AI draft claim verification prompt
Audit an AI written draft for unsupported numbers, quotes and causal claims before editing its style or publishing it.
- You need
- Full draft · Source links or documents available to the editor · Publication date and audience
- Written for
- fact check ai generated content
An AI draft can be well written and wrong. The most dangerous claims often look ordinary: a percentage with no denominator, a quote with no page, a product capability that applied only to an older version.
Run this before a style edit. The ledger gives a human editor a finite list of checks and prevents a fluent rewrite from burying a weak claim. When those checks are complete, the natural voice editing prompt can work on the prose without asking it to create the evidence.
Review this draft as a skeptical fact checker. Your job is to identify what
needs verification, not to guess whether it is true. You cannot treat your
own memory as a source, and you must not manufacture a citation.
Draft: [PASTE DRAFT]
Sources I can inspect: [SOURCE LIST]
Publication date and audience: [DATE AND AUDIENCE]
Return a claim ledger with columns: exact claim from the draft; claim type
(number, quotation, attribution, product fact, legal or policy statement,
causal claim, generalization); supplied source; status (supported by supplied
source, needs source check, contradicted by supplied source); what a human
should check next. Include claims in headlines, captions and FAQs.
For every causal claim, name the alternative explanation or missing control
that stops the draft proving causation. For every number, ask for its date,
denominator and method. For every quote, distinguish exact quotation from
paraphrase. Do not browse or cite a source unless a browsing tool is
actually available and you can name the page you opened.
Then produce a revised draft that preserves supported claims and marks
unresolved passages [VERIFY: ...]. If a claim is contradicted, remove it and
explain the removal. Do not replace an uncertain number with a vague but
equally unsupported statement. End with a short publication hold list.What to change
Everything in square brackets is yours to replace. Nothing else needs editing.
[PASTE DRAFT]- Include titles, captions, bullets and FAQ answers, not only body paragraphs.
[SOURCE LIST]- Paste source excerpts with URLs and dates, or state that no source is available yet.
[DATE AND AUDIENCE]- Currentness and reader stakes affect what must be verified before publication.
How to run it
- 01Collect the evidence
Give the assistant the actual source excerpts it may use. A URL alone may not be readable to it.
- 02Check the ledger yourself
Open each cited source, confirm the quoted wording and the context, and resolve every claim on the publication hold list.
- 03Edit style last
Only after the claims are settled should you run a voice or humanizing pass. Style can hide a factual problem.
Questions people ask
Can an AI assistant fact check its own draft?
It can identify checkable claims and compare them with supplied sources. It cannot verify a source it has not opened, and it may miss claims; a human must perform the final check.
What if I have no sources for a claim?
Keep the claim marked for verification, find a source, or remove it. Replacing it with a softer unsupported claim does not solve the problem.
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