Skill: quochungto/bookforge-credibility-evidence-selector (version 1.0.0)

--- name: credibility-evidence-selector description: "Pick the strongest credibility evidence for a claim and kill weak evidence chains with the Sinatra Test. Use this skill whenever the user asks 'how do I prove this?', 'how do I make this more credible?', 'which statistic should I cite?', 'do I need a source for this?', 'how do I build trust?', 'this claim sounds unbelievable', 'they won't believe us', 'we need a case study', 'should I quote an expert?', 'is this testimonial strong enough?', 'which proof point should I lead with?', 'my pitch needs more evidence', 'the numbers aren't landing', 'how do I back this up without a credentials wall?', 'who should say this for maximum credibility?', or 'is one example enough or do I need data?'. Also invoke when the user has a marketing claim, sales pitch, fundraising ask, research finding, policy argument, product benefit, or security/reliability promise and must choose between authority quotes, customer stories, statistics, vivid details, testable demos, or a single hero example. This skill ranks evidence across six named credibility categories (external authority, antiauthority, testable credentials, vivid details, Sinatra Test hero example, statistics-as-illustration) and applies the Sinatra Test as a pass/fail filter to cut weak chains. Run BEFORE shipping any claim that a skeptical audience might doubt." version: 1.0.0 homepage: https://github.com/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills/tree/main/books/made-to-stick/skills/credibility-evidence-selector metadata: {"openclaw":{"emoji":"🔬","homepage":"https://github.com/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills"}} status: draft source-books: - id: made-to-stick title: "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" authors: ["Chip Heath", "Dan Heath"] chapters: [9, 13] tags: [credibility, evidence, persuasion, marketing, sales, messaging, sinatra-test, proof, bookforge] depends-on: [] execution: tier: 1 mode: plan-only inputs: - type: document description: "The claim the user needs to support (one sentence)." - type: document description: "Evidence inventory — the proof points, stories, stats, testimonials, and demos the user has available." - type: document description: "Audience profile — who will judge the claim and what they are skeptical about." tools-required: [Read, Write] tools-optional: [Edit] mcps-required: [] environment: "Operates on prose artifacts — claims, pitches, marketing copy, fundraising asks, research summaries. No codebase or tooling required." discovery: goal: "Select the strongest credibility evidence for a claim and apply the Sinatra Test to kill weak evidence chains." tasks: - "Rank available evidence across six credibility categories" - "Run the Sinatra Test on a candidate hero example as a pass/fail gate" - "Decide whether to lead with an authority quote, a testable demo, a single hero case, or vivid details" - "Diagnose a claim that feels unconvincing and prescribe the missing credibility type" - "Convert an abstract statistic into a human-scale illustration" audience: roles: [marketer, founder, sales-professional, communicator, fundraiser, researcher, policy-writer] experience: any when_to_use: triggers: - "User has a claim that a skeptical audience might reject" - "User is choosing between stats, quotes, stories, and demos as proof" - "User is drafting a credibility paragraph and has too many options" - "A case study feels weak and the user is not sure why" prerequisites: [] not_for: - "Fabricating evidence — this skill selects from what already exists" - "Running A/B copy experiments — use a testing skill" - "Extracting the core message itself — use core-message-extractor first" environment: codebase_required: false codebase_helpful: false works_offline: true quality: scores: {} tested_at: null eval_count: 0 assertion_count: 0 iterations_needed: 0 --- # Credibility Evidence Selector ## When to Use You have a claim a skeptical audience might reject, and a bag of possible proof points (stats, quotes, stories, demos, details). You need to decide which evidence to lead with — and which to cut. This skill ranks evidence across six named credibility sources and applies the Sinatra Test as a pass/fail filter to kill weak chains before they reach the audience. Run this skill when the user is about to ship a claim without thinking hard about *why* the audience would believe it. Run it BEFORE writing the final copy, not after — the choice of evidence type reshapes the whole paragraph. **Preconditions to verify before starting:** - You know the specific claim. If missing, ask: "What is the exact one-sentence claim you need the audience to believe?" - You have an evidence inventory (even a rough list). If missing, ask: "What proof points do you have — stats, stories, customers, experts, demos, details?" - You know the audience's default skepticism. If missing, ask: "Who is judging this, and what is the one thing they'd say to dismiss it?" **Do NOT use this skill for:** - Fabricating evidence. This skill ranks what exists; it never invents sources. - Designing experiments or user studies. - Extracting the core message (use `core-message-extractor` first — credibility is applied to a core, not in place of one). ## Context & Input Gathering ### Required Context (must have — ask if missing) - **The claim:** the exact sentence the audience must believe. -> Check prompt for: a quoted claim, a pitch paragraph, a headline, a research finding. -> Check environment for: `claim.md`, `draft.md`, `pitch.md`, `core-message.md`. -> If still missing, ask: "What is the one-sentence claim — the thing the audience must believe?" - **Evidence inventory:** the candidate proof points available. -> Check prompt for: lists of customers, stats, quotes, case studies, demos, testimonials. -> Check environment for: `evidence.md`, `proof-points.md`, `case-studies/`, `testimonials.md`, `customer-stories/`, a `data/` dir. -> If still missing, ask: "What evidence do you already have? Dump a rough list — customers, numbers, experts, stories, demos, details — I will rank them." - **Audience skepticism profile:** who judges the claim, and their default objection. -> Check prompt for: role, domain, familiarity, prior objections. -> If missing, ask: "Who will read this, and what would they say to dismiss the claim?" ### Observable Context (gather from environment) - **Prior credibility drafts:** existing "why trust us" copy, testimonial pages, case study PDFs. -> Look for: `about.md`, `trust.md`, `social-proof.md`, `testimonials.md`, `case-studies/`. -> If present: mine for candidate evidence; treat as raw material, not final answer. - **Brand voice constraints:** legal review rules, claims guidelines. -> Look for: `brand-guide.md`, `legal/claims.md`. -> If present: note which evidence types are disallowed (e.g., "no unverified customer quotes"). ### Default Assumptions - Medium: short-form text (one paragraph, one slide, one email). State this assumption if used. - Audience default: mildly skeptical professional, not a hostile expert. Upgrade to hostile if the user says so. - Evidence claims are truthful — the skill trusts the user's inventory and does not fact-check. ### Sufficiency Threshold - SUFFICIENT: claim + evidence inventory + audience known. - PROCEED WITH DEFAULTS: claim + evidence known, audience inferable from context (state the inference). - MUST ASK: claim is not a single sentence, OR evidence inventory is completely empty (cannot rank nothing). ## Process ### Step 1: Lock the Claim to a Single Sentence **ACTION:** Write the claim as one sentence with a clear subject, verb, and measurable predicate. Reject hedges ("might," "could help," "in some cases"). Save it under a `## Claim` heading in `credibility-plan.md`. **WHY:** Credibility attaches to a specific assertion, not a vibe. If the claim is "we help teams ship faster," no evidence can be strong or weak — the claim is too fuzzy to judge. Locking the sentence forces the later steps to pick evidence that actually answers the specific assertion. Fuzzy claims are where weak evidence hides; tightening the claim is half the work of ranking the proof. **IF** the claim is still multi-part ("we are fast, cheap, and reliable") -> split into one file per claim and run this skill once per claim. **ELSE** -> proceed. ### Step 2: Inventory Evidence Into the Six Categories **ACTION:** Take every proof point the user has and sort it into one of six credibility categories. Some evidence fits multiple — list it under the strongest fit only. Write the result as a `## Evidence Inventory` section with six sub-headings. **The Six Credibility Sources (from Chapter 4 CREDIBLE):** 1. **External Authority** — a recognized expert, institution, or celebrity endorsement. Example: a Nobel laureate, an industry analyst, a peer-reviewed study. *Strength:* borrows the audience's existing trust. *Weakness:* cheap to fake and audiences are now skeptical of expert voices; "analyst-quoted" pitches blur together. 2. **Antiauthority (Credible Victim / Lived Experience)** — an ordinary person who lived the consequences. Not an expert; their biography IS the proof. Example: Pam Laffin — age 29, mother of two, started smoking at 10, emphysema at 24, failed lung transplant — used for anti-smoking messaging because no statistic lands like a face that earned the cost. *Strength:* inverts expert fatigue. *Weakness:* emotionally heavy; must be ethical and consensual. 3. **Testable Credentials ("Try It Yourself")** — the audience can verify the claim in real time, with their own senses, before committing. Example: Wendy's "Where's the beef?" (you can see the tiny patty). Snickers "satisfies" (you can feel it). Barry Marshall drinking a beaker of *H. pylori* bacteria, inducing gastritis, then curing himself — a self-experiment as a public, falsifiable demonstration that ulcers are bacterial. *Strength:* collapses the skeptic's objection into a single observable act. *Weakness:* only works when real-time verification is possible. 4. **Vivid, Convincing Details** — specific sensory or biographical detail that an inventor could not have bothered to fake. Example: the juror study where jurors believed a mother who testified her child had a "Goofy toothbrush" he loved to brush with — the trivial detail signaled an observer telling the truth, not a litigant pitching a case. *Strength:* non-obvious signal that the speaker has been close to the thing. *Weakness:* easy to confuse with purple prose; the detail must be load-bearing, not decorative. 5. **Sinatra Test (One Overwhelming Hero Example)** — a single reference so dominant that the audience cannot doubt you afterward. Named after "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere." Example: Safexpress, an Indian logistics firm, won enterprise contracts by saying "we delivered the final Harry Potter book to 6,000 Indian bookstores in one day, sealed, no leaks" — one sentence that obliterates the due-diligence conversation. Fort Knox security contractor = you're in the running for every security contract. *Strength:* replaces a wall of credentials with one unforgettable story. *Weakness:* only works when the hero case is genuinely the hardest case in the domain. 6. **Statistics-as-Illustration (Human Scale)** — a number converted into a concrete, sensory comparison so the audience can feel the magnitude. Example: explaining US/Soviet nuclear arsenals not as "thousands of warheads" but as "if a BB represents the Hiroshima bomb, the world's nuclear stockpile is a garbage can full of BBs — and one BB can level a city." Stats as raw numbers are forgettable; stats as illustration are sticky. *Strength:* anchors an abstract scale to a physical image. *Weakness:* only works if the illustration is honest — if the analogy flatters the number, the audience will catch you. **WHY:** Sorting forces you to see that you usually do not have six types of evidence — you have two or three, and one slot is empty. The empty slots are signals: if you have zero testable credentials, ask whether you can manufacture one (a free trial, a public benchmark, a demo). The inventory is also the cut list; evidence that does not fit any category is usually rationalization, not proof. **Anti-pattern to flag:** *credentials wall.* If the entire inventory lands under "External Authority," the user is leaning on a stack of expert quotes. Audiences skim credentials walls and remember nothing. Go find one testable credential or one Sinatra hero and lead with that instead. ### Step 3: Rank by the Default Preference Order **ACTION:** Apply the default preference order from strongest to weakest and rank the candidates. Write the result as a `## Ranked Evidence` section. **Default preference order** (Chapter 4 CREDIBLE): 1. **Testable Credentials** — the audience verifies with their own senses. 2. **Sinatra Test Hero Example** — one overwhelming case. 3. **Vivid Convincing Details** — truthful trivia that signals firsthand knowledge. 4. **Antiauthority (Credible Victim)** — lived experience beats expertise for behavior change. 5. **Statistics-as-Illustration** — numbers rescued by human-scale analogy. 6. **External Authority** — expert quote as last resort, not first move. **WHY:** The ordering is not arbitrary — it tracks how audiences actually process claims. Testable credentials short-circuit skepticism ("I just saw it"); Sinatra heroes override it ("if they did THAT, I believe the rest"); vivid details bypass it ("no one would bother to invent that"); antiauthorities reframe it ("a doctor would lie; this mother wouldn't"); illustrated stats make it tangible; and authorities — cheapest to fake, most diluted by overuse — come last. Inverting this order is the most common credibility mistake: leading with a quote from a Gartner report when you have a customer who would pass the Sinatra Test. **Override rules** (apply when defaults don't fit): - **IF** the audience is a domain of credentialed peers (scientists reviewing research, doctors reading a trial) -> External Authority moves up to #1 or #2, because the audience's own credential norms require it. - **IF** the claim is a behavior-change ask aimed at the people who resist expert messaging (teens on smoking, developers on technical debt, users on security hygiene) -> Antiauthority moves to #1. - **IF** the claim is about scale / magnitude / cost / risk that audiences cannot feel intuitively -> Statistics-as-Illustration moves up (nuclear-warheads-as-BBs was the only way to make that scale real). ### Step 4: Run the Sinatra Test as a Pass/Fail Gate **ACTION:** Take the strongest candidate from Step 3 (especially if it's a case study, customer example, or hero story) and run the Sinatra Test as a binary pass/fail. Write the result as a `## Sinatra Test` section with verdict, reasoning, and — if failed — a replacement plan. **The Sinatra Test, stated formally:** > An example passes the Sinatra Test when ONE example alone is enough to establish credibility in a given domain — because the example represents the *hardest case* the domain can throw at you. **The three questions:** 1. **Is this the hardest case?** If the audience heard only this one example and nothing else, would they concede the full category? (Fort Knox security = yes, any security contract follows. Harry Potter delivery for 6,000 bookstores in one day, sealed = yes, any logistics contract follows.) 2. **Is the hard part legible?** Can the audience *see* why it was hard without a paragraph of explanation? Sinatra examples are self-evidently difficult — "Fort Knox" and "Harry Potter launch day" need no setup. If you must explain why the case was hard, it is not Sinatra material. 3. **Is it verifiable?** Can the audience check the claim if they wanted to? A Sinatra hero that cannot survive a two-minute Google search is worse than no Sinatra at all — it becomes a credibility *liability* on discovery. **WHY:** The Sinatra Test exists because one dominant example is cheaper and stickier than a capabilities deck, but a *weak* hero example is worse than a deck — the audience senses the cherry-picking and punishes you. The three questions are the diagnostic: hardest case, legibly hard, checkable. Any failure means replace, don't patch. The Marshall ulcer story passes because drinking a beaker of bacteria is unambiguous; a vendor's "we helped a Fortune 500 save 15%" fails because it is neither the hardest case nor self-evidently hard. **IF** the candidate passes all three questions -> mark PASS, make it the lead evidence. **ELSE IF** it fails one question -> mark FAIL, cut it from the lead, and either find a stronger example or fall back to the next category in the ranking (vivid details or testable credentials). **ELSE IF** no candidate passes -> do NOT fabricate one. Accept that the claim has no Sinatra-grade proof and move to multi-source credibility (testable demo + vivid detail + illustrated stat). **Anti-pattern to flag:** *Sinatra inflation.* The user wants their best customer to pass the Sinatra Test and is willing to argue for it. If you have to argue, it fails — the test is whether the audience recognizes the hardness instantly. Three extra sentences of framing is a flunk. ### Step 5: Check for the "Sound Bite / Credentials Wall" Failure Modes **ACTION:** Review the ranked evidence against two named failure modes from the book and note any hits in a `## Diagnostic Notes` section. **Failure mode A — The Credentials Wall.** Symptom: the evidence is a list of logos, titles, and expert quotes with no single piece of proof an audience can remember. Consequence: audience forgets everything and defaults to their prior belief. Fix: replace the wall with one Sinatra hero or one testable credential. If you cannot, your claim is stronger than your evidence — shrink the claim. **Failure mode B — The Raw Statistic.** Symptom: a scary or impressive number without a human-scale translation ("we prevent 3.2M attacks per day"). Consequence: the number washes past the audience. Fix: apply the nuclear-warheads-as-BBs move — convert to a sensory comparison. "3.2M attacks per day = 37 attacks every second — one every time you blink." **WHY:** Credibility is a negative-space problem. The right evidence makes the claim stick, but the *wrong* evidence actively weakens it — a credentials wall signals insecurity, and a raw statistic signals that the speaker never tested their own number on a human. Running these checks after ranking catches cases where the strongest evidence in the inventory still triggers a failure mode, and the fix is not ranking-higher but *rewriting* the evidence into a stronger form. ### Step 6: Write the Output Artifact **ACTION:** Assemble the final `credibility-plan.md` with these sections, in order: ``` # Credibility Plan ## Claim <one-sentence claim> ## Audience Skepticism - Who: <role / segment> - Default objection: <the one thing they'd say to dismiss this> ## Evidence Inventory (Six Sources) ### External Authority - <evidence> — <one-line note> ### Antiauthority (Credible Victim) - ... ### Testable Credentials - ... ### Vivid Convincing Details - ... ### Sinatra Test Hero Example - ... ### Statistics-as-Illustration - ... ## Ranked Evidence 1. <category> — <evidence> — <why it leads> 2. ... ## Sinatra Test - Candidate: <the hero example tested> - Hardest case? <yes/no + reasoning> - Hard part legible? <yes/no + reasoning> - Verifiable? <yes/no + reasoning> - VERDICT: PASS | FAIL - IF FAIL: <replacement plan> ## Diagnostic Notes - Credentials wall? <yes/no + fix> - Raw statistic? <yes/no + illustration> ## Recommendation Lead with: <the one piece of evidence to put first> Support with: <1-2 backup pieces> Cut: <evidence that weakens the claim and should be removed> ## Assumptions - <any inferred audience/claim/evidence assumption the user should confirm> ``` **WHY:** The artifact separates *ranking* (what I have) from *recommendation* (what to lead with) from *cut list* (what to remove). Users resist cuts; seeing them attached to specific failure modes ("this is a credentials-wall entry") makes the cut negotiable point-by-point rather than an all-or-nothing argument. The Sinatra Test section is kept verbatim (three questions, verdict, replacement) because it is the single most defensible step — a downstream reviewer who disagrees with the lead evidence has to disagree with a named, checkable test. ## Inputs - The one-sentence claim that needs credibility. - The evidence inventory (rough dump is fine — customers, stats, experts, stories, demos, details). - The audience skepticism profile (who judges; their default objection). - Optional: medium constraints (character limit, slide vs paragraph vs email), legal/brand guidelines on allowed evidence. ## Outputs - `credibility-plan.md` — the artifact defined in Step 6, containing: - The locked claim. - Evidence sorted into the six categories. - Ranked evidence with an explicit lead. - A Sinatra Test block with pass/fail and reasoning. - Diagnostic notes on credentials-wall and raw-statistic failure modes. - A cut list of evidence that should be removed. - An assumptions block for anything inferred. ## Key Principles - **One overwhelming example beats a wall of credentials.** — The Sinatra Test exists because audiences remember one hero case and forget ten expert quotes. When you have a genuine hardest-case reference, lead with it and cut the quote stack; when you don't, do not manufacture one — fall back to testable credentials or vivid details. - **Testable credentials collapse skepticism into a single observable act.** — "Where's the beef?" works because the audience verifies with their own eyes. Barry Marshall drinking *H. pylori* works because the demonstration is public and falsifiable. When you can give the audience a way to check the claim themselves, nothing else in the evidence stack matters nearly as much. - **Antiauthority beats authority for behavior change.** — The people most resistant to expert messaging — teens on smoking, developers on technical debt, users on security — are often best reached by someone who lived the consequences, not someone who studied them. Pam Laffin's biography outperformed any Surgeon General report because her body was the proof. - **Raw statistics are forgettable; illustrated statistics are sticky.** — A number alone ("3.2M attacks per day") washes past. The same number translated to human scale ("37 every second — one every time you blink") lands. The nuclear-warheads-as-BBs move is not decoration; it is how abstract magnitude becomes emotionally real. - **Vivid details signal firsthand observation.** — The juror who believed a mother because she mentioned a "Goofy toothbrush" did not decide on the toothbrush — she decided on the fact that no liar would bother inventing that detail. Load-bearing trivia is a credibility signal; decorative trivia is just prose. - **Evidence ordering is a trust hierarchy, not a taste preference.** — The default preference order (testable > Sinatra > details > antiauthority > illustrated stats > authority) tracks how skepticism actually resolves. Inverting it — leading with a credentials wall — is the most common and most damaging credibility mistake in this book. - **When the evidence fails, shrink the claim.** — If no evidence category produces a defensible lead, the claim is stronger than the proof supports. The fix is not to pad with weaker evidence; it is to tighten the claim until the available evidence is genuinely sufficient. ## Examples **Scenario: B2B security startup with a credentials wall** Trigger: Founder says "our homepage lists 14 analyst quotes and 40 customer logos but nobody books a demo. How do I make the security claim more credible?" Process: (1) Lock claim: "Our system blocks every known credential-stuffing attack pattern." (2) Inventory — 14 entries under External Authority, 2 under Vivid Details (an incident-response write-up mentioning a specific attacker TTP), 1 under Sinatra (they run security for a top-3 global bank's consumer login). (3) Rank: the bank reference is Sinatra-grade; testable credentials missing; authority dominates inventory (credentials wall). (4) Sinatra Test on the bank reference — Hardest case? Yes (top-3 global bank, consumer login = highest-volume attack surface). Legibly hard? Yes (audience instantly recognizes). Verifiable? Partial — the bank will not be named publicly. VERDICT: PASS with anonymization ("a top-3 global bank, consumer login, 400M accounts, zero successful credential-stuffing incidents in 18 months"). (5) Diagnostic flags credentials-wall (14 analyst quotes). Fix: cut to 3. (6) Recommendation: lead with the anonymized bank Sinatra hero; back with two incident-response details; cut 11 of 14 analyst quotes. Output: `credibility-plan.md` with the bank Sinatra as lead, the quote wall shrunk, and a note that the founder should push for a testable credential (open benchmark or public red-team) to upgrade the credibility stack further. **Scenario: Nonprofit fundraising email, abstract statistics** Trigger: Fundraiser has a draft saying "3.2 million children are affected by food insecurity each year" and asks "why isn't this landing?" Process: (1) Lock claim: "Child food insecurity is a scale emergency in our region this year." (2) Inventory — 1 raw statistic (the 3.2M number), 1 External Authority (a public-health study), 0 Testable, 0 Sinatra, 0 Antiauthority, 0 Vivid Details. (3) Rank: only two entries, both weak; the statistic is a Raw Statistic failure mode and needs illustration. (4) Sinatra Test: no hero candidate exists. Do NOT fabricate. Instead: convert the statistic. "3.2M children = every elementary-school seat in the five largest school districts in the country, empty at breakfast." (5) Diagnostic: Raw Statistic HIT. Fix: the BB-translation above. Also: add one Antiauthority — a single named family from the region, their story, their specific morning (vivid-details pairing). (6) Recommendation: lead with the illustrated statistic AND the one-family Antiauthority story side-by-side (Mother Teresa effect — identifiable victim paired with illustrated scale). Cut the authority-study citation to a footnote. Output: `credibility-plan.md` recommending a two-piece lead (illustrated stat + identifiable family) with a note that the fundraiser should recruit an antiauthority spokesperson BEFORE next campaign. **Scenario: Academic publishing a counterintuitive research finding** Trigger: Researcher has a finding that contradicts 20 years of prior consensus. Asks "how do I make this credible to reviewers who will dismiss it on sight?" Process: (1) Lock claim: "Finding X contradicts prior consensus Y because of mechanism Z." (2) Inventory — External Authority is dominant (peer-reviewed replication); Testable Credentials possible (open data + reproducible pipeline); one Antiauthority candidate (a respected prior defender of Y who reversed position); no Sinatra hero. (3) Rank: override default — audience is credentialed peers, so External Authority upgrades to #1. But lead with the Testable Credentials (open data) because a reviewer who can reproduce the result in an hour is more convinced than one reading a methods section. Antiauthority (the reversed defender) comes next — a Barry-Marshall-pattern Sinatra hero by analogy: someone who publicly reversed position is the "hardest case" this audience responds to. (4) Sinatra Test on the reversed defender: Hardest case? Yes (they were a public critic). Legibly hard? Yes (the reversal is documented). Verifiable? Yes. VERDICT: PASS. (5) Diagnostic: no credentials wall, no raw-stat failure. (6) Recommendation: lead with the open-data link (testable), follow with the reversed-defender statement (Sinatra-pattern antiauthority), support with the peer-reviewed replication. Cut nothing. Output: `credibility-plan.md` with a testable-credential lead, a named Sinatra-pattern antiauthority, and a note that the open dataset should be ready BEFORE submission — the credibility plan depends on it. ## References - For long-form worked examples of each of the six credibility sources, see [credibility-sources-catalog.md](references/credibility-sources-catalog.md) - For the Sinatra Test worksheet and replacement decision tree, see [sinatra-test-worksheet.md](references/sinatra-test-worksheet.md) ## License This skill is licensed under [CC-BY-SA-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Source: [BookForge](https://github.com/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills) — *Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die* by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. ## Related BookForge Skills This skill is standalone (a Level 0 foundation skill in the Made to Stick skill set). It pairs well with `core-message-extractor` (run first to lock the claim) and with downstream Concrete, Emotional, and Story skills (which apply stickiness techniques once credibility is established). Browse more BookForge skills: [bookforge-skills](https://github.com/bookforge-ai/bookforge-skills)

path: references/credibility-sources-catalog.md
content: # Credibility Sources Catalog

Long-form worked examples for each of the six credibility sources from Chapter 4 CREDIBLE of *Made to Stick*. Use this when the SKILL.md summary is not enough and you need to see the full pattern of what good evidence in each category looks like.

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## 1. External Authority

**Definition:** A recognized expert, institution, celebrity, or credentialed body vouches for the claim. The audience transfers their pre-existing trust in the source to the claim itself.

**When it works:**
- Audience is credentialed peers (scientists, doctors, lawyers) who enforce citation norms.
- The expert is unexpected — e.g., a former opponent of the claim now endorsing it.
- The expert is paired with at least one other category so the evidence does not become a credentials wall.

**When it fails:**
- Expert is over-quoted in the category (analyst quotes in B2B tech are now background noise).
- The claim and the expert's domain don't exactly match ("Nobel laureate says X" — in what field?).
- It is the ONLY evidence type used (credentials-wall failure mode).

**Patterns from the book:** Authorities used well are rare in the book — the authors mostly warn against over-reliance on them. The strongest use is when the authority has reversed position on the claim, which functionally converts them into a Sinatra-pattern antiauthority.

**Checklist:**
- [ ] Expert is credentialed IN the exact domain of the claim.
- [ ] The audience would independently recognize the source.
- [ ] The expert is not the only category represented in the inventory.

---

## 2. Antiauthority (Credible Victim / Lived Experience)

**Definition:** An ordinary person who lived the consequences of the claim. Not an expert — their biography is the proof. The credibility comes from personal stakes, not credentials.

**Canonical example — Pam Laffin:** An anti-smoking ad campaign used Pam Laffin — 29 years old, mother of two, started smoking at 10, diagnosed with emphysema at 24, underwent a failed lung transplant. No statistic about smoking mortality lands the way a 29-year-old mother walking through her own dying does. Surgeon General reports had existed for decades; Laffin's biography reached the audience that had ignored every expert.

**Why it works:** The resistance to expert messaging is highest in audiences who have already decided the experts are lying to them (teens on smoking, developers on technical debt, users on security, citizens on policy). An antiauthority bypasses that resistance because the messenger has no institutional stake — they are paying the cost in public.

**When it works:**
- Behavior-change messaging to a resistant audience.
- Topics where lived experience is legibly superior to abstract study.
- When you can pair the antiauthority with a specific, vivid, concrete biography (Pam Laffin is not a generic "smoker" — she is 29, two kids, started at 10, emphysema at 24).

**When it fails:**
- The lived experience is vague or anonymized to the point of losing biographical texture.
- The antiauthority is not actually antiauthority — e.g., a former executive at the competitor (too close to expert).
- Consent and ethics not handled: using someone's story without genuine consent is a credibility bomb on discovery.

**Checklist:**
- [ ] Messenger is not a credentialed expert in the domain.
- [ ] Messenger has personally paid the cost the claim is about.
- [ ] Biography is specific and verifiable (name, age, dates, details).
- [ ] Consent is real and documented.

---

## 3. Testable Credentials ("Try It Yourself")

**Definition:** The audience can verify the claim themselves, in real time, with their own senses. The evidence collapses skepticism into a single observable act.

**Canonical examples:**

- **Wendy's "Where's the beef?" (1984)** — Wendy's ran an ad campaign contrasting their burgers with competitors' oversized buns hiding undersized patties. The claim ("our patties are bigger") was instantly verifiable: walk into any location, unwrap a burger, compare. The campaign became a cultural phenomenon because the challenge was testable.
- **Snickers "satisfies" / the snack-bar category generally** — the credential is that the audience experiences satisfaction immediately after eating, so the claim self-validates in real time.
- **Barry Marshall drinking H. pylori (1984)** — Australian researchers Marshall and Warren proposed that stomach ulcers were caused by *Helicobacter pylori* bacteria, not by stress and stomach acid as the medical establishment had insisted for decades. Their peer-reviewed papers were ignored. Marshall then drank a beaker of *H. pylori* cultures, developed gastritis within days, documented it with endoscopy, and cured himself with antibiotics. The self-experiment converted an abstract claim into a public, falsifiable demonstration. Marshall and Warren won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005.

**Why it works:** Testable credentials are the strongest credibility category because they force the audience to run their own experiment. No middleman, no trust transfer, no credentials gap. The audience's own senses become the proof.

**When it works:**
- Claims about products or experiences the audience can sample cheaply (taste, feel, see).
- Claims about reproducible phenomena (benchmarks, open data, free trials).
- Claims where the demonstration is cheaper than the argument.

**When it fails:**
- The verification cost is too high (enterprise software with a 3-month implementation).
- The demonstration is rigged (audience discovers and punishes).
- The testable credential is available but the copy fails to explicitly invite the test.

**Checklist:**
- [ ] Audience can verify the claim with their own senses within a short time window.
- [ ] The invitation to test is explicit in the copy (not buried in a footer).
- [ ] The test is honest — no rigging or selective framing.

---

## 4. Vivid, Convincing Details

**Definition:** Specific sensory or biographical detail that a fabricator could not have bothered to invent. The detail is not load-bearing for the argument; its credibility value is precisely that it is too trivial to be a lie.

**Canonical example — the Goofy toothbrush juror study:** In a jury simulation study on the effect of vivid details, jurors were more likely to believe a mother testifying about her child's dental hygiene when she mentioned that he had a Goofy-the-Disney-character toothbrush he loved to brush with. The toothbrush had nothing to do with the case — but the jurors reasoned, unconsciously, that no one inventing a story would bother with the brand of the toothbrush. The detail signaled firsthand observation.

**Other patterns from the book:** The dancing 73-year-old in a fitness claim outperformed a generic "exercise works at any age" pitch because the specific age and specific activity signaled a real person, not a marketing composite.

**Why it works:** Humans have a trained ear for the texture of truth. We do not consciously evaluate details, but we unconsciously flag copy that has the smooth, context-free feel of invention. Load-bearing trivia (the Goofy toothbrush) breaks the smoothness and signals that the speaker has been close to the thing.

**When it works:**
- Stories and testimonials where you have firsthand access to small sensory details.
- Case studies where the client's actual workflow has specific quirks.
- Journalism and long-form nonfiction where the reader is scanning for texture.

**When it fails:**
- The detail is purple prose — decorative rather than load-bearing.
- The detail is suspiciously perfect (signals invention rather than observation).
- The detail is too on-the-nose to the claim (rigging).

**Checklist:**
- [ ] The detail is specific enough that no one would bother fabricating it.
- [ ] The detail is NOT directly relevant to the claim (its credibility value comes from its irrelevance).
- [ ] The detail is first-person observed, not a stereotype.

---

## 5. Sinatra Test (One Overwhelming Hero Example)

**Definition:** A single reference so dominant — typically the hardest possible case in the domain — that one mention establishes credibility for the entire category. Named after "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere" from the Sinatra song about New York.

**Canonical examples:**

- **Fort Knox (the book's defining example):** A security contractor who has the contract for Fort Knox is in the running for any security contract. You do not need a capabilities deck after that sentence.
- **Safexpress and the Harry Potter delivery:** Safexpress, an Indian logistics firm, won enterprise contracts by telling one story: on the launch day of the final Harry Potter book, they delivered sealed copies to 6,000 Indian bookstores across the country in one day, zero leaks, zero early releases. One sentence carried the entire due-diligence conversation. The audience did not need to hear about other customers — the Harry Potter launch was legibly the hardest possible case (distribution, secrecy, deadline), and Safexpress passed it.

**Why it works:** A wall of credentials dilutes. A single hero case concentrates. The audience reasons: "If they did THAT, the rest follows." The Sinatra Test is the book's most important credibility insight because it inverts the instinct to pile up proof.

**The three pass/fail questions** (also in the SKILL.md):
1. Is this the hardest case in the domain?
2. Is the hard part legible without explanation?
3. Is it verifiable?

**When it works:**
- Sales pitches with one customer who is legibly the hardest case.
- Reference stories where the hard part is self-evident to the audience.
- Domains where customers talk and a verifiable reference survives discovery.

**When it fails:**
- The hero case needs a paragraph of setup to explain why it was hard (Sinatra inflation — see anti-pattern in SKILL.md).
- The hero case is cherry-picked and the audience can sense it.
- The reference is unverifiable (unnamed customer, lost records).

**Checklist:**
- [ ] Passes all three Sinatra Test questions (hardest / legible / verifiable).
- [ ] Requires no setup paragraph — the audience recognizes the hardness instantly.
- [ ] Replacing the entire credentials section with just this one example would still work.

---

## 6. Statistics-as-Illustration (Human Scale)

**Definition:** A number translated into a concrete, sensory comparison so the audience can physically feel the magnitude. Raw statistics wash past; illustrated statistics stick.

**Canonical example — the nuclear-warheads-as-BBs illustration:** Explaining the US/Soviet nuclear arsenals during the Cold War using raw numbers ("5,000 warheads") produced incomprehension — the audience could not feel the scale. The illustrated version: imagine a single BB represents the Hiroshima bomb. Now picture a garbage can full of BBs. That is the world's nuclear stockpile. And one BB — the Hiroshima bomb alone — flattened a city. The garbage can is terrifying in a way the number "5,000" is not.

**Other patterns from the book:** A Stephen Covey example rescales company headcount into a "soccer team" analogy so the audience can grasp the human footprint. Any time the book converts a number to a body-sized reference (a football field, a school bus, a blink), it is applying the Human Scale principle.

**Why it works:** Human brains cannot natively process magnitudes above roughly the size of a small tribe. Numbers in the millions and billions are technically precise but emotionally equivalent. Translating the number into a sensory anchor (can, blink, football field) hands the audience a body they can use to feel the scale.

**When it works:**
- Large-scale claims (infrastructure, epidemiology, finance, climate).
- Rate statistics ("per second," "per day") that benefit from a body-sized comparison.
- Risk statistics that are emotionally flat as raw numbers.

**When it fails:**
- The analogy is dishonest (the comparison flatters the number, and the audience catches it).
- The analogy is to an abstraction the audience cannot feel ("the size of Belgium" to an American).
- The illustration replaces the number entirely and loses technical credibility with credentialed audiences.

**Checklist:**
- [ ] The analogy uses a body-sized or daily-life-sized reference (blink, can, school bus, elementary class).
- [ ] The analogy is honest — not flattering the number.
- [ ] The precise number is still present alongside the illustration for audiences that need it.

---

## Default Preference Order (Summary)

From strongest to weakest credibility, absent overrides:

1. Testable Credentials
2. Sinatra Test Hero Example
3. Vivid Convincing Details
4. Antiauthority (Credible Victim)
5. Statistics-as-Illustration
6. External Authority

**Override rules:**
- Credentialed-peer audience (scientists, doctors): External Authority moves to #1-2.
- Resistant behavior-change audience (teens on smoking, developers on technical debt): Antiauthority moves to #1.
- Scale / magnitude / risk claim: Statistics-as-Illustration moves up.

Apply these in Step 3 of the SKILL.md process.


path: references/sinatra-test-worksheet.md
content: # Sinatra Test Worksheet

A structured worksheet for applying the Sinatra Test (Chapter 4 CREDIBLE, *Made to Stick*) as a pass/fail gate on a candidate hero example. Use this when Step 4 of the SKILL.md process needs a deeper treatment than the three-question summary.

---

## The Test, Stated Formally

> An example passes the Sinatra Test when ONE example alone is enough to establish credibility in a given domain — because the example represents the hardest case the domain can throw at you.

Origin: "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere" — the Sinatra lyric about New York City. The book's defining example: a security contractor with the Fort Knox contract is in the running for any security contract. The Safexpress/Harry Potter case is the operational example: one sentence about delivering the final Harry Potter book to 6,000 Indian bookstores in a single day, sealed, passed the entire due-diligence conversation for enterprise logistics buyers.

---

## Worksheet: Run This For Each Candidate Hero Example

### Candidate: _____________________________________________

### Domain: _____________________________________________
(What category of claim does this example establish credibility for?)

---

### Question 1 — Is this the hardest case in the domain?

If the audience heard only this one example and nothing else, would they concede that the rest of the category follows?

**Pass if:**
- The case is self-evidently the top of the difficulty ranking the audience would apply.
- A reasonable person hearing it would think "well, if they can do THAT, they can do anything."

**Fail if:**
- The case is merely a good example, not the hardest example.
- The audience would accept it as evidence but still ask "what about harder cases?"

**Verdict:** PASS / FAIL

**Reasoning:**
_______________________________________________

---

### Question 2 — Is the hard part legible without explanation?

Can the audience see WHY it was hard without a setup paragraph? The Sinatra effect is lost if you have to explain.

**Pass if:**
- A single phrase captures the hardness ("Fort Knox" / "Harry Potter launch day, 6,000 stores, sealed" / "drank a beaker of H. pylori").
- A layperson in the audience gets it on first read.

**Fail if:**
- You must write three sentences of context before the case lands.
- The audience would say "OK, but was that actually hard?"

**Verdict:** PASS / FAIL

**Reasoning:**
_______________________________________________

---

### Question 3 — Is it verifiable?

Can the audience check the claim if they wanted to? A Sinatra hero that fails a two-minute Google search is worse than no Sinatra at all — discovery turns it from proof into liability.

**Pass if:**
- The case is public, documented, and survives basic search.
- The audience could independently confirm the key facts.

**Fail if:**
- The reference is anonymized AND the anonymization hides the verification pathway.
- Key details are embellished or cannot be sourced.
- The customer has asked not to be discussed.

**Verdict:** PASS / FAIL

**Reasoning:**
_______________________________________________

---

## Final Verdict

| Question | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Q1: Hardest case | PASS / FAIL |
| Q2: Legibly hard | PASS / FAIL |
| Q3: Verifiable | PASS / FAIL |

**OVERALL:** All three must pass.

- **If all three PASS** → This is a Sinatra Test hero. Lead the credibility stack with it. Cut redundant supporting evidence.
- **If any FAIL** → Do NOT use as lead. See replacement decision tree below.

---

## Replacement Decision Tree (If Sinatra Fails)

### IF Question 1 failed (not the hardest case)
→ **Search the inventory for a harder case.** If one exists but the user skipped it because it was "boring" or "small logo," reconsider — the audience's hardness ranking often differs from the seller's. If no harder case exists, fall through to Question 2's failure path (the inventory lacks a Sinatra candidate entirely).

### IF Question 2 failed (hard part not legible)
→ **Try to rephrase the case into a phrase the audience recognizes instantly.** Safexpress did not say "we ran a challenging logistics operation"; they said "we delivered the final Harry Potter book to 6,000 Indian bookstores in one day, sealed." The rephrase is the whole skill — find the one noun-phrase the audience already flags as hard.
→ **If no rephrase works:** the case is not Sinatra material. Fall back to category #3 (vivid details) or #1 (testable credentials) from the SKILL.md preference order.

### IF Question 3 failed (not verifiable)
→ **Attempt anonymization with a verifiable pathway.** "A top-3 global bank, consumer login, 400M accounts" is anonymized but the audience can verify the class. "A Fortune 500 customer" is anonymized and unverifiable — do not use.
→ **If anonymization fails:** treat as a Vivid Detail instead of a Sinatra hero, pair with a testable credential, and abandon the "one overwhelming case" lead strategy.

### IF NO candidate in the inventory passes all three questions
→ **Do NOT fabricate a Sinatra hero.** The most damaging credibility mistake is inflating a weak case into a hero that the audience sniffs out.
→ **Fall back to multi-source credibility:** combine a testable credential + a vivid convincing detail + an illustrated statistic. Three moderately strong categories outperform one inflated Sinatra.
→ **Alternative:** shrink the claim. If no evidence passes Sinatra, the claim is often stronger than the proof supports. Tightening the claim until the inventory is genuinely sufficient is the honest move.

---

## Common Anti-Patterns

**Sinatra Inflation.** The user wants their best customer to pass the test and is willing to argue for it. Rule: if you have to argue, it fails. The test is whether the audience recognizes the hardness instantly, without framing. Three extra sentences of context is a flunk.

**The Retro-Sinatra.** The user picks a case that was hard BEFORE the audience had context, but the audience now takes that capability for granted. "We handled the 2015 holiday peak" does not land in 2026 — the peak is old news. A Sinatra hero must be currently legibly hard.

**The Insider Sinatra.** The case is legibly hard to the seller's own team but not to the audience. Sellers consistently underestimate how much domain knowledge they have that the audience does not. Always test the case on someone outside the seller's domain before trusting the legibility verdict.

**The Unverifiable Boast.** A named customer reference that the customer has asked not to be discussed publicly. Using it anyway is a breach and a credibility bomb on discovery. Either secure explicit permission to name the customer, or use the Vivid Details fallback path instead.


Security scan verdicts — ClawScan: clean | static analysis: clean | VirusTotal: clean | SkillSpector: clean (LOW)