Safety & ops
What is Verification?
Verification is an explicit check that an artifact meets criteria before it ships.
Verification can be rules, tests, citations, or a separate evaluator agent.
Why it matters
Verification is an explicit check that an artifact meets criteria before it ships. Without verification, agent outputs are unreviewed — and unreviewed outputs from probabilistic systems will eventually be wrong.
Verification is the stage that turns "the model said it's correct" into "we checked and it passed."
Verification methods
Methods include: automated tests (for code), assertion checks (for structured data), citation verification (for research), human review (for high-stakes decisions), and evaluator agents (for quality scoring).
The best verification combines multiple methods. A coding agent should run tests AND have the diff reviewed.
Key takeaways
- 1Verification turns model claims into checked facts.
- 2Combine multiple verification methods for reliability.
- 3Without verification, agent outputs are unreviewed guesses.
Common mistakes
- ✕Skipping verification because the model sounds confident.
- ✕Using only one verification method when multiple are available.
Related terms
Concept neighborhood
Terms linked from Verification in the glossary graph.
- Verification
- Evaluator Agent
- Grounding
- Agent Evaluation