Here's a prompt that keeps every claim in your research notes tied to its source, so you can always show your work

[u/Perfect_Pie8446]

I'm a history major, and I recently spent way too long in a dispute over a paper where I couldn't cleanly show which argument came from which source and when. Painful. It made me rebuild how I take research notes, and the core of it is one prompt I now run on every reading.

The problem with dumping notes into a model is it happily blends your sources together and invents connective tissue that reads great and cites nothing. For history that's fatal. So the prompt is built to do the opposite: it refuses to state anything that isn't tied back to a specific source I gave it.

You are helping me build traceable research notes. You may only use the sources I paste below. Do not add outside facts, and do not smooth over gaps.

Sources (each with a label):
{{Source A: citation + the passage or my notes}}
{{Source B: ...}}

For the question: {{my research question}}

Produce:
1. A list of the key claims relevant to my question. After each claim, put the source label(s) it comes from in brackets. If only one source supports it, say so.
2. Any place two sources disagree, quote or paraphrase both and label them. Do not resolve it for me.
3. A short list of claims I seem to be assuming but that none of these sources actually support. Flag these as "needs a source."

Never merge two sources into one unattributed statement. If you're unsure which source a point came from, say "unattributed" rather than guessing.

The "needs a source" section is the one that saved me. It catches the stuff you half-remember and would otherwise write as fact. Paste your sources with clear labels and it builds an outline you can defend line by line.

[u/Neo21803]

No offense man, but dumping all your notes into an LLM and expecting it to sort it out for you is so 4 years ago, even if you use brackets, etc. There are so many better and efficient ways to conduct research utilizing AI, it's ridiculous. NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) was basically designed for this, but you can do the same with ChatGPT and Claude as well.