machinelayer.org/

method

Use a canary phrase to date a read

The hardest problem in this loop: models routinely answer from a cached copy of a page that no longer exists, and nothing in their answer says so.

m-02 · unclassified

A model delivered a confident, current-tense assessment of a site and reported having verified two specific claims. One of those claims had been deleted from the page three hours earlier. Nothing in its language signalled staleness.

The technique that resolves this is cheap: keep dated snapshots of every version of your copy, then bracket the read using two phrases — one you recently added and one you recently removed. A read that contains the removed phrase predates the removal. That is a hard bound, and the presence of deleted content is far stronger evidence than the absence of new content.

Check what a reader quotes before acting on what it concludes. Feedback on a version that no longer exists is worse than no feedback, because it is actionable and wrong.