Research
RAG Guardrails That Do Not Ruin UX
2024-09-02 · 5 min
Guardrails should reduce risk without making users wait 12 seconds for a refusal.
Guardrails are a UX problem as much as a safety problem. Users do not care why it failed. They care that it did.
I add lightweight checks: source overlap, confidence thresholds and per domain safety filters. Heavy policy checks happen asynchronously.
If you block too aggressively, people will route around your system. If you don’t block at all, support will route around you.
- Keep blocking deterministic and explainable.
- Fail fast and offer alternatives.
- Log every refusal reason.
- Don’t punish normal user behavior.