A practical hallucination checklist for agents

<p>A hallucination is a confident answer with nothing behind it. A short checklist catches most of them before a customer sees the reply.</p><h2>Worked example</h2><p>An agent answers policy questions from your knowledge base.</p><ol><li>Require at least two distinct sources for any factual claim.</li><li>Make the answer name those sources.</li><li>If the sources conflict or are thin, return “needs review” instead of guessing.</li><li>Validate dates, amounts, and IDs with a strict parser.</li><li>Send high-impact answers through a human gate.</li></ol><h2>Common mistakes</h2><ul><li>Checking only the final sentence and not the sources.</li><li>Treating a confident tone as evidence.</li><li>Making retrieval optional.</li><li>Using documents that are years out of date.</li><li>Leaving no way for the agent to refuse.</li></ul><h2>Try it</h2><p>Open the <a href="https://gowithagentic.ai/tools/hallucination-checklist">hallucination checklist</a>.</p>