Design grounded answers and useful citations

Make claims inspectable#

A source link and a supported claim are different things. A useful citation helps a reader locate the passage that actually supports an assertion. Cohere’s citation documentation demonstrates mappings between answer spans and referenced documents. That is a Cohere capability; applications using other providers must check what citation information is actually available.

Write an answer contract for your application. Separate supported statements, unresolved questions and clearly labeled interpretation. Prefer short factual statements when evidence differs across releases or sources. Avoid attaching one broad reference to a paragraph containing several unrelated claims.

Keep evidence identities stable#

Store the source identifier, revision and passage locator with the exact evidence supplied to generation. A document title alone is insufficient when several versions share that title. Preserve access rules when opening the source from a citation, not only when initially retrieving it.

Cohere’s Chat reference describes supplying documents with content and metadata. Independently of any provider format, keep an application-owned record of what was supplied. Resolve citation links through that record. A model-generated URL should not become an authoritative source merely because it looks plausible.

Use an explicit evidence record#

This fictional response record is provider-neutral JSON, not an Align API schema. It illustrates a reviewable relationship between an answer, a claim and a source passage.

{
  "answer": "Release 3.2 supports CSV export.",
  "claims": [{
    "text": "Release 3.2 supports CSV export.",
    "evidence": [{
      "document_id": "release-notes",
      "revision": "3.2",
      "passage_id": "exports",
      "quote": "CSV export is available in release 3.2."
    }]
  }]
}

Validate that each identifier exists and that each quotation occurs in the recorded passage. These mechanical checks establish traceability, not meaning. A reviewer must still decide whether the passage supports the claim’s scope, conditions and implied certainty.

Validate support before presentation#

For every material claim, ask whether its evidence entails the statement, contradicts it, or leaves it unresolved. Check numbers, units, exceptions and dates explicitly. When sources conflict, show the conflict or narrow the answer instead of silently combining incompatible statements.

Display a recognizable source title and a passage preview near the supported statement. Keep access to the full context available. If answers stream, distinguish provisional text from citations that have been resolved and checked. Treat rewriting, translation and formatting as transformations that may invalidate character offsets; associate citations with the final displayed answer.

Know what citations cannot prove#

Citations do not certify that a source is correct, current or unbiased. They also do not guarantee that every unsupported assertion has been detected. Record unsupported-claim and incorrect-citation cases separately so improvements target the right failure.

Build review examples with misleading titles, stale revisions and passages that mention a topic without answering the question. Include an answer with a correct quotation but an unjustified conclusion. For sensitive decisions, provide a path to human review and make the evidence gap visible. A transparent refusal is more useful than a polished answer whose citations merely decorate it.

When a source changes, preserve the revision used for the original answer where policy permits. Otherwise, a later reader may see evidence different from what the system used.