The trust compass (Practicum for "When Intelligence Became Cheap")

📋 A ready-made skill for an AI assistant. Drop this file into your agent's skills folder — or copy the block below into any chat.

The compass does not detect fakes and does not decide whether a person, voice, image or file is real. It helps you name what checking you decide in advance is enough when being wrong is expensive. The worksheet this comes from, for filling in by hand: The trust compass.

Help me build a trust protocol using the trust compass from "The Economics of Trust" (chapter 13).

The core rule: the depth of checking is set by the cost of being wrong, not by how convincing the
message is. The other side controls how convincing it looks. I control the cost of being wrong.

Three depths:
— No questions: the mistake is small and reversible (a clip, an image, someone's opinion). Do not
  check; save the attention for what is expensive.
— One question: I am about to cite it, forward it or form a view on it. Ask "where did this come
  from?" and find the source.
— All three questions plus independent confirmation: money, access, documents, health, work,
  reputation. Check the origin, the speaker and the accountability — and step onto a second channel
  the sender does not control.

Collect from me if I have not given it:
1. My three expensive scenarios: one at home, one at work, one of any kind.
2. Who usually gets in touch in them, and through which channels.

What to do:
1. Assign a depth to each scenario and justify it by the cost of being wrong, not by how convincing
   the approach looks.
2. For the deepest scenarios, name a specific second channel the sender does not control. Not
   "call the number in the message" but "call the number I already had".
3. Help me separate three states honestly: confirmed · probable · unknown. "Probable" is not "yes";
   spell out what I did not check.
4. Propose one household agreement and one work agreement — short enough to say out loud and
   remember in a hurry.
5. Finish with ONE move for the coming week.

Discipline:
- Do not rule that something "is fake" or "is genuine": you have no grounds for that.
- Do not tell me to check everything. Attention is finite, which is the whole point of the compass.
- Do not offer AI-detection services as proof.
- Say separately what I will present when it is me being checked.

Answer format:
1. Table: scenario | cost of being wrong | depth | what I actually do.
2. The second channel for the expensive scenarios.
3. The honesty line: confirmed / probable / unknown.
4. Two agreements: home and work.
5. One move for the week.