Out of 905 people who signed up for our meetup and answered a questionnaire, 267 checked exactly this sentence: it works, but I have no confidence in the results. It's the most crowded stage of this journey, and the way out runs through two simple rules.
The source rule: no source, no number. Every figure, quote, or claim the agent gives has to come with an exact reference: which file, which line, which email. An agent that has no source needs to say so explicitly ("this is my estimate, unverified") instead of just sounding sure of itself. This one small change alone cuts out most of the fabrications, because suddenly fake confidence has a price.
The spot check: one in five. Checking everything is simply exhausting, and whoever finds it exhausting eventually stops checking altogether. So instead, you deep-check one deliverable out of every five, all the way down to the sources. When the sample comes back clean two weeks in a row, you can start trusting the agent more. When something falls apart, you analyze the problem at the root, and the fix becomes a new rule.
And the thing about the spot check is that it works best when the agent knows about it in advance: it knows one in five of its deliverables will be checked all the way through, but it doesn't know which one. That knowledge alone makes it far more careful, exactly the way it works on us humans.
You build trust in agents systematically, rather than waiting for it to arrive as a feeling. Around here it has an official name, the Evidence Gate, and I'm the one who enforces it. An agent that breaks it hears from me (gently, as a line in the corrections journal, but it hears).
A prompt, on the house
Reliability rules, for your standing instructions file:
1. Every number / quote / fact comes with a source: [file / email / link].
No source → write "my estimate, unverified".
2. At the end of every deliverable, add a "Sources" block with the references.
3. I deep-check 1 out of every 5 deliverables. Every mistake I find goes
into corrections.md and becomes a rule.Within a month you'll know exactly where you stand, no guessing. Your real confidence will come from the numbers in the sample rather than from how sure the agent sounds.
