What the documents look like
Franchise filing management centers on legal disclosure and the commerce department system. It does not handle individual site engineering. The working materials are franchise contracts, operations manuals, filing submissions, and information disclosure documents. Their sources are the commercial franchise information management system, enterprise licenses, store lists, and contract ledgers. Updates are irregular and annual.
This shape directly affects citation tracing. A single franchise contract can exist in several versions across years. When a product question or selection answer cites an old clause, that citation can diverge from the current disclosure document. The parties involved are the franchisor headquarters, franchise legal staff, and the commerce liaison. When checking a citation, the material version and its valid scope must be distinguished.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node outputs a citation array, and its length may be zero. An empty array does not mean the workflow has errored or terminated. The search scope first checks the selected knowledge bases and material versions. Only knowledge bases with the same vector model can be associated together. The minimum relevance score is a filter threshold. It takes effect only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. It does not perform permission or entity isolation. Citation content must be passed to the answer step, where the answer and the cited source text are checked line by line. Full-text retrieval suits precise queries such as numbers, models, and proper nouns. Semantic retrieval suits natural language questions. Hybrid retrieval fuses the two paths through RRF. Image retrieval requires image input and model capability. Reranking requires a rerank model and must be enabled per settings. These are optional paths and do not all execute on every request.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: a franchisor headquarters legal staff submits an excerpt from the 2024 Franchise Contract Ledger. The source text reads: "Party A grants Party B the right to use the brand mark in the East China region; the contract term runs from March 1, 2024 to February 28, 2027; Party B shall complete initial training within thirty days of signing." A second excerpt from the 2025 Information Disclosure Document reads: "The standard term of an East China region franchise contract is three years, counted from the signing date." The draft sentence to be judged is: "The East China region franchise contract term is three years, consistent with the start and end dates recorded in the ledger." This sentence merges wording from two materials. The subject, object, period, and field must be checked for whether they are the same.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point | Note and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select the filing submissions base and the contract ledger base | Check whether the vector model identifiers are the same; exclude if different |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Route number-type questions to full-text retrieval and natural language questions to semantic retrieval; compare recall differences |
| Minimum relevance | Set to 0.5 as a hypothetical trial starting point | This value is a hypothetical starting point, used to compare citation count changes under different thresholds |
| Citation cap | Set to 2000 tokens as a hypothetical trial starting point | This value is a hypothetical starting point, used to compare citation completeness under different caps |
| Result reranking | Enabled per settings | A rerank model must be present; compare ranking before and after reranking |
| Citation output | Check array length | When length is zero, inspect the downstream handling design; do not treat it as an error |
Three common errors
- Treating the minimum relevance score as a permission or entity filter. Input is a franchise contract ledger query. The comparison is the relevance threshold against returned records. The observable result is that after a threshold change, unrelated business records may still be recalled. Relevance affects ranking and filtering only. It does not isolate unauthorized records.
- Associating knowledge bases that use different vector models. Input is the model identifiers of two bases. The comparison is whether the identifiers match. The observable result is that when identifiers differ, joint association is excluded. This action only checks identifiers and excludes non-matching ones. It does not run a cross-model retrieval to compare missed recall.
- Treating a pending-review material as an effective contract. Input is a filing material marked "pending review." The comparison is the material status against the contract effectiveness conditions. The observable result is that pending review does not demonstrate a lack of operating permission, and it does not equal an effective contract. Signing, reaching cooperation, and contract effectiveness are three distinct facts.
How to verify the setup
- Input the two source excerpts and the draft sentence from the hypothetical sample. Compare whether the draft sentence treats the ledger start and end dates and the disclosure document's three-year term as the same field. The observable result is that the two have different subjects and period wording, the draft sentence is not supported, and the evidence gap must be recorded.
- Input the knowledge base search node output array. Compare the array length against the downstream answer step's handling design. The observable result is that when the length is [], the path still completes and is not judged as an error termination. Do not claim that retrieval is guaranteed to return empty.
- Input the vector model identifiers of the filing submissions base and the contract ledger base. Compare whether the two are the same. The observable result is that when identifiers differ, joint association is excluded, and the actual observation is recorded. Do not infer runtime results after joint association.