The $40 That Poisoned My AI Agent Grounding Gate

Description and use

An unsourced $40 in the AI agent’s prompt triggered the grounding gate, causing a missed blog post. Input sanitization and schema enforcement were added to prevent recurrence.

Problem

An unsourced number ($40) in a topic brief caused the grounding gate of an AI content generation pipeline to fail, resulting in a missed blog post.

Outcome

The grounding gate successfully prevented publication of an unverified blog post, highlighting the importance of input sanitization. Subsequent tooling updates reduced the risk of similar incidents.

Workflow

• 1. Cron triggers cto-aipa agent at 14:30 Panama time.
• 2. Agent receives topic brief (including $40).
• 3. Grounding gate checks prompt and evidence for sourced numbers.
• 4. Gate detects unsourced $40 and fails closed.
• 5. Agent stops and logs failure.
• 6. Incident review identifies stale input.
• 7. Implement automated scrubbing of numeric literals.
• 8. Enforce schema requiring source for numbers.
• 9. Update documentation and SOPs.
• 10. Monitor for future grounding gate failures.

Evidence

Grounding gate, unsourced number(s): 40.

Source

The gate’s output is designed to be concise, identifying the specific ungrounded element.

Source