Cognitio News Verifier

Cognitio is an evidence-first claim verifier. It is not a truth oracle: it searches public sources, ranks evidence quality, and returns one of five labels: Supported, Disputed, Unverified, Misleading context, or Not checkable.

What is included

• apps/web: Next.js web app and /api/verify route.
• apps/extension: Chrome Manifest V3 extension for selected-text and page-title verification.
• packages/verifier: shared TypeScript verifier logic, Bright Data provider, source ranking, and verdict selection.

The extension never receives Bright Data credentials. It sends user-triggered claim text to the web API, and only the server calls Bright Data.

Bright Data setup

Create a .env.local file in apps/web or export these variables before running the web app:

BRIGHT_DATA_API_KEY=...
BRIGHT_DATA_SERP_ZONE=serp_api1
BRIGHT_DATA_UNLOCKER_ZONE=web_unlocker1
BRIGHT_DATA_TIMEOUT_MS=12000

The implementation uses Bright Data's REST request endpoint:

• SERP API: POST https://api.brightdata.com/request with a Google search URL and format: "json".
• Web Unlocker: POST https://api.brightdata.com/request with a source page URL and format: "markdown".

Official docs:

• https://docs.brightdata.com/api-reference/rest-api/serp/serp-api
• https://docs.brightdata.com/api-reference/rest-api/unlocker/unlock-website

If these variables are missing, /api/verify returns a clear provider_not_configured error instead of returning a fake report.

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test
npm run typecheck
npm run lint
npm run dev

The web app runs at http://localhost:3000 by default.

Image attachments

The web form accepts up to 3 images per check:

• PNG, JPEG, WebP, or GIF.
• 5 MB maximum per image.
• Images are sent to the API as request context and validated server-side.
• Raw image data is stripped before the verifier result is returned.

OCR/vision is not enabled in this MVP. Users still need to type or paste the claim text. This avoids pretending the app read a screenshot when no approved OCR/vision provider exists.

Load the Chrome extension

1. Run npm run build --workspace @cognitio/extension.
2. Open chrome://extensions.
3. Enable Developer Mode.
4. Click "Load unpacked".
5. Select apps/extension/dist.
6. Keep the popup API base set to http://localhost:3000 for local development.

The extension only captures page context after a user action:

• Verify selection reads the active page selection after the click.
• Verify page reads the active page title/headline after the click.
• Context-menu verification stores the selected text for the next popup open.

There is no background scanning and no account or cloud history in this MVP.

Test the Chrome extension locally

1. Run the web API:

   npm run dev

2. Build the extension:

   npm run build --workspace @cognitio/extension

3. Open chrome://extensions, enable Developer Mode, choose "Load unpacked", and select apps/extension/dist.
4. Open any normal public webpage.
5. Highlight a sentence, open the Cognitio extension, and click "Verify selection".
6. Expected local result without Bright Data env vars: the popup shows the same server configuration error as the website.
7. Add Bright Data env vars, restart npm run dev, then repeat the selection test to exercise real source collection.
8. Also test the right-click path: highlight text, right-click, choose "Verify selected claim", then confirm the popup opens with that text queued.

If the popup says it cannot read the page, reload the target page after loading the extension. Chrome only grants activeTab access after a user action on pages where extension scripts can run.

Privacy and product boundaries

• No analytics, telemetry, accounts, or cloud-saved report history.
• No automatic scanning of pages or feeds.
• No scraping private logged-in content beyond text the user explicitly selects or asks to verify.
• No Bright Data API key in client-side code or extension code.
• No LLM-generated verdicts in the MVP. The optional AI summary audit is represented in the result shape but left disabled until a separate provider is approved and implemented.