Business
Beginner
16 min
Hallucination and staleness — the two failure modes that reach customers
The problem
You ask for the current referral fee for a marketplace category. You get a specific percentage, confidently. It is a percentage that was correct at some point in the past, for a different sub-category.
The workflow
1Identify the claim type
2Ask for the uncertainty label
3Source every specific claim
4Check every current-state claim at source
5Note the date checked
6Reject unsourced specifics
7Log
★Move on
What you need
Question: What is the current referral fee for kitchenware on Amazon.in, and what other fees should I model? Context: D2C brand, ₹749 average selling price, FBA.
The tool
The primary source, always
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
[TIME-SENSITIVE] Referral fees for kitchenware on Amazon.in are tiered by price band and sub-category. I have a figure in mind but I am not going to state it, because fee schedules are revised regularly and a wrong percentage would flow into your entire margin model.
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- Note the model declined to state a percentage at all. That is the correct behaviour and it is what the labelling instruction produces.
- Get the referral rate from Seller Central for your exact sub-category, and note the date you checked it.
- The stable-structure versus unstable-rates distinction is worth keeping. The cost layers do not change; the numbers do.
- Supply the four unknowns and re-ask if you want anything quantitative.