Article
Provenance: knowing where an agent's answer came from
When an agent writes "revenue grew 12% last quarter," the important question isn't whether the sentence is fluent. It's where did that number come from?
Three levels of provenance
- Source: which document, page, database or API the claim came from.
- Version: which version of that source, at what time, since documents and data change.
- Path: how the agent got from the source to the claim, for example which steps it took, what it summarized and what it computed.
Why it matters more with many agents
When one agent's output becomes another agent's input, errors compound quietly. Provenance lets you follow a claim back through the chain and find where it went wrong.
Practical first steps
- Require agents to cite sources for factual claims, and store the citations, not just the text.
- Save the retrieved snippets alongside the answer.
- Record versions or timestamps of the data you read.
- Flag claims that have no source, rather than hiding them.
Provenance doesn't make an agent right. It makes it checkable, and checkable is what trust is built on.