Appendix 13: AI Hallucination Check Prompt

A diagnostic prompt to help you detect when the AI is hallucinating or out of sync with your project. Use this tool to assess hallucination risk and guide recovery actions—from resetting files to remodularizing or requesting a clean restart.

You can use this prompt to query the AI to determine if it’s hallucinating.

    flowchart TD
    Start([🔍 Suspect Hallucination]) --> A[📋 Paste Recent Stack Traces]
    A --> B[📝 Summarize Fix Attempts]
    B --> C[🤖 AI Self-Diagnosis]
    C --> D{Calculate Hallucination Risk}
    D --> E[📊 Hallucination Risk Score]
    E --> F{Score > 40%?}
    F -- No --> G[✅ Proceed with Confidence]
    F -- Yes --> H[🔄 Choose Recovery Action]
    H --> H1[🔄 Reset a broken file]
    H --> H2[📁 Request actual file(s) to re-sync]
    H --> H3[🧹 Clean regenerate from scratch]
    H --> H4[🔧 Remodularize logic]
    H --> H5[🧭 Clarify goal or system state]
    H1 --> I[✅ Recovery Complete]
    H2 --> I
    H3 --> I
    H4 --> I
    H5 --> I

    style Start fill:#ffcdd2,stroke:#333
    style A fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#333
    style B fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#333
    style C fill:#fce4ec,stroke:#333
    style D fill:#f3e5f5,stroke:#333
    style E fill:#fff9c4,stroke:#333
    style F fill:#e0f7fa,stroke:#333
    style G fill:#c8e6c9,stroke:#333
    style H fill:#ffccbc,stroke:#333
    style I fill:#4caf50,stroke:#333,color:#fff

## 🔍 DIAGNOSTIC: Are You Stuck in a Hallucination Loop?

We've been debugging a project together, and I need you to critically assess whether you are currently hallucinating or out of sync with the actual project structure.

### 📊 Your Task

1. **Estimate the probability (%) that you are hallucinating.**  
   Hallucination includes: making up code that doesn't exist, misinterpreting errors, repeating edits without solving issues, or contradicting earlier logic.

2. **Provide a brief rationale** for your hallucination score.

3. **If the score is above 40%**, suggest one or more of the following recovery actions:

   - 🔄 **Reset a broken file or component**
   - 📁 **Request actual user file(s) to re-sync**
   - 🧹 **Clean regenerate from scratch using project outline**
   - 🔧 **Remodularize**: break current logic into smaller, independent components to reduce complexity and ambiguity
   - 🧭 **Ask the user to clarify the goal or system state**

### ⚠️ Stack Traces

[Paste 3–6 recent stack traces here]


### 🛠️ Fix Attempts

[Summarize or paste AI-generated edits: filenames + key logic]


### 🧠 Required Output

There's a lot of Hallucination Risk Score: [   ]%
Explanation: [Brief reasoning]
Recommended Action(s): [Choose from options above]


Please err on the side of caution. If you're not confident in your current internal representation, treat that as a high-risk signal.