skills/create-practice-set/references/item-quality.md

# Practice item quality checks

Run these checks before returning a practice set.

## Answerability

- Confirm that the selected source contains enough information to answer every item.
- Remove an item if the answer depends on an unstated assumption or outside fact.
- Treat a causal, setup, classification, explanatory, or scenario relationship between two source facts as unsupported unless the source itself states that relationship. Facts that can be combined into a valid inference still do not authorize that inference. For example, do not claim one process established the gradient used by another merely because that is common domain knowledge.
- Match numerical precision, units, qualifiers, and exceptions to the source.
- Reject an item that adds a new organism, cell type, disease, scenario condition, intermediate mechanism, upstream cause, downstream effect, acronym expansion, named example, or outcome absent from the source.
- If a requested application scenario cannot be built from a single source sentence that states the entire scenario relationship, replace it with direct retrieval from one clause. Do not replace it with a comparison, sequence, or explanation assembled from separate facts.

## Uniqueness

- Keep one primary retrieval target per flashcard.
- Remove duplicate items and near-duplicates that test only the same wording.
- Ensure one multiple-choice option is clearly best under the source's framing.
- Unless the learner explicitly asks for multiple choice, prefer short answer. Never use an option whose falsity depends on outside knowledge or on the absence of a statement from the source.

## Coverage

- Represent major source concepts before minor details.
- Default to direct retrieval. Use explanation, comparison, sequencing, or application only when one source sentence explicitly states the entire requested relationship and the learner's requested format calls for it.
- Do not manufacture an application scenario that requires outside-domain knowledge.

## Wording

- Avoid trick questions, double negatives, trivia, and clueing through grammar or answer length.
- Use neutral language and preserve meaningful technical terms.
- Keep distractors plausible but false for a reason visible in the source.

## Answer-key consistency

- Re-solve every item from the source.
- Confirm labels and numbering match exactly.
- Make each rationale a minimal quote or close paraphrase of the one source clause that answers the item; do not add an explanation.
- Compare every clause of each answer and rationale with the source. Remove a clause when its support is only general knowledge.
- Keep a rationale to the direct source statement supporting the answer. Never explain the deeper cause, consequence, taxonomy, or relationship unless that exact relationship is stated in the source.
- Scan the entire pre-answer portion. It must contain fronts and question prompts only—no backs, answers, rationales, correctness cues, or revealed solutions.