Production agents need deterministic rechecks, not just better prompts, to catch polished wrong numbers
Ok-Salary-6309 · reddit · 2026-07-29
The post describes a production failure mode for agents that generate client reports: polished, well-formatted output that is still numerically wrong. The author says the most effective guardrail so far is a deterministic second pass that re-derives key figures from source rows and blocks shipment if numbers do not match.
Other practices mentioned:
- make the agent cite the exact source row for every figure so humans can verify it quickly
- use a non-LLM check for critical numbers rather than trusting the model
- add a human gate when the cost of a wrong but confident report is high
The author also cites a real failure when an agent built a recap deck through Gamma’s API: the deck looked authoritative, but one number was wrong and Gamma had no way to know it.
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