What the documents look like
This category covers disposable plastic bags and single-use items in supermarkets and convenience stores, where reporting obligations sit alongside environmental regulation rather than membership marketing. The working materials are plastic bag procurement ledgers, sales vouchers, half-year reports and self-discipline commitments. Procurement ledgers and sales vouchers form daily; half-year reports aggregate on a half-year cycle, so two rhythms coexist in the same knowledge base. Records are spread across a commerce ministry reporting system, POS plastic bag sales, procurement systems and store ledgers. For the same batch of bags, the quantity recorded at procurement intake, at POS sale and in the ledger may not agree, because each stage counts a different field.
Product material and selection questions must answer where a citation comes from and what state that material is in. A fluent answer is not evidence of a source. The citation must be traceable back to the original text, and the original text must state its own subject, object, period and status.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model. Its output is a citation array, and the length may be zero; when the array is empty, that output path still completes. The citation limit is measured in tokens, not in top-k items. The minimum relevance value is a filter threshold and applies only during semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it is not a permission filter and does not isolate entities or businesses. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF. Reranking requires a rerank model and is enabled according to settings. Image retrieval requires image input and matching model capability. These paths are listed in the overall retrieval flow and do not all execute on every request.
Retrieval is not authorization. Forms collect values; business verification, approval, database writes and external synchronization each need their own downstream implementation. Scheduled triggers and hidden controls are not assumed.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample. Three sentences of the source material reads "From 1 March 2025 to 31 March 2025, one store's procurement ledger recorded 12,000 single-use plastic bags received, procurement order number CG-2025-031." "Over the same period, POS plastic bag sales records totalled 11,800 units sold, sales voucher number XS-2025-031." "The 2025 half-year report has been submitted; the recycling status field states 'summarised per store ledger'." A draft sentence to be judged: "The store's March 2025 plastic bag procurement, sales and recycling quantities have all been checked and agree, and can be cited directly as a data source for the half-year report."
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | What it covers on this page | How to check, with hypothetical starting point |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Libraries holding procurement ledgers, sales vouchers, half-year reports and self-discipline commitments | Check the vector model identifier of each library first; associate only those sharing the same vector model, exclude others and record the exclusion |
| Citation limit | Maximum tokens cited per search | Hypothetical starting point set to cover summaries of all three materials; compare against a smaller value sufficient for one material only, and observe whether truncation occurs |
| Minimum relevance | Filter threshold during semantic retrieval or reranking | Hypothetical starting point at a mid value; compare against a higher value and observe whether low-relevance fragments are filtered |
| Search mode | Semantic, full-text, hybrid | Use full-text or hybrid for number-type queries and semantic or hybrid for natural-language questions; record the actual retrieval path |
| Result reranking | ReRank second-pass ordering | Confirm the rerank model is available and enabled; compare candidate order against the disabled state |
| Citation output handoff | Citation array passed to the answer step | Use the paper input [] to check whether downstream continues on an empty array, and compare each answer statement against the cited original text |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization. Input the draft sentence above together with the retrieved ledger fragment; compare the retrieval result against the authorization field. A retrieval hit does not mean the store is approved to cite or submit. When authorization status is absent, record the gap.
- Treating numbers from different fields or periods as a direct contradiction. Input the procurement intake figure of 12,000 units and the POS sales figure of 11,800 units. These share a subject and a period but are different fields, so the difference is an ordinary measurement-basis difference. Only mutually exclusive values in the same field constitute a contradiction.
- Treating a pending or submitted item as effective. Input "the 2025 half-year report has been submitted"; compare the submitted status against review and effective status. Submission does not demonstrate that review passed, and does not demonstrate that recycling data was verified.
How to verify the setup
- Input the three source sentences and the draft sentence above. Compare the phrase "procurement, sales and recycling quantities have all been checked and agree" against the respective fields in the source text. The source gives procurement intake, POS sales and a recycling-field summary only; it provides no same-field reconciliation conclusion. That phrase is unsupported, and the gap must remain.
- Input the paper empty citation array []. Compare whether the downstream answer step continues on the empty array and observe whether the output path still completes. Do not infer that a fabricated rule search necessarily returns [].
- Input a handoff request: "Please cite the March 2025 sales voucher XS-2025-031 directly as recycling data for the half-year report." Compare the object, period and field in the request against the source text. The sales voucher belongs to the sales stage, while the half-year report recycling field is a different field. The request lacks a corresponding recycling basis, so it is pending verification and does not indicate that citation or submission was executed.