Check the claim before you send the AI draft
AI-assisted work usually does not fail because every sentence is wrong.
It fails because one confident claim slips through without a source.
A number. A competitor claim. A “best practice” line. A recommendation that sounds right but cannot be defended.
That is the sentence someone asks about later.
Before I send AI-assisted work, I now run a private Client Claim Check.
It is not a rewrite prompt. It is not a spreadsheet that reviews the draft for you. It is a 10-minute check that forces every important claim to point back to a source before the work goes out.
The point is not to make AI sound more polished.
The point is to decide what gets used, what gets revised, and what gets cut.
🧠 When to use this
Use this before sending AI-assisted work that includes:
Client recommendations
Numbers or percentages
Competitor claims
Market claims
“Best practice” language
Board, partner, or leadership-facing summaries
Anything someone may challenge later
Do not use it for every draft.
Use it when being wrong would cost trust.
What you need
You need three things:
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or another AI tool
The AI-assisted draft
The source material you actually used
That source material can be pasted text, meeting notes, a transcript, a deck, a PDF, a Google Doc, or a connected Drive folder if you already use connectors.
Connectors are optional.
Pasted sources work fine.
One warning: the AI cannot verify sources you do not give it. If a claim has no source in the material you provide, the right answer is not “sounds plausible.”
The right answer is Missing.
Step by Step Guide
Step 1: Open a second AI chat
If the draft came from ChatGPT, run the check in Claude.
If the draft came from Claude, run the check in ChatGPT.
You do not have to do it this way, but it helps. The second chat is your reviewer, not your writer.
Paste this prompt.
You are my claim-checking assistant.
I am going to give you:
1. An AI-assisted draft
2. The source material I used to create it
Your job is to extract the important claims from the draft and classify each one.
For each claim, create a table with these columns:
- Claim
- Source
- Evidence status
- Risk level
- Fix needed
- Revised wording
Use these evidence statuses:
- Supported
- Weak
- Missing
- Contradicted
- Judgment call
Use these risk levels:
- Low
- Medium
- High
Rules:
- Do not invent sources.
- If you cannot find support in the material I gave you, mark the claim Missing.
- If the source only loosely supports the claim, mark it Weak.
- If the claim is reasonable but not directly proven, mark it Judgment call.
- Treat numbers, client-specific claims, competitor claims, “best practice” language, and recommendations as higher risk by default.
- Be stricter than usual. This is for work that may be sent to other people.
- Do not include filler claims, transitions, or general framing sentences. Only include substantive claims someone could challenge.
Here is the draft:
[PASTE AI-ASSISTED DRAFT]
Here are the sources:
[PASTE SOURCES, OR NAME THE CONNECTED FILES TO CHECK]Step 2: Read the table like a reviewer, not a passenger
The AI will produce a claim table.
Do not treat it as final.
The important column is Final verdict: Use, Revise, or Cut. The AI drafts the columns to the left. You verify the source trail and fill in the verdict. That is the only column that decides what goes out the door.
Use this simple rule:
Use if the claim is supported and low-risk
Revise if the claim is directionally useful but too strong
Cut if the claim has no source and does not need to be there
The goal is not to save every sentence.
The goal is to make the draft defensible.
Step 3: Paste the table into the Google Sheet
Copy the AI’s table into the Claim Check tab.
Then fill in the Final verdict column yourself.
The sheet gives you one audit trail for the draft:
What claim was made
What source supported it
What risk level it carried
What changed before sending
What you decided to use, revise, or cut
Before you download: Run the prompt first. The AI does the thinking pass. Then paste its table into the Claim Check tab. The sheet is the audit trail, not the AI reviewer.
What the sheet includes
The template has five tabs.
How to use
A quick guide for running the check.
Claim Check
The main table. This is where the AI’s claim table goes.
Source Log
A place to list the docs, transcripts, emails, decks, or files used for the review.
Red Flag Rules
The claims that deserve extra attention: numbers, competitors, best-practice language, vague attribution, and recommendations.
Example
A worked example using a fictional SaaS pricing memo.
Upload the file to Google Drive, then open it with Google Sheets.
The dropdowns and color formatting should carry over.
Example
Here is the kind of AI claim that looks fine until someone asks where it came from:
Mid-market SaaS companies typically see a 12-18% lift after moving from per-seat to value-based pricing.
That sounds useful.
But if the AI cannot point to a source, it should not survive as a hard claim.
In the sheet, that row becomes:
Evidence status: Missing
Risk level: High
Fix needed: Either source it or remove it
Final verdict: Cut or revise
A safer version might be:
Several firms in our portfolio have seen meaningful lift after pricing model changes.
That sentence is less flashy.
It is also more defensible if that is what the source material actually supports.
The common mistake
The mistake is treating this like “AI reviews AI.”
That is not the workflow.
The AI finds the claims and drafts the review. You make the judgment.
If you skip that part, you are just outsourcing trust to another model.
The useful move is slower and better: make the claim visible, make the source visible, then decide what goes out.
Where this breaks
This check is useful, but it is not magic.
It can still fail in a few places.
The AI may cite the wrong source.
Spot-check important claims against the actual source file.
The AI may treat weak evidence as strong evidence.
A sales call, a client transcript, and a public blog post are not the same kind of source.
The AI may miss implied claims.
A draft can imply something risky without saying it directly.
The AI cannot make the business judgment for you.
The verdict is yours.
Confidential material still matters.
If your company has not approved a tool for client work, do not paste confidential client material into it. Use approved tools, redacted sources, or synthetic examples.
What to do before your next important draft
Pick one AI-assisted draft this week.
Run the claim check.
Paste the result into the sheet.
Mark every important claim as Use, Revise, or Cut.
You will know it worked when the final draft is less impressive-sounding and more defensible.
That is the trade I would take.
Was this useful enough to try on real work this week?
I’m using these quick polls to decide what to make clearer, cut, or build next. One click helps me avoid guessing.