> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getcited.in/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Non-Determinism

> The property of LLMs that causes the same prompt to produce different responses across runs.

**Non-determinism** is the property of large language models that causes the same prompt to produce different responses when run multiple times. This is not a bug — it is a fundamental characteristic of how LLMs generate text by sampling from probability distributions at each token.

## Why it matters

Non-determinism makes single-run AI visibility measurements unreliable. A brand mentioned in one ChatGPT response might not appear in the next response to the identical prompt. Robust measurement requires multiple runs per query and statistical aggregation — a single snapshot tells you what happened once, not what typically happens.

## How Cited uses it

Cited accounts for non-determinism by running prompts multiple times per platform and aggregating before reporting. Dashboard metrics are based on aggregated data, not single runs. See [Non-determinism](/concepts/foundations/non-determinism) for practical guidance on interpreting metric movements.

## Related concepts

* [Non-determinism (full page)](/concepts/foundations/non-determinism) — detailed explanation and practical guidance
* [Data freshness](/methodology/data-freshness) — how to interpret confidence in aggregated data
* [LLM](/glossary/llm) — the models exhibiting this property