Verify

Why verification is the craft

Models can sound certain while being wrong. Your job is not to distrust everything. It is to match scrutiny to risk.

Fluency is a product feature. Evidence is your process. For why confident wrong answers feel so smooth, see the Challenge Why your AI sounds confident when it’s wrong.

Match scrutiny to risk

Risk if wrong	What to do
Low (brainstorm title)	Skim and ship
Medium (internal howto)	Spot-check facts; run it once
High (customer, legal, money, health)	Independent source + human owner

If you cannot place the task in a row, treat it as high until proven otherwise.

Five-check verification loop

Run these before you paste, send, merge, or publish:

Assumptions - Ask: “List assumptions and the weakest claims.”
Skeptic pass - Second prompt: “What would a skeptic challenge? What would falsify this?”
Source you can open - Prefer a link, ticket, log, or doc you actually open over a citation that merely appears.
Numbers and names - Re-check quantities, dates, people, and product names against a system of record.
Paste privilege - If the prompt or the outbound message contains secrets or customer data, stop. Use the habit in Verify before you paste.

Low-risk work can skip to a skim. High-risk work needs all five, plus a human owner.

Habits that scale

Ask the model to list assumptions and weakest claims.
Re-run critical steps with a skeptic prompt.
Prefer citations you can open over citations that merely appear.
Save one redacted “good verify” example so the habit sticks on a busy Tuesday.
When privacy is the risk, read Privacy and judgment and the Challenge Privacy is a habit.

Common failure modes

Shipping because the prose sounded finished
Checking only spelling while numbers stay unchecked
Asking the same chat to prove itself without an outside source
Skipping the paste check when you are late for a meeting

If you recognize one of these, slow down on the next send. Craft is mostly refusal of convenient shortcuts.

What good looks like

You can explain, in one sentence, what you checked and what remains uncertain. You are not required to trust nothing. You are required to own the residual risk.