A housing authority wants its agent to cite eligibility policy instead of improvising rulings. How should agent goals be written?

A housing authority agent that must cite eligibility policy instead of improvising rulings should be given goals that prefer citing grounded policy sources over improvising eligibility rulings. Agent goals steer behavior: when success is defined as grounded citation, retrieval and quotation are rewarded; when success is creative exception-making, the agent invents unauthorized outcomes. For eligibility, goals must encode policy fidelity as the objective. Goals that prefer citing recalled policy summaries over improvising eligibility rulings reward memory-based summaries instead of verifiable citation, inviting hallucinated policy rather than answers actually grounded in sources. Goals that prefer citing prior eligibility decisions over improvising eligibility rulings substitute past outcomes for grounded policy, risking repeated errors and inconsistent rulings instead of grounding each decision in authoritative sources. Goals that prefer citing general housing guidance over improvising eligibility rulings reward vague, non-authoritative references instead of specific eligibility policy, which still leaves room to improvise rulings rather than citing grounded sources. On the exam, write goals that prioritize grounded policy citation; distractors cite recalled policy summaries, cite prior eligibility decisions, or cite general housing guidance instead of grounded policy sources. Caveat: goals alone are insufficient without retrieval tools and refusal patterns—pair goal text with mandatory cite-or-escalate behavior when policy is missing. Operational check: pose edge-case eligibility questions, verify answers quote policy sources, confirm the agent does not substitute recalled policy summaries, prior eligibility decisions, or general housing guidance for grounded citation, and review goal text to ensure it does not reward any such shortcuts.