How to check an AI summary against its source.

Decide what the summary is for

A meeting recap, a reading note and an executive decision brief have different jobs. Write the intended use at the top of your review. A recap might need decisions and owners. A reading note might need the argument and its limitations. A decision brief must keep the conditions that could change the decision.

Keep a copy of the exact source and the generated summary. If the original is a changing web page, record its date and the version you used. Ask for source locations alongside each important claim. Those locations are a route back to the evidence; check that they actually support the sentence.

Review one claim at a time

Underline names, numbers, dates, decisions and causal statements. For each one, locate the matching passage. Mark it supported, changed, missing context or not found. Do this before editing the tone: a polished sentence can make an unsupported claim harder to notice.

Check omissions separately. Ask what a reader would misunderstand if they had only the summary. An exception, an unfinished decision or a narrow sample may deserve a sentence even if it feels less tidy. Do not ask the same model to approve its own answer and treat that as independent evidence.

A worked example: a pilot that is not a rollout

Fictional source note: “Eight volunteers tried the draft assistant for two days. Five said drafting felt faster. Nobody measured review time. The team has not decided whether to roll it out.”

Weak summary: “The pilot proved that the assistant improves productivity, and the team will roll it out.” There are three changes: a small self-reported observation became proof; drafting speed became total productivity; an undecided rollout became a commitment.

A closer summary is: “In a two-day pilot with eight volunteers, five reported faster drafting. Review time was not measured, and no rollout decision has been made.” The corrected version preserves the evidence and its limits. These numbers illustrate the review method; they are not research results.

Keep a short review record

For consequential uses, bring in the person responsible for the underlying facts. A summary is a convenience, not permission to skip the review your work already requires. NIST’s AI risk framework provides broader context for evaluating reliability; the checklist here is our practical editing method, not a NIST certification.

• Claim: copy the exact sentence you are checking.
• Evidence: identify the source passage or timestamp.
• Issue: note a changed fact, an omission or an unsupported inference.
• Correction: write the smallest accurate replacement.
• Decision: accept the summary, narrow its use or write it yourself.

Use this next

• Measure the whole task, including review
• Write a clearer brief