A Simple Prompt That Helps Catch AI Hallucinations Before You Use the Output

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A developer on DEV Community has shared a reusable eight-line prompt designed to audit AI-generated text for hallucinations before the content is acted upon. The prompt instructs an AI model to extract every factual claim, label each as verifiable, suspect, or a fabrication pattern, and rank the three claims most likely to be wrong. In a controlled test using Claude Sonnet, the checker was applied to a five-sentence paragraph containing three planted errors mixed with two true statements. The tool successfully flagged a fabricated study with a named researcher and statistic, an implausible framework-usage figure, and a subtly wrong date — though it could not independently verify correctness, only surface suspicious patterns. The author notes the prompt works on ChatGPT, Claude, or similar models and is intended as a repeatable audit step between AI-generated output and real-world use.

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