Design a Corrective-RAG loop that self-corrects when an answer lacks evidence, without spinning forever or padding.
Self-correcting RAG is easy to demo and easy to ruin. The discipline is a gate that grades evidence before drafting, a termination rule that is not just a loop cap, and a metric that proves correction adds facts rather than fluff.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Self-correcting RAG is easy to demo and easy to ruin. The discipline is a gate that grades evidence before drafting, a termination rule that is not just a loop cap, and a metric that proves correction adds facts rather than fluff.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
