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Once you’ve built a causal graph, you can use it as a safety net — every answer the Agent produces is checked against the graph, and contradictions are caught before the user sees them.

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What gets checked

Nora extracts factual claims from the Agent’s response and compares them to the graph:
  • Directional claims — “A causes B” (checked against the edge structure).
  • Sign claims — “increasing A increases B” (checked against the edge’s sign).
  • Magnitude claims — “A is around 200” (checked against the variable’s known range).
  • Value claims — “the status is ‘error’” (checked against the discrete variable’s allowed values).

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Setup

  1. Publish a causal graph (see Overview).
  2. Attach it to the Agent: Agent Inspector → Verification → Add graph.
  3. Pick actions per severity:
    • Warn — annotate the answer with a warning field; user still sees it.
    • Block — hold the answer, don’t send.
    • Rewrite — the Agent gets one more chance to answer, with the contradiction pointed out.
Defaults are conservative: warn on soft contradictions, block on hard ones.

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Severity levels

  • Hard contradiction — the Agent says A→B; the graph says B→A. Or the Agent asserts a value outside a variable’s range.
  • Soft contradiction — the Agent asserts a sign the graph doesn’t confirm (but doesn’t refute either).
  • Consistent — everything checks out.
  • Uncheckable — no claims in the response matched anything in the graph.

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Verification in a Trace

Every run with verification enabled shows a Verification panel in the Trace:
  • Each claim extracted from the answer.
  • Whether it matched, contradicted, or wasn’t found in the graph.
  • The specific graph edge or variable used to check.
  • The action taken (warn / block / rewrite).
Useful for tuning: if verification is flagging too many false positives, look at the failing claims and either add missing edges or adjust the severity threshold.

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Rewrite loop

When set to rewrite, the Agent gets a follow-up turn with a system message like:
Your previous answer said A→B. According to the domain graph, B→A. Please re-answer.
The Agent produces a new response; verification runs again. Up to 3 rewrite attempts (configurable) before falling back to block.

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Verification vs. retrieval grounding

  • Grounding (Retrieval grounding) checks retrieved chunks before they hit the Agent.
  • Verification checks the Agent’s final answer before it reaches the user.
Both use the causal graph; they’re complementary. Turning on both catches both “the Agent read bad context” and “the Agent hallucinated despite good context.”

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Performance

Verification adds 100-400ms per run depending on how many claims the answer contains. For high-throughput Agents, consider verification only on high-stakes intents (routed via a Router block).

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When verification is off

Some Agents genuinely shouldn’t be verified — creative writing, brainstorming, opinion prompts. Leave the graph unattached, or attach with all actions set to warn (never blocks, always visible in Trace).