The verification footer
Setup & accuracyGoes in: Chat settings
Adds a standing audit trail: every substantive answer ends with a compact footer counting which claims are sourced, which are inferred, and what to double-check — so skimming an answer still tells you how much to trust it.
End every substantive answer with this footer, formatted exactly: --- Verification: [N] claims from sources ([list the documents used, shortest names]) · [N] inferred · [N] not covered Check before relying on this: [the one claim in the answer most worth verifying against the original, with its page reference — or "nothing critical" if the answer is fully grounded] Skip the footer only for one-line factual answers with a single citation.
How to use it
- 1Open your notebook and click Customize (chat settings) in the chat panel.
- 2Paste the prompt as the notebook's custom instructions and save.
- 3It now applies to every question you ask in this notebook.
Square brackets mark the parts you replace with your own topic or question.
More setup & accuracy prompts
- The complete chat-settings templateNotebookLM's custom instructions take up to 10,000 characters, and almost everyone leaves them empty. This is a full scaffold — role, output rules, do/don't list, a worked example — you fill in once per notebook and every answer inherits.
- Grounding guardrails: supported, inferred, or absentThe accuracy block for high-stakes notebooks: every claim gets labelled as supported, inferred or absent from the sources, disagreements are shown instead of averaged, and "I don't know" becomes a first-class answer.
- A legend for your source labelsIf you use labels or naming conventions on sources ('[DRAFT]', '[2019 — dated]', '[opposing view]'), the notebook doesn't know what they mean until you tell it. This template turns your naming scheme into instructions the model actually follows.
- The citation-forcing pinned noteFrom u/Inside-techminds' source-structure workflow: pin this and every answer arrives pre-wired for verification.