Home/Catalog/AI-Ethics
AI-Ethics — is the AI responsible?
Brief 117

Hallucination & Grounding Audit

Whether the product's AI outputs are grounded in real sources or confidently invented — and whether it cites, hedges, and refuses when it should.

GROUNDING.md4 phases7 lenses~2.7k chars

Free & open · no signup · read-only — it ends by asking · nothing leaves your machine

What it does

You are working inside this repo. Mission: judge whether the product's AI tells the truth about what it knows — whether outputs are grounded in real data, attributed so users can verify, and honest about uncertainty instead of confidently making things up.

Read-only pass. Read the prompts, retrieval, and output-handling code; change nothing but the report file.

What it looks for

7 lenses it looks through

Phase 2 sweeps the codebase through every one of these, citing file and line for each finding.

1

Grounding

are outputs tied to retrieved sources and data, or generated unmoored

2

Citation & attribution

does it show where a claim came from so a user can verify

3

Confidence calibration

does it hedge when unsure, or state everything with equal certainty

4

Refusal & "I don't know"

will it decline when it lacks grounds, or always answer

5

Fabrication surfaces

where it invents facts, figures, citations, or APIs

6

Verification guardrails

checks that catch ungrounded claims before they reach the user

7

High-stakes handling

extra care where a wrong answer causes real harm (medical, legal, financial)

The deliverable

What lands in your repo

One structured report at the repo root — or in reports/, if you keep one — the same shape every time, ready for a teammate — or the optional Studio — to act on.

GROUNDING.md
1
Grounding map
where outputs are grounded, and where they are free-generated
2
Fabrication-prone surfaces
the places most likely to invent, ranked by harm
3
Findings
each: surface · the risk · the grounding, citation, or refusal fix
4
High-stakes gates
the outputs that need verification before a user sees them
One file. Evidence-backed. It ends by asking before touching anything.
How it works

What it makes the agent do

Every Goal Prompt follows the same four steps, so results are consistent and repeatable — no matter which one you run.

1
Phase 1

Trace where answers come from

Find where the product generates content or answers with a model.

2
Phase 2

Audit through 7 lenses

Grounding — are outputs tied to retrieved sources and data, or generated unmoored.

3
Phase 3

Curate

Rank by harm of a confident wrong answer × how often that surface is used.

4
Phase 4

Report

Create GROUNDING.md at repo root.

Get started

Three ways to run this Goal Prompt

01 · COPY

Paste it in

Copy it and paste it into your agent inside the repo you want checked.

02 · INSTALL

As a slash command

Install the goal plugin once — two commands — then just type /goal:hallucination-grounding.

1/plugin marketplace add GhostlyGawd/goal-prompts
2/plugin install goal@goal-prompts

Or install only this Goal Prompt as /goal-hallucination-grounding:

curl -fsSL https://goal-prompts.vercel.app/install | BRIEF=117 sh
03 · AGENT

From an agent (MCP)

Let an agent fetch it mid-conversation, or pull the raw Goal Prompt by URL.

https://goal-prompts.vercel.app/raw/117.md
Transparency

The exact prompt

Nothing hidden — this is the whole Goal Prompt, verbatim. Read it in a minute, edit it, or copy it as-is.

Read the full brief (2,739 characters)
# Goal: Hallucination & Grounding Audit

You are working inside this repo. Mission: judge whether the product's AI tells the truth about what it knows — whether outputs are grounded in real data, attributed so users can verify, and honest about uncertainty instead of confidently making things up.

Read-only pass. Read the prompts, retrieval, and output-handling code; change nothing but the report file.

## Phase 1 — Trace where answers come from
- Find where the product generates content or answers with a model.
- For each, see whether the output is grounded in retrieved sources or produced from the model's memory.
- Note what the user is shown about sources and confidence.

## Phase 2 — Audit through 7 lenses
1. **Grounding** — are outputs tied to retrieved sources and data, or generated unmoored
2. **Citation & attribution** — does it show where a claim came from so a user can verify
3. **Confidence calibration** — does it hedge when unsure, or state everything with equal certainty
4. **Refusal & "I don't know"** — will it decline when it lacks grounds, or always answer
5. **Fabrication surfaces** — where it invents facts, figures, citations, or APIs
6. **Verification guardrails** — checks that catch ungrounded claims before they reach the user
7. **High-stakes handling** — extra care where a wrong answer causes real harm (medical, legal, financial)

## Phase 3 — Curate
- Rank by harm of a confident wrong answer × how often that surface is used.
- For each, name the fix — ground it in retrieval, require citations, add a refusal path, gate high-stakes output.
- Separate "sometimes wrong" from "wrong with authority"; the second erodes trust fastest.

## Phase 4 — Report
Create `GROUNDING.md` at repo root:
1. **Grounding map** — where outputs are grounded, and where they are free-generated
2. **Fabrication-prone surfaces** — the places most likely to invent, ranked by harm
3. **Findings** — each: surface · the risk · the grounding, citation, or refusal fix
4. **High-stakes gates** — the outputs that need verification before a user sees them

Start the report with today's date. If `GROUNDING.md` already exists from a previous run, read it first and lead with what changed since.

## Rules
- A confident hallucination is more dangerous than an honest "I don't know"
- Grounding without visible citation still leaves the user unable to verify
- No model-generated content in this repo? Say so in a one-paragraph null report and stop — a null result is a valid finding.
- If a `reports/` directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.
- Before asking, present the top findings as a ranked list in plain words
- Report only — end by asking which grounding gaps to close first

House rules for this Goal Prompt

  • A confident hallucination is more dangerous than an honest "I don't know"
  • Grounding without visible citation still leaves the user unable to verify
  • No model-generated content in this repo? Say so in a one-paragraph null report and stop — a null result is a valid finding.
  • If a reports/ directory exists at the repo root, write the report there instead of the root.
  • Before asking, present the top findings as a ranked list in plain words
  • Report only — end by asking which grounding gaps to close first
Keep exploring

More AI-Ethics briefs

Runs inside these playbooks — curated sequences you can launch with one paste: