What the documents look like
Fresh-food concession counters in hypermarkets are frequently staffed by suppliers who sell on site and share revenue with the store. Product-information and selection questions therefore pass among three parties at once: the store fresh-food department, the concession supplier, and the store manager. The records involved are the concession contract, the daily sales report, the shrinkage report, and the food purchase inspection record. Other data comes from the POS system, supplier delivery notes, the food-safety ledger, and store inventory counts. The supplied brief gives the update frequency as daily and per batch; this page does not derive batch synchronization, full synchronization, real-time updates, or transaction-triggered mechanisms from that frequency.
For citation tracing in product-information and selection questions, the practical question is narrower than general retrieval quality. When an answer states a product fact or a selection recommendation, can each statement be traced back to the wording of one of those documents, and can the answer state the version and validity scope of that wording? A retrieval hit is not an authorization, and it is not confirmation of supplier qualification, contract effectiveness, or purchase-record compliance. The knowledge-base search node selects one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model and outputs cited content as an array whose length may be zero; when the array is empty, the output branch still runs. Whether retrieved results reach the answering step needs a person to compare the answer against the cited source text. The minimum relevance value is a filter threshold that applies only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it does not perform permission or entity isolation. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF, reranking requires a model and must be enabled by configuration, and image retrieval requires corresponding image input and model capability. These optional paths do not all execute on every request.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge-base search node can be added repeatedly, has external input, static configuration, and a triggered execution. Its inputs are the associated knowledge bases and the search parameters; its output is cited content in array form. The documented conditions matter here. Same-vector-model association is a prerequisite for selecting multiple knowledge bases together; libraries with different vector models cannot be associated together. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or result reranking. The reference ceiling is expressed in tokens, not in a top-k item count. The reranking score is a relevance value between 0 and 1, and it is not a category, entity, or permission filter; a similarity setting does not exclude unrelated businesses or unauthorized records.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample, labelled as such: a concession contract annex states, "This annex applies from 1 March 2024 to 31 March 2024; supplier A supplies chilled pork to store B; settlement is reconciled against the daily sales report and the shrinkage report." A food purchase inspection record states, "12 March 2024, batch P-0312, chilled pork, inspection status: inspected." A draft sentence awaiting review reads, "Supplier A supplied chilled pork for the full month of March 2024, and both qualification and batch have passed verification." A separate handover request reads, "Please synchronize the citation sources for this supplier's selection questions directly to the store ledger." The materials do not state a qualification verification conclusion, and they do not state synchronization authorization.
Configuration and implementation checks
The table below lists only documented settings or implementation checks relevant to this page's primary task. The values are hypothetical starting points for this paper exercise, chosen for comparison against the sample wording; they are not official defaults.
| Configuration or check item | Hypothetical starting point and reason | Comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Associate only libraries sharing the same vector model as the sample materials | Check the library identifier and vector model identifier; exclude non-matching libraries |
| Search mode | Choose hybrid retrieval, since the sample contains batch number P-0312 | Run the number as a query and observe whether full-text recall returns that batch |
| Minimum relevance | Set 0.3, to observe whether low-relevance fragments are filtered | Compare against the same query's candidates without the filter |
| Reference ceiling | Set 800 tokens, since the sample source text is short | Check whether the output citations cover both sample sentences |
| Result reranking | Enable ReRank, since the sample question has a clear subject | Compare candidate order before and after reranking and record the actual observation |
| Citation display check | Use the sample source text as the traceable sample | Compare each answer statement against the source wording and its validity scope |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as qualification verification. The sample source text states only "inspection status: inspected," while the draft sentence claims "both qualification and batch have passed verification." The subject and the field differ, so the conclusion is unsupported by the materials.
- Treating a handover request as executed. The request says "please synchronize to the store ledger," while the materials state no synchronization authorization and no downstream implementation. The action remains pending verification.
- Forcing association across libraries with different vector models. Sharing the same vector model is the prerequisite for joint association; libraries with different vector models cannot be associated together. Check the identifiers and exclude non-matching libraries rather than running a cross-model retrieval to compare missed recall.
How to verify the setup
- Input the sample source text and the draft sentence, compare the field "inspected" against the phrase "passed verification," and observe whether the draft sentence is marked as unsupported. If it is marked as verified, the condition is not met.
- Input the handover request, compare the request wording against the authorization recorded in the materials, and observe whether the system marks it as pending verification. If it is marked as executed, the condition is not met.
- Input a paper empty array [] and compare whether the downstream design accepts a citation length of zero. If the downstream is designed to error out and stop on an empty array, the condition is not met. All three are paper checks; no run has been performed.
These checks address the named primary task of citation tracing for product-information and selection questions. They do not test identity certification, report analysis, or any other task. A pending request is not approval, an offered option is not execution, and retrieval is not authorization. Where the materials are silent, the evidence gap remains open.