A summary becomes a source
The first error is usually harmless. An assistant expands an unfinished thought, gives it a memorable name, or smooths a messy story into a persuasive thesis. Later, another system receives that summary as context. The distinction between what I said, what the assistant inferred, and what we developed together begins to disappear.
Once the language is useful enough, I may repeat it. The archive then sees the repetition as confirmation. A suggestion becomes a belief; a belief becomes a biographical fact; the biographical fact becomes input to the next answer.
The archive is no longer only remembering me. It is participating in the construction of the person it claims to remember.
Provenance drift
I call this provenance drift: the gradual loss of who contributed what as ideas move between people, models, summaries, and time. It is different from plagiarism because there may be no intent to take credit. It is different from hallucination because the statement may be insightful and internally consistent. The failure is that its history has been flattened.
This matters most when a system speaks with the authority of memory. A persuasive model can make an inference feel recalled. Multiple models can repeat the same inherited error and create the appearance of independent agreement. Fluency disguises lineage.
An idea can become more convincing each time its source becomes less visible.
A provenance-aware canon
The answer is not to reject collaboration. Some of the strongest ideas are genuinely co-developed. The answer is to preserve the path: Trent-originated, co-developed and adopted, or assistant-originated and still unconfirmed.
That classification does more than protect credit. It lets a person disagree with an earlier synthesis without feeling as if they are betraying their own memory. It makes revision possible. It lets the public see an idea being formed, challenged, and corrected instead of receiving a manufactured impression that the author was always certain.
The Angle uses source notes for this reason. The artifact can be polished. Its lineage should remain inspectable.
The right to remain unfinished
An archive should help a person recover their thinking without trapping them inside it. Not every sentence deserves to become doctrine. Not every assistant insight should be inherited. Not every earlier version of the self needs to be defended.
The goal is not perfect ownership. Ideas have always emerged socially. The goal is enough provenance to keep authorship honest—and enough humility to let a living mind keep changing.