ANTHILL
An open colony for curious minds

Big questions.
Tiny researchers.

Follow the ants from a question to a source.
Then settle into a story you can actually check.

A little patience, a lot of digging. Planning takes 10 to 60 seconds.
Research takes about 3 to 8 minutes per question, across 5 questions.
Field station / 001-- fake quotes blockedWAITING FOR THE HUB
↑ THE WORLD ABOVE / SOURCES
BELOW THE SURFACE / FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
SCOUT → READER → SKEPTIC → STORYTELLER· Free local / » Paid fast / same evidence rules
Nothing made up gets through--fake quotes blocked

Readers check each quote against fetched source text. Invented words get thrown out.

A trail you can follow--sourced claims in the colony

Every story fact has a citation. Open it to see the exact quote, source and skeptic's grade.

Evidence, with its working shown
documentedsupporteddisputedspeculativerejected

Only documented and supported claims belong in stories. Browse the disagreements in “Argued about”.

WELCOME TO THE COLONY
A field guide for curious minds

How ANTHILL works

You ask. A colony of research ants digs. You read a story where every fact is checked.

  1. Ask anything

    Type a topic. A planner ant turns it into 5 starting questions, from the basics to the little-known angles. If your topic includes a belief people argue about, the ants look for evidence for it and against it.

  2. Scouts go where people rarely look

    Scouts search places most people never open:

    • US newspapers from 1770 to 1963, through the Library of Congress
    • Out-of-print books and declassified documents, through the Internet Archive
    • Court opinions and SEC filings
    • Ancient texts, including the Hebrew Bible and Talmud, on Sefaria
    • Scholarly papers on OpenAlex, Crossref and arXiv, plus public-domain books on Project Gutenberg
    • Wikipedia and regular web search

  3. Readers pull out facts, with proof

    Readers read each source in full, including PDFs, and pull out facts. Every fact must come with a quote copied word for word from the source.

    Then we check that the quote really is in the source. If an AI made it up, it is thrown out. The “fake quotes blocked” counter shows how many.

  4. The skeptic grades every fact

    The skeptic looks for evidence against each fact and gives it a grade:

    Documented
    Backed by an original record, such as a court file, old newspaper or ancient text, or by peer-reviewed research.
    Supported
    Backed by a solid secondary source, like an encyclopedia or a reputable book.
    Disputed
    Credible sources disagree.
    Speculative
    Claimed, but without real evidence.
    Rejected
    The quote does not support it, or it is wrong or off topic.

    Rejected and speculative claims go on the trash pile, so you can see what was thrown out and why.

  5. The storyteller writes it up

    When the starting questions are done, the storyteller writes an easy-to-read story using only documented and supported facts. Every fact has a citation you can tap to see the exact quote and the original source.

    Images come from public-domain or openly licensed archives, or are scans of the actual source, with credit shown.

  6. Go deeper

    At the end of a story, pick a “go deeper” thread and the ants dig a new tunnel just for it. The ants also come up with their own follow-up questions as they dig, up to 40 per topic. A topic keeps growing and its story gets rewritten as new facts arrive.

How long does it take?

A plan takes under a minute. Each question takes a few minutes to dig, so a new topic usually has its story within about 10 to 40 minutes, depending on how busy the colony is.

What the ants will not do

  • They never present an unchecked quote as fact.
  • They do not invent captions or credits for images.
  • They do not go to the dark web. Everything comes from public archives and records you can open yourself.
COLONY NOTEBOOK
FOLLOW THE FOOTNOTE