# Provenance

> Published by **Knowledge Company** (knowledgecompany.ai).
> Canonical source: https://knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/provenance
> Markdown mirror, generated 2026-09-02. Cite the canonical URL.

The recorded history of a piece of content: where it came from, what changed it, and who vouches for it.

Knowledge Architecture

OWNER — Research

LAST REVIEWED — 2026-09-02 17:35:01 UTC

[SOURCE — C2PA — Content Credentials explainer ↗](https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.4/explainer/Explainer.html)

## What it is

Provenance is the recorded history of a piece of content: where it came from, what changed it, and who vouches for it. The C2PA specification defines it for media as the facts about an asset's history, bound cryptographically so the record travels with the file rather than sitting in a database somewhere behind it.

## Why it matters

Claims need the same property in a different form — not a signature on an image, but a durable link from a published sentence back to its evidence and to the person who approved it. Content moves between surfaces, gets quoted, summarised and re-hosted, and the trail is what keeps it checkable at the other end. Without it, verification restarts from zero every time a claim is repeated somewhere new. Knowledge Company keeps that link on the claim itself, which is why every term in this dictionary carries a source and a review date.

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## Related documents in this mirror

- [Dictionary](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary.md)
- [Approved Claim](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/approved-claim.md)
- [Source of Truth](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/source-of-truth.md)
- [Knowledge Drift](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/knowledge-drift.md)
- [Retrieval Boundary](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/retrieval-boundary.md)
- [Claim Registry](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/claim-registry.md)
- [Substantiation](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/substantiation.md)
- [Claim Owner](https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/claim-owner.md)

*This document is the markdown mirror of https://knowledgecompany.ai/dictionary/provenance, published by Knowledge Company -
a knowledge freshness platform that detects, verifies and updates outdated claims in company content.*

*Mirror index: https://llms.knowledgecompany.ai/index.md - Generated 2026-09-02*