TRUTH engine
Is it actually true? Let's check.
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Example results
What TRUTH returns
Real results, not mock-ups.
Sent
“God helps those who help themselves.”
Standard read
Claim assessment
“God helps those who help themselves.”
Assessed Oct 14, 2026, 4:15 PMtruth-engine/research-v32
Shepherd’s answer
Too early to call: it needs evidence Shepherd can’t check yet
Shepherd’s first look leaned toward this being false, but the evidence doesn’t let it go that far.
What holds it back
- Some evidence this needs is outside what Shepherd can check yet
Claim by claim
- Too early to callClaim 1
God helps people only if those people have first helped themselves.
Shepherd held back from a stronger answer on this part.
Why
The absolutist 'only if' conditional is inconsistent with the biblical witness: Ephesians 2:8–9 treats salvation as God’s gift not earned by works ( / –29), and narrative/providential passages — notably Exodus 14:14 ( / , load-bearing), Psalm 121:2 ( / ), and Matthew 6:26 ( / ) — depict God initiating deliverance and provision. Passages showing the Spirit’s help in human weakness (Rom 8:26; / ) and God’s enabling of will and work (Phil 2:13; / ) further undercut a strict rule that locates divine help only after prior human self‑help, though some texts are covenantal or rhetorical and a focused lexical/contextual study would sharpen the scope of this judgment.
Read Shepherd’s full reasoning
This reasoning was written for Shepherd’s first look. Where it sounds surer than the answer above, the answer above is the one Shepherd stands behind.
From different angles
None of the angles Shepherd checked gives it enough to call this yet.
Other credible readings
Scripture teaches that God helps people irrespective of their having first helped themselves; God often initiates help, grants grace, and aids the helpless or passive.
Primary sourceDirect biblical texts in the verified set portray divine initiative and provision rather than dependence on prior human self-help: Ephesians 2:8–9 (salvation by grace, not by works), Exodus 14:14 (YHWH will fight for you; be silent), Psalm 121:2 (my help comes from the LORD), Matthew 6:26 (the Father feeds the birds), Romans 8:26 (the Spirit helps in our weakness), Philippians 2:13 (God works in believers to will and to act), Romans 8:28 (God cooperates all things for good). These passages support that God helps apart from prior human self-sufficiency.
Not preferred: This reading is not the original proverb's claim; it directly contradicts the 'only if' absolutist formulation the proposition asserts (so it defeats the proposition rather than rescues it).
A theological nuance: Scripture supports a cooperative/relational model where God empowers and responds to human faith and seeking — God helps those who seek/obey/faithfully respond, but that human activity itself is enabled by God's grace.
Primary sourcePhilippians 2:13 (God works in believers both the will and the work) and Romans 8:28 (God 'works together' with those who love him) can be read to support a synergistic picture in which human response and divine enabling are both real. Romans 8:26 also shows the Spirit assists believers in their weakness, implying cooperation between divine aid and human need/response.
Not preferred: Among the verified passages, there is stronger and clearer evidence of God's unilateral initiative and provision; the cooperative nuance does not sustain the absolute 'only if those people have first helped themselves' claim because even cooperative help is itself grounded in divine initiation/enabling, and the verified texts more directly refute the proposition's exclusive conditional ('only if') wording.
Evidence · 14
- ev-2CountersChecked against our sourcesPrimary source
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- ev-28CountersChecked against our sourcesPrimary source
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- ev-32CountersChecked against our sourcesPrimary source
- ev-33CountersChecked against our sourcesPrimary source
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- ev-35CountersChecked against our sourcesPrimary source
Scripture sources: Greek: Nestle 1904 Greek New Testament (public domain) · Hebrew: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (CC BY 4.0) · English: World English Bible (public domain) · Word glosses: Abbott-Smith Greek lexicon (public domain) · Word glosses: openscriptures/HebrewLexicon (BDB + Strong's) (CC BY 4.0)
Returned by TRUTH v32 · API v1.
Submit a claim, then poll for the result.
Submit a claim (async, real engine)
Queues an assessment and returns a job id; poll /status. Resubmitting the same claim joins the same job.
Request body
| Field | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
contentrequired | string (1–2000) | The claim, lyric, line from a sermon, or saying to test. Words that could ask 2–3 different claims are run as every claim they ask; words asking more than 3 run once, as typed. |
claims | string[] (1–3) | Instead of content: the exact claims to test, each run as written. |
context | string (≤2000) | Where it was said / who said it. |
reasoning_profile | standard | deep | deep is slower and costs more. |
Response
| Field | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
jobId / status | uuid / queued | processing | The first claim's job handle to poll. |
claims[] | {claim, question, jobId, status} | {claim, question, error} | Every claim run, each its own job with its own result on /status. |
Try it
Sign in with a funded account to send.
// the response will appear here
Call it from your code
curl -sS -X POST 'https://<your-shepherd-host>/api/public/truth/submit' \
-H "Cookie: <session cookie of the signed-in reader; browser only, no service bearer>" \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
--data-binary @- <<'JSON'
{
"content": "God won't give you more than you can handle.",
"context": "Said to comfort a friend whose dad just died."
}
JSONBrowser only, with credentials: "same-origin". A service bearer gets 403 browser_session_required.
Versions
Every response from every Shepherd engine — a result, an estimate, a refusal or an error — says which versions produced it, under the same three headers on every engine. A JSON object body carries the same three as `versions: { api, engine, engines }`.
Response headers
| Field | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
X-API-Versionrequired | v<N> | The API version: the request/response contract, the same for every engine ("v1"). It changes only for a breaking change to that contract. |
X-Engine-Versionrequired | <engine>-engine/<line>-v<N> | The responding engine's version ("truth-engine/research-v32", "verse-engine/card-v1"). The number goes up whenever the engine's behaviour changes: its prompts, its models, its retrieval or its rules. |
X-Engine-Versionsrequired | JSON object | The versions of the engines this response's own work called, by engine name ({"lifeline": "lifeline-engine/match-v1", "truth": "truth-engine/research-v32"} from a FORMATION study; {} when it called none — a refusal before any work, or a result served from a recent identical run). |
- · Read as a label, a version is the engine's name, its number and the API's: "VERSE v3 · API v1". The example results on every engine page are labelled this way, with the versions each was captured under.
- · A result stored for later (a TRUTH read, a FORMATION study's reviews) keeps the version that produced it; the headers name the versions answering now.
- · TRUTH's assessment endpoints return the frozen assessment contract, which carries its own provenance.truth_engine_version, so there the versions are in the headers only. The open contract endpoint runs the deterministic stub and answers as truth-engine/stub-v0.