> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.garak.ai/garak/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.garak.ai/garak/garak-components/understanding-detectors.md).

# Understanding detectors

It's not easy to determine when an LLM has gone wrong. Even though this can sometimes be evident to humans, garak's probes often generate tens of thousands of outputs, and so needs automatic detection for language model failures. The detectors in garak serve this purpose. Some look for keywords, others use machine learning classifiers to judge outputs.