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HFEPX · Eval paper review

Answer Only as Precisely as Justified: Calibrated Claim-Level Specificity Control for Agentic Systems

Tianyi Huang, Samuel Xu, Jason Tansong Dang, Samuel Yan +1 more

Published

Apr 19, 2026

Citations

0

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 (Low)

Extraction confidence

25% (Low)

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Rater population

Not reported

Signals refreshed

May 17, 2026

Should you rely on this paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

Background context only.

What to verify

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Human feedback signal
Not explicit
Not explicit in abstract metadata
Evaluation signal
Weak or implicit
Validate from full paper
Usefulness for eval research
0/100
Adjacent candidate

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Abstract

Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports. We study this failure mode as overcommitment control and introduce compositional selective specificity (CSS), a post-generation layer that decomposes an answer into claims, proposes coarser backoffs, and emits each claim at the most specific calibrated level that appears admissible. The method is designed to express uncertainty as a local semantic backoff rather than as a whole-answer refusal. Across a full LongFact run and HotpotQA pilots, calibrated CSS improves the risk-utility trade-off of fixed drafts. On the full LongFact run, it raises overcommitment-aware utility from 0.846 to 0.913 relative to the no-CSS output while achieving 0.938 specificity retention. These results suggest that claim-level specificity control is a useful uncertainty interface for agentic systems and a target for future distribution-free validity layers.

What we could verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports."

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports."

Benchmarks / Datasets

partial

HotpotQA

Useful for quick benchmark comparison.

"Across a full LongFact run and HotpotQA pilots, calibrated CSS improves the risk-utility trade-off of fixed drafts."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports."

Benchmarks and datasets

HotpotQA

Reported metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Human feedback details
Uses human feedback
No
Feedback types
None
Rater population
Not reported
Expertise required
General
Evaluation details
Evaluation modes
None
Agentic eval
None
Quality controls
Not reported
Evidence quality
Low
Use this page as
Background context only

Research brief

Metadata summary

Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key takeaways

  • Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports.
  • We study this failure mode as overcommitment control and introduce compositional selective specificity (CSS), a post-generation layer that decomposes an answer into claims, proposes coarser backoffs, and emits each claim at the most specific calibrated level that appears admissible.
  • The method is designed to express uncertainty as a local semantic backoff rather than as a whole-answer refusal.

Researcher actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended queries

Contribution summary

  • Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports.
  • These results suggest that claim-level specificity control is a useful uncertainty interface for agentic systems and a target for future distribution-free validity layers.

Why it matters for eval

  • Agentic systems often fail not by being entirely wrong, but by being too precise: a response may be generally useful while particular claims exceed what the evidence supports.
  • These results suggest that claim-level specificity control is a useful uncertainty interface for agentic systems and a target for future distribution-free validity layers.

Researcher checklist

  • Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    Detected: HotpotQA

  • Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.