The 80% Rule: Why Your AI Agents Should Only Speak When Confident
· 4 min read
We've all been there: You ask your AI coding assistant for a solution to a tricky bug. It responds instantly, with absolute certainty, providing a code snippet that looks perfect. You copy it, run it, and... nothing. Or worse, a new error.
The AI wasn't lying to you. It was hallucinating. It was "confidently wrong."
In our Agentic Development Principles, we call this The Principle of Confidence-Qualified AI Output. But in practice, we just call it The 80% Rule.