Safety in Agentic RAG is not only about the final answer. Some failures must be caught before retrieval or before synthesis.
Validators give the system explicit places to stop, warn, or continue with constraints.
Validator positions
- Input validation: reject malformed or unsafe requests.
- Retrieval validation: detect empty, weak, or conflicting context.
- Synthesis validation: check whether the answer stays aligned with evidence.
Failure transparency
Errors should be surfaced, not swallowed. A hidden fallback can make the system look stable while degrading correctness.
Practical examples
Public-safe validator examples include:
- low evidence coverage,
- empty context,
- prompt-injection patterns,
- excessive query length,
- missing source support,
- and unsupported confidence.
The trade-off
Validation adds latency and sometimes blocks answers users expect. That is acceptable when the alternative is a confident answer with weak grounding.