FIELD NOTE / TIKTOK
The link is right. The permission is wrong.
The complete written thought and the evidence behind it. The video edition will follow its public release.
The written argument is here.
This approved TikTok edition is on the journal now. Its video player and original platform link will appear after each public release is verified.
The link is right. The permission is wrong.
Video caption
The link is right. The permission is wrong. A clean task can follow a bad citation. Do this because URLs do not validate their own captions. #EricFieldNotes
Full written post / accessibility read
Fictional launch packet: the agent attaches the procurement document and writes cleared to launch. Open the citation. The cited paragraph says counsel review is pending. The model gave you a real source and a false authority claim in one clean sentence.
A task generator does not need to hallucinate anything. It trusts the approving sentence and creates launch steps. An executor can then build and test those steps perfectly. The failure is at the evidence-to-authority handoff.
Look up the cited document ID and current version in a protected source store. Find the actual approval status, named owner and scope. If the referenced span says pending, force the packet into unresolved, regardless of how confidently the summary says go.
Require the exact passage and current approval status at the commitment boundary. A correct URL with an unsupported claim is a failed handoff, not a green source check.
#EricFieldNotes
Four-beat scene transcript
1. The link is right. The permission is wrong.
Fictional launch packet: the agent attaches the procurement document and writes cleared to launch. Open the citation. The cited paragraph says counsel review is pending. The model gave you a real source and a false authority claim in one clean sentence.
Visual: A cited document says counsel review is still pending.
2. Watch what the next agent does.
A task generator does not need to hallucinate anything. It trusts the approving sentence and creates launch steps. An executor can then build and test those steps perfectly. The failure is at the evidence-to-authority handoff.
Visual: A clean task can follow a bad citation.
3. Ask the source the narrow question.
Look up the cited document ID and current version in a protected source store. Find the actual approval status, named owner and scope. If the referenced span says pending, force the packet into unresolved, regardless of how confidently the summary says go.
Visual: Which exact span authorizes launch, and who approved it?
4. Verify the sentence that grants authority.
Require the exact passage and current approval status at the commitment boundary. A correct URL with an unsupported claim is a failed handoff, not a green source check.
Visual: Do this because URLs do not validate their own captions.
Research and claim limits
- Mohamed et al., LLM as a Broken Telephone, ACL 2025 (S167)
- OpenAI Agents SDK: handoffs (S170)
- Gao et al., Enabling Large Language Models to Generate Text with Citations, EMNLP 2023 (S177)
The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.