refused. |
Want this applied to your estate?
These artifacts are general by design — and they are the method behind the Agent Estate Review: two to three weeks establishing what is actually running, what each thing is permitted to do, and where you could not evidence it if you were asked next week. You have just read how it works.