AI engineering glossary · Evals guardrails AI security
What is structured output validation?
Structured output validation: Checking that a model's output follows an expected format, such as a JSON schema with required fields and allowed value ranges, before using it. Failures trigger a retry or error, and it also prevents malformed or unsafe data from reaching downstream code.
Structured output validation: an example
A parser rejects a reply where the 'age' field is the text 'twenty' instead of a number and asks the model to try again.
Related terms
More Evals guardrails AI security terms
- SWE-bench
- Synthetic test data
- System prompt extraction
- Threat modelling
- Tool poisoning
- Tool-call accuracy
- Topical rails
- Toxicity classification
Where you learn it
Structured output validation is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.