RESEARCH, WRITING, AND KNOWLEDGE AGENTS

CITATION AND SOURCE-GROUNDING REQUIREMENTS A citation is a pointer from a claim to the source that supports it. Source grounding means that every factual statement the agent makes is tied to evidence it actually read. This matters because language models can produce hallucinations, which are confident statements that are not true or not supported by any source, as you learned in Part One. Even worse, a model can invent a citation that looks real but points to nothing. So the harness must enforce grounding with mechanical checks, not just polite requests. Practical grounding techniques include the following. Inline citations: each factual claim carries a marker linking it to a specific source, such as a document name and section. Quote support: for important claims, store the exact supporting passage so a reviewer can see it quickly. Source registry: keep a list of every source the agent actually opened, and allow citations only to items on that list. Link checking: automatically confirm that each cited address exists, and where possible that the cited page contains the claimed content. Claim extraction and verification: a second step lists every factual claim in the draft and checks each one against the sources provided. Unsupported claim handling: a claim with no traceable source is sent back, and the agent must find a real supporting source, rewrite the claim as clearly uncertain, or remove it. The last rule is the most important. An honest report that says the evidence is weak is far better than a smooth report that quietly invents support. Two further cautions apply. A real citation does not guarantee a true claim, because the cited source may itself be wrong, or the agent may have misread it. And the copyright of source material still matters, so summarize in your own words and quote only briefly, following the usage rules of your organization.