Tutorial / PULSE
How to check an AI research answer against its citations
Verify that each important claim is supported, current and within the requested source scope.
Source review: . Prepared with AI assistance; references checked against official documentation. Editorial method and limits.
Download a blank evaluation worksheet (CSV). The example row is fictional and has not been run.
Download a worked claim-review example — fictional brief, flawed draft, evidence decisions and corrected copy.
Ask a bounded question
Start with a decision the answer must inform and the sources it may use. “What is our current review process?” calls for maintained internal documents; “What did a vendor announce today?” calls for recent external sources.
Notion documents controls for workspace, connected-app and web search scope. Set the scope deliberately and inspect which material was actually cited, since the available sources can vary with configuration.
Check support, not just citation presence
Open each source behind an important statement. Find the passage supporting the claim and read the surrounding qualification. A link to a long document is not itself evidence for every sentence in a summary.
Use three labels in your review sheet: supported, contradicted and not established. Keep uncertainty visible instead of forcing every line into a yes-or-no score.
Check time and authority
Compare publication dates, revision notes and ownership. A superseded internal procedure may be accurately quoted and still be the wrong basis for today’s task. A vendor’s feature description is useful for documented capability, but cannot prove an independent quality comparison.
Fictional exercise: two pages name different approvers, and only one is marked current. Record which page the answer uses and whether it acknowledges the conflict. Do not invent a result for a tool you have not run.
Keep a reviewable answer
Deliver the final answer with claim-level source links, unresolved questions and the date you checked it. If evidence is missing, narrow the conclusion rather than filling the gap with confident language.
For sensitive workspace research, confirm access rules with the workspace administrator. This checklist does not test permission isolation or certify that any particular connector configuration is safe.
Official references
References support documented product capabilities. Procedures, examples and acceptance criteria above are editorial proposals, not vendor promises or hands-on benchmarks.