Reports written by agents tend to look thoroughly sourced. Every paragraph ends in a bracketed number, the footnotes list plausible addresses, and the formatting is cleaner than most human drafts. Reviewers see the apparatus and relax. That is the problem: the apparatus is cheap to produce, and support is not. A citation that holds up is one a skeptical reader can follow to a specific passage that says what the finding says, no more and no less.
Why a link proves nothing on its own
A link tells you where to look. It does not tell you what you will find. In practice, a cited address can let you down in several ways:
- It does not exist. Generated text can produce addresses that look exactly like real ones.
- It exists but says something else. The page is on topic, yet nothing in it supports the specific claim.
- It has changed. The page said it once, but no longer does, and nobody recorded what it said at the time.
- It supports a weaker claim. The source says “some”, the finding says “most”; the source says “planned”, the finding says “available”.
- It is a copy of a copy. A news summary of a blog post about a filing, with the original never consulted.
A polished footnote makes all of these harder to spot, not easier. Treat a citation as a pointer to evidence, never as the evidence itself.
Tie each finding to a passage
The unit of evidence is a quoted passage, not a page. For each finding, keep the exact words from the source, where in the source they appear (section, page or clause), the source reference and when it was retrieved. Then hold the claim to a simple rule: it may be no stronger than the passage.
A small table makes the check concrete:
| Finding as written | Passage in the source | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| The vendor offers on-premises deployment. | “Self-hosted deployment is available on the Enterprise plan.” | Supported, but only for one plan; the finding should say so. |
| The rule applies to all lenders. | “These requirements apply to lenders that take deposits.” | Overstated; narrow the finding. |
| The company has stopped selling the product. | “The product will no longer be offered to new customers.” | Partly supported; existing customers are not mentioned. |
Writing the passage next to the claim forces the precision that a footnote lets you skip. It also turns the reviewer's job into a comparison rather than a search.
Keep “no source found” separate
Sometimes the honest result is that nothing supports the claim. That outcome should be visible as itself, not disguised as a finding with a weak citation attached. A finding backed by a quotation and a question for which no source turned up are different things, and a report should list them apart so the reader knows exactly where the evidence ends. GoCux keeps both, each in its own place; missing evidence is an open question explains why that matters for decisions.
How a reviewer should check support
Reviewing citations well is a habit more than a skill. A routine that works:
- Open the passage, not just the link. Find the quoted words in the source and read the paragraph around them.
- Compare strength. Check quantifiers (some, most, all), tense (planned, launched, discontinued), scope (one region, one plan, one product) and conditions (“subject to approval”).
- Check the source type. Primary documents, official pages and filings carry different weight from summaries and commentary.
- Check the age. Is the passage still current for the decision being made?
- Look for independence. Three citations that all trace back to one press release are one source.
- Match effort to stakes. Check every citation behind a finding that will drive a consequential decision; spot-check the rest, and widen the check if the spot-check turns up problems.
Record what you checked. A note such as “passage confirmed, scope narrowed to the Enterprise plan” on the finding itself saves the next reader from repeating the work.
Where GoCux fits
GoCux is built so the passage travels with the claim. Knowledge search answers a question from one project's documents with the passages it found and their citations. Extraction returns each value alongside the passage that supports it, and when the material does not contain a value, it leaves that value unknown instead of guessing. Rows in a FindAll table carry their own evidence. None of this replaces the reviewer: a citation still only points, and a person still decides whether the passage means what the finding says. If you already hold the documents, bring the evidence you already have shows how to start from them.
What to verify before you trust a sourced report
- Every finding has a quoted passage, a location in the source and a retrieval time.
- No claim is stronger than its passage in scope, tense or quantity.
- Questions without a source are listed separately, not padded with weak citations.
- Repeated citations have been traced to see whether they are independent.
- Findings that drive consequential decisions have had every citation checked by a person.
- What the reviewer checked is noted on the finding.
For building systems that ground answers in sources from the start, see chatbots that cite their sources and reducing hallucinations with grounding.
Bring this workflow into your workspace.
Set the scope. Review the evidence. Approve the steps that need it.