Inside the verification pass

An agent that’s confidently wrong is worse than one that says “I don’t know.” The verification pass is the part of TRACE that earns the difference.

Grounding before output

Before a single token reaches the user, every claim is matched against the sources the agent actually retrieved. No source, no claim.

Failing loudly

When a check fails, the run doesn’t quietly degrade. It retries within budget, or it escalates to a human, with the failed step highlighted in the trace.