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Nah, "provenance" is a good word to know. Plain English version would be, "what colour are your bits?".


Good word to know, yes. Best word to use, no.

If you know “origin” or “source” and those words suffice, using a word that means the same thing but you don’t know is strictly worse for communication.

So if Claude is writing a novel, maybe provenance is the best word to use at times. If its a codebase README or variable name, its usually not.


LLMs haven't mastered the use of regular language that is the background of a jargon. Source and origin are exactly the word you'd use in IT.



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