Paste a URL and Trace extracts the article, pulls out its checkable claims, and looks for where each one actually comes from — inside the article's own citations, and across everything else already in the corpus.
It flags claims with no attached source, detects when text has been copied or republished elsewhere, and compares a claim's wording against the source it's supposedly drawn from to see whether it's actually supported.
Confidence is never a made-up number. It's an ordinal level (high / medium / low / unverified) derived from concrete evidence — an inline citation, a corroborating occurrence elsewhere with a known date, a shared-sentence count — always shown with the reason behind it.
Following a citation chain beyond an article's own links means searching the web and fetching other sites — real requests with real cost. Trace never does that automatically. Every step past the article you pasted is a switch or a button you choose to use.