# Grounding

> Tying an answer to retrieved sources so its claims can be traced rather than invented.

## What it means in practice

A grounded answer carries citations the reader can open. Grounding is not a guarantee of accuracy: a source can be cited and still be misread, and some engines attach sources after composing the text, so a citation is evidence the document was retrieved rather than proof it was used. This is why a mention and a citation have to be counted separately.

## Category

Concept in How AI answers work.
This definition is editorial category vocabulary, not a metric refd computes.