The book’s vocabulary

Tracing

Record what the application sent — not what the model says it received.

From The World That Agrees With You1 section of the book1 related post

Recording what an application actually sent: the resolved prompt version, memory IDs and versions, source excerpts, tool results, model ID, and relevant settings — kept in an access-controlled trace where retention permits.

“What does the assistant remember about me?” should have an answer from the retrieval layer, not from asking the model to reconstruct its inputs. A digest of the request helps you notice that requests differed; it does not authenticate a document or prove a claim true.

Definition from The World That Agrees With You: Understanding and Managing Sycophancy in the Age of AI, by Timothy O’Brien. © 2026 Timothy O’Brien. All rights reserved.

In the book

See also