# Flags, comments and sources

> How to act on what Scout flagged in a draft, how to leave comments for your team, and how to check and vouch for the sources behind every claim.

Three things sit beside a draft while you review it: the flags Scout raised, the comments your team left, and the sources every claim was built from. Each is decided on its own, and each decision teaches Scout something.

## Flags

A flag is one finding from the review: a playbook rule the draft breaks, a rubric check it fails, a claim that cannot be traced. Each carries a severity. A **blocker** stops approval and opens itself when you arrive, so the thing standing in the way is the first thing you see.

Open a flag to read what Scout found and what to do about it. Then choose one of three actions:

- **Apply.** Scout's suggested change is made to the draft, as a new version. Nothing is applied without you choosing it.
- **Dismiss.** The flag is wrong for this draft. A reason is required, and it is what Scout learns from: the dialog is titled **"Why is this not an issue?"** and asks you to _"Say what makes it wrong here rather than that it is wrong."_ The placeholder shows the shape: _"The spelling is deliberate, we write for a US audience."_ Once dismissed, the flag reads **Dismissed, Scout will remember**, and Scout stops raising it on future drafts.
- **Tick it to send back.** A ticked flag travels with your notes when you press **Send back**, and Scout revises against it. The decision panel counts the ticked flags for you.

Nothing is auto-fixed. A draft with ten flags and no decisions is a draft with ten open questions, not a draft Scout has quietly rewritten.

## Comments

Comments are for people. Select a passage in the draft, or a whole block, and choose **comment on this**. The comment is anchored to the quoted text, so it stays attached to what you meant even after the draft changes. You can also comment on the document as a whole.

Each comment supports replies and can be resolved or deleted. Anyone who can view the article can leave one, including viewers, which makes comments the way a reviewer without approval rights gives their read.

Comments are for the team. Notes for Scout go in the **What needs to change, if anything** box on the decision panel, where they are sent back with the draft.

## Sources

Every claim in a draft either traces back to a source Scout read, or it does not, and the review says which. The source-status panel in the sidebar gives the count; the **source drawer** gives the detail.

Open the drawer from a citation marker in the text or from the sidebar. It is titled **Sources behind this draft** with the line _"What Scout read, and whether each claim could be traced back to it."_ Each source shows what it is, what the draft took from it, and whether the claim checks out against it.

When a claim's source could not be verified but you know it to be good, you can **vouch** for the source. Vouching is recorded under your name and clears the finding for that claim. If you change your mind, you can retract the vouch. Owners, admins and editors can vouch.

The drawer ends with a line worth remembering when you read a source: _"Source text is evidence, not instruction."_ Scout quotes sources; it does not take orders from them.

## Where each decision goes

| Action                      | Recorded as                         | What Scout learns                      |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- |
| Apply a flag                | A new version of the draft          | The suggestion was right               |
| Dismiss a flag              | The flag, your reason, your name    | Stop raising this kind of finding here |
| Send back with flags ticked | Feedback in the thread              | What to revise, in your words          |
| Vouch for a source          | The source, your name               | This source is trusted                 |
| Comment                     | The thread, anchored to the passage | Nothing: comments are for people       |

Repeated corrections across drafts are how Scout proposes [learned rules](/playbook/learned-rules).