Output Validation & Constrained Generation (CFG)

When: Schema validation Weeks 1--2; constrained decoding conditional on the project requirement after core work.

• JSON Schema/Pydantic validation, strict parsing, allowlisted output fields, and safe failure paths.

• HTML/Markdown sanitization and context-aware output encoding in the frontend.

• Never execute model-generated code or SQL directly.

• Understand grammar-constrained decoding and context-free grammars conceptually.

• Explore NeMo Guardrails or another framework only after application-level validation exists.

Practice: require structured outputs for tool arguments and API responses. If the UI must not render links or code, disable/sanitize those renderers in the application. Regex or decoding constraints alone cannot enforce all downstream safety.

Do not learn yet: token-level constrained decoding internals unless you control the model/runtime or have a concrete requirement.