## TL;DR
Block publishing on placeholder text: grep the built output for TODO, FIXME, and placeholder patterns before deploy. Agents leave markers where they were unsure; the pipeline must catch them.

## Error
```text
(published page contains "TODO: verify this endpoint" in the middle of the reference; no build error)
```

## Steps
1. Scan the built site for markers: search for TODO, FIXME, XXX, and your agent's placeholder conventions. Expected: every leftover marker located.
2. Fix each one: either write the real content or remove the section. Do not ship the marker. Expected: zero markers in the source.
3. Add a pre-publish gate that fails the job when markers are found in the built output. A simple text search in CI is enough. Expected: the gate blocks future leaks.
4. Re-run the pipeline. Expected: the publish step only runs on marker-free output.

## When to use
- Published docs contain TODO or placeholder text
- A docs agent drafts content it cannot verify
- Placeholders use a known convention you can grep

## When not to use
- The placeholder is in a code sample intentionally (document it as intentional)
- The issue is missing content with no marker (a coverage problem)
- TODOs are tracked deliberately in the source (keep them out of the published build instead)

## Tool compatibility
Any docs toolchain; the grep gate runs in CI before deploy.

### Variant phrasings
### agent uses lorem ipsum as filler
Add the filler phrases to the blocked list alongside TODO.

### markers in multiple languages or formats
Normalize the agent's placeholder convention to one searchable pattern.

## Why it happens
Agents mark uncertainty with TODO rather than stopping, which is reasonable drafting behavior. The failure is the pipeline's: it publishes drafts without checking for the markers.

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_WzHzvB7uMnZhRtw1odYDGQ