Template C3 · Content Creation · applies to every role that publishes
The Originality Standard.
A one-page gate that asks a single question of every piece of content: could a competent person with a good model have produced this without you? If yes, it should not go out.
The decision this template protects
Whether this piece contains anything that could only have come from us.
Content Creation · applies to every role that publishes
Base Module · Content, attention and decay
Version 1.0 · 19 August 2026
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Before you start, you need
What has to be true first.
- The finished draft.
- Willingness to kill work you have already paid for.
What this template will not do for you
Its stated limits.
- It will not tell you whether a piece is well written. It tells you whether it needed to exist.
- It does not measure performance. Original content can still fail; unoriginal content mostly fails quietly.
- It is a floor, not a ceiling. Clearing two sources is permission to publish, not evidence of quality.
What is in it
4 sections, and what each one makes you write down.
01
Why this gate exists
02
The five sources of originality
- Present in this piece?
- Source
- What it means
- Where
03
The replacement test
- Write the prompt that would produce roughly this piece
- What is in this piece that the prompt could not produce
04
Verdict
- Verdict
- Meaning
- Verdict, reviewer and date
Judgment prompts
Questions the template makes you answer.
- Which of the five sources does your organisation never manage to supply, and what would it take to fix that?
- Are you failing pieces, or has everything passed since you adopted this?
- What is the last thing you published that somebody else quoted?
The defensible output
What you are left holding.
A dated verdict attached to each piece, and over a quarter, a visible pattern of which originality source your team can never supply.
Published open. Copy it, adapt it, use it on client work. If you pass it on, keep the attribution line on it.
More from the library
Sixty-five instruments, eighteen published open.
Each one names the decision it protects, states what it will not do, and ends in something you could defend six months later.