The Core Laws
The source outranks the guess
A generated answer carries no evidence. When a document, record, or measurement exists, make the machine read it and derive.
When a document, a record, or a measurement exists, there is no reason to accept the machine's recollection of it. Generated answers resemble the truth by construction; that is what generation is. And a resemblance is exactly what a wrong number looks like. The nearby value, the rounded figure, the last version's rule: each is plausible enough to survive review and wrong enough to matter.
The discipline is to route the question at the source. Open the document and make the machine read it. Ask for the quote, not the summary. For anything that changes, prices, policies, schedules, versions, insist on a fresh look over a remembered one. Prior knowledge sets the hypothesis. The source gives the answer.
How to practice it
Point at the document.
If the authoritative thing exists, put it in front of the machine and make it derive from there. Its memory of the document is not the document.
Quote, don't guess.
Ask for the exact passage, the exact number, the exact field, with its location. A claim that can't produce its line hasn't earned belief.
Live beats remembered.
Anything with a version or a date gets checked now, not recalled. The cutoff is always closer than the confidence suggests.
Reject the nearest number.
12.5 is not 12, rev B is not rev A, and the familiar default is not your configuration. Close is the failure mode, not the success.
Deep scripture: Codeuteronomy VII — The source is authoritative; the agent's guess is not