Stage 3 · Citable Production

Stage 3 turns the prompt-to-page map into pages engineered to be quoted, and it does so through process, not talent. The insight that makes this a distinct stage: citability retrofitted after drafting always reads bolted-on, and engines respond to structure, not intentions. So the discipline is front-loaded: a brief that demands citability before a word is written, drafting that leads with answers, and a QA gate that checks extraction before anything ships. Quality that depends on a heroic writer having a good day doesn't scale; quality enforced by a repeatable pipeline does.

The pipeline is: brief from the cluster → draft answer-first → inject original evidence → QA for extraction → ship wired. Each step has a hard rule: the brief names the target questions verbatim and the expert reviewer up front; every section goes question-heading → direct answer → evidence; at least one original number or first-hand observation per page; and every passage must survive being read alone, out of context. This node carries no impact score because the measurable citation leverage is attributed to Content & Citability; here the point is the operational discipline that makes that leverage repeatable instead of occasional.

Run every page through the same five-step pipeline so citability is guaranteed by process. The brief front-loads the requirements; the QA gate refuses anything that isn't extractable.