Before you share an AI summary, check these three facts
Compare a summary with its source notes for the person, timing and status, then practise a changed deadline.
Updated
A fluent summary can still change the work. Before sharing it, compare who owns the task, when it is due, and what has actually happened. A short sentence is useful only when it preserves the facts people need to act on.
Your outcome: identify changes to the person, timing and status in a fictional summary, then rewrite it without adding unsupported facts.
You need only the source notes and example below. No AI account, prompt or workplace document is required. The names and situation are fictional. The faulty summary was manually written for this lesson; it was not captured from a live AI model.
Read the source before the summary
Suppose these are the complete notes available for a demonstration task:
Alex will review the draft checklist. The review time is not confirmed. The checklist has not been approved.
There are three facts to preserve. Alex owns the review. Its timing is unconfirmed. The checklist remains unapproved.
Now compare this deliberately faulty summary:
Morgan approved the checklist and will send it by Friday.
The sentence sounds complete, but it describes a different situation. Someone relying on it could believe a decision has already been made and a delivery date agreed. The source notes support neither conclusion.
Check the person, timing and status
| Check | What the notes support | What the faulty summary says |
|---|---|---|
| Person | Alex will review the checklist | Morgan approved it |
| Timing | Review time is not confirmed | It will be sent by Friday |
| Status | Review is still ahead; approval has not happened | Approval has happened |
The summary also invents a sending action. Checking the main three facts should not stop you from noticing other additions. Every action and claim still needs support.
An accurate replacement is:
Alex will review the draft checklist. The review time is unconfirmed, and the checklist has not been approved.
This version is close to the source because the source is already short. There is no benefit in forcing it into fewer words if that hides uncertainty or changes the task. An accurate summary can sometimes be only slightly shorter than the original.
Compare claims one at a time
For a longer summary, read one claim and locate the part of the source that supports it. Check names against the task they own, dates against the actions they apply to, and status words against what has occurred.
Words such as “will,” “reviewed” and “approved” carry different information. A planned review is a future action. A completed review says the review happened. Approval records a decision. One does not automatically establish the others.
Preserve uncertainty when it matters. “Time unconfirmed” is useful information for someone coordinating work. Replacing it with a plausible Friday deadline would make the sentence more specific while making it less faithful.
If the original notes conflict or leave the status unclear, the summary should expose that uncertainty or wait for clarification. Rewriting cannot supply missing evidence. You do not need to guess a detail just to make the paragraph read smoothly.
Try the changed case
Replace the original notes with these revised notes:
Alex agreed to review the draft checklist by Friday. The checklist has not been approved.
Write one or two sentences that preserve the updated facts. Decide what you can now say about the deadline and what you still cannot say about completion or approval.
Then check your draft against three questions:
- Did you keep the person responsible for the review?
- Does Friday refer to the review, or did you attach it to a different action?
- Did you leave the checklist’s approval status unchanged?
Make your own attempt before continuing to the answer. The wording does not need to match ours; the meaning does.
Check your reasoning
One supported version is:
Alex agreed to review the draft checklist by Friday. The checklist has not been approved.
You can now include Friday because the changed notes explicitly provide that deadline. You still cannot say Alex has finished the review, that the checklist is approved, or that anyone will send it by Friday.
The key change is a confirmed review deadline. A deadline is not evidence of completion. “Alex will send the approved checklist on Friday” would still add both an unsupported action and an unsupported status.
If your version preserves Alex, the agreed review deadline and the unapproved status without adding a new promise, it passes this written exercise.
Keep the check proportional to the work
Person, timing and status are a useful starting point for task notes. They are not a complete review of every possible summary. Numbers, units, conditions, omitted exceptions and the quality of the underlying source may also matter.
This manually written example does not measure any AI product’s accuracy or establish how a particular model will respond. Practise with made-up notes, and follow your organization’s rules before putting workplace information into any tool.
Before sharing your next summary, identify one important sentence and trace its claims back to the source. For a related decision about evidence and approval, try Which spreadsheet is current?.
Put the idea to work with a small example.
Explore the Excel sample