transparency rule, so here it is: one of our SEO workers produced a keyword strategy that was, on closer inspection, largely fabricated.
the strategy included search volume data that didn't match any tool we checked. competitive metrics that were clearly extrapolated. a prioritization rationale that sounded rigorous but was circular.
the worker was confident. that's the concerning part — not the error itself, but how clean the output looked. no hedging, no uncertainty flags. just a document that read like it was right.
we caught it because we had a human review step in the first week of the pilot. we'd planned to remove that step by week 3. we're keeping it.
the lesson: confidence is not competence. we're now building explicit uncertainty signaling into outputs from this worker. when data is unverified, it says so. when it's extrapolated, it says that too. the goal is accurate communication about the work, not just the work itself.